I’m sort of afraid to go back and reread my mental spiraling from a few weeks ago. From what I recall of the emotional and wine-heightened blur in which it was written and published I was not in a good place. That night I was a ball of white hot (wet) rage, crying every few minutes and thisclose to selling every piece of tri gear I own on Craigslist. Fortunately I don’t think there’s much of a market for child-sized tribikes and spandex and so Koopa Troop and Warrio and my wardrobe were spared.

I’m not going try and hold myself out as a measured adult in control of her emotions here, you know me too well for that and it’d be a lie, but I am faring marginally better. I don’t think I’ve cried since that soggy Wednesday night. (I mean I don’t think I’ve cried about this; I’ve cried plenty about other things like every Subaru commercial I’ve seen this holiday season and every time I’ve played the newest Hamildrop. [Keep reading for more on my musical theatre past…and future?])

I’ve also become moderately proficient on my temporary prostheses. Actually after 8 days at my parents very much non-ADA-compliant home in the very much non-ADA-compliant country of Mexico I’ve gotten pretty good. I’ve traversed sand, and dirt, gravel, and cobblestone, my parents’ second story kitchen and pool, and faced all of that several margaritas in.

Drunken levity aside, a week into the crutches I received some unwelcome additional clarity from my orthopedist about my recovery and in short this is going to be a very long, slow road back and she is not enthusiastic about an Ironman in July. She doesn’t know the race (IM Lake Placid) is the very last Sunday in July and didn’t rule it out so I haven’t pulled the plug yet but I had been trying to haul my wallowing ass out of the depths of self-pity and that cynical message was tantamount to her swatting me several rungs back down the mental health ladder. The small light at the end of the tunnel that had been expanding narrowed again to a barely visible pinprick of light. But like I said, I didn’t cry this time; the small part of (small) me that retained some measure of hope for 2019 must be calcifying. Hopefully my bones follow suit.

She expanded on the no-swimming-no-nothing orders in response to my request to swim sooner than 6 weeks out if I stick with a pull buoy and avoid pushing off the wall explaining that some doctors would allow that but she’s seen people with this sort of fracture end up with chronic, life-long pain and improper healing so she tends to be more conservative. Hearing that I first entertained thoughts of second and third more permissive (reckless?) opinions but I quickly abandoned that fantasy. I need to accept this situation rather than seek out someone who will tell me what I want to hear. I’m just going to do what she says. I do think she’s being overly-cautious given that the hip was already improving and there is no pain when I swim. (Or cycle or anything but run for that matter.)

See I’m trying to be a grown up and accept and not fight lest I ruin myself for good. My doctor did put it well saying, “time off now pays it forward for later.” She sees a later in my future, so long as I don’t asshole it up now. So I’m following her orders and I’m trying to stop being a whiny baby about it.

To that end I’ve been compiling a list of positive things that have happened or anything that has cheered me even a tiny bit since this diagnosis. When someone says something that gives me even the smallest boost in spirits, that grows the far away end-of-the-tunnel light just a little more, I’m trying to take note of it. So in no particular order, another, less snarky, non-comprehensive list of things that made me feel less shitty in the last three weeks:

• Damn do I have a huge community of support. This is number one and the only item in a particular order. Members of the three different tri teams on which I race, fellow trainers and clients at the several gyms and studios at which I teach, work colleagues who know how crazy I am in my non-working hours, friends from now and from every part of my life, strangers online who have found my blog and feed, have all reached out to send well-wishes and share their stories. I feel bad for myself but I do not feel alone.

• This low point in my health may get other people to commit more to their own health: A number of friends and strangers alike have messaged me that they’ve decided to see their doctors about niggling pains, vitamin d testing, and to address things they’ve put off addressing.
• Even more people have reached out and thanked me for being so honest and raw [read: ugly] in my last post. Whether injured now or previously they identified with all of the doldrums and less charitable sentiments, and unless they’re just lying to me no one seems to be holding my unpretty selfishness against me long-term.
• I’ve been able to speak to a few people who have been through this very injury. They agree, it’s a pretty miserable one, but they (mostly [eventually]) recovered fully and they came back.
• Speaking of people with hip stress fractures -though his was in a different spot – Jan Frodeno! He was forced to withdraw from Kona after winning 70.3 Worlds in an epic race in South Africa. I’ve been seriously creeping on his feed lately. He’s back to training, and perhaps he is still tilting at the the mental windmills from it but he’s putting his best face forward and I will try to emulate, after all this is more his whole life than it is mine and he has slightly more to lose.
• People are sending me so many puppy pics. (People get me. [Or I’m simple?]) My first peg-leg Saturday I even organized the whole day around going to meet a friend’s 5 week old Bull Terrier puppy. I’ve always had a thing for bullies and I’d never held a dog that young. It was pretty magical.

• Revisiting new passions! I’m taking a musical theatre class starting in January. I’m terrified. I have the same butterflies when I think about it that send me running barefoot into the nearest portapotty on race mornings. (I’ll try to get that under control though as I don’t remember actors being equally easygoing as triathletes about anxiety-related BMs.)
• Another one of those passions is that I’m writing more! Two blogs within a few weeks of each other?! (My mom and Kim must be so proud! [The rest of you may be horrified.])
• I’m sleeping, and holy moly have you all tried this? It’s great!
• People saying one day down helps put the time in perspective. (Whereas proclamations that ‘I’ll come back stronger’ just make me want to cry and punch something.) After getting the crutches on a Wednesday afternoon, blogging like a maniac Wednesday evening, I received several texts Thursday morning declaring “one day down!” So simple, so mollifying. (Then I did the math and died a little inside when I considered there were 55 more to go, but one day at a time works.)
• I have reason to skip early mornings and late nights during this darkest, coldest part of the year – when I get back to it the days will be getting longer and lighter. Someone said this a few days into my crutches-sentence and it was like the clouds parted.
• My bone density is okay. My Vitamin D is not, and there are further complications there that I’ll expound on another time, but I’m within a normal density range for my age. That. Is. HUGE.

• Great suggestions like using Calm or Headspace app. I have Calm, I used it once, and I will try to use it more, especially to get more of this sleep thing I’d been missing out on!
• I’m seeing my friends (and husband!) more. I’ve been doing dinner and drinks and at regular hours not smelling like my usual post-gym/pool half-assed application of old spice.

• And yet, I don’t have to shower every day! In these first few weeks it’s been an every other day affair including while in Mexico. I just told myself I was doing my part for the limited water table in Baja. (Shhhhh. Just let me have this one.)
• Laundry is much easier and much less disgusting. Less, uh, damp.
• I took a real vacation. Scott and I just got back from 8 days visiting my parents in Mexico and I took the opportunity to do absolutely nothing. Usually when we’re there I run on the beach, yoga with my mom, take a day trip to a little city where we snorkel with the whale sharks. Any time I vacation anywhere I try to make it active. But for the first time in I can’t even say how many years I took actual time off. I sat by my parents’ pool the whole damn week and read and snoozed and indulged in mid-day adult beverages.

• My dad was inspired to tell me a pretty crazy story from his own childhood. That man has lived a thousand lives in his 66 years and every time I get a tidbit from his adolescence it’s a treat and a trip. This time around it was the nonchalant revelation that he spent almost two years on crutches as a child. TWO YEARS! After having his leg crushed by a bag of grain 50 gallon drum of kerosene at the age of 8. He endured horrific-sounding surgery following which the chicken mesh holding his glued-together femur in place had to be periodically tightened via screws in his leg. The 1960s weren’t so long ago but medically it’s been a billion years. I never knew this story and thanks to my overwrought angst he felt compelled to share.

• A reminder to never take anything for granted? Did I get complacent and assume my body would hold up no matter what? I don’t think I did, but after two stress fracture-free seasons (a feat I credit in large part to Josh’s guidance) maybe I was getting too comfortable in my own bones. I don’t believe in fate or karma though so I’m not really buying that, but I know that if and when I’m allowed to return to training I will savor every minute of health.

Still, if I’m being honest, and I usually am, I still have a sense of lingering foreboding, or finality. That I won’t get my legs back. Or my confidence, or the will to keep trying. I’m trying to shake this sinking feeling that I’m going to do everything “right” and it’s still going to be this protracted struggle from which I’ll never truly heal. Maybe I’m just chronically disposed to hairpin trigger flights of despair. (I do convince myself every time I get a soar throat that I’ll never sing again and so far my neighbors’ wishes haven’t come true on that. [Although my musical theatre teacher and classmates may argue when I meet them in a few weeks that if I ever had anything in the vocal department, it’s long-gone.])

But singing of that, I’m trying to unstick myself from confused considerations that maybe I’m just emotionally done with triathlon, with this whole unexpected jock phase of my life. Maybe I’ll find my voice, literally, and I can be done with this sports stuff and just be a weird theatre kid again.

I don’t know how to process those thoughts; undeniably a part of me is excited and relieved by them. (Maybe it’s the heavily-and-frequently-concussed part of me.) But sitting with and typing those thoughts here brings me back to the verge of tears too. I just want someone to tell me the right answer. How can I want to be totally done with it all and want so desperately not to be done at the same time?

I suspect this is part of some blahblahblah natural emotional Kübler-Rossian progression. Three weeks ago I wanted to set fire to or sell thousands of dollars worth of bicycles and spandex. Today only half of me wants that.

And I am looking forward. I haven’t dropped out of Lake Placid and knowing I can’t do Boston, and probably can’t do Ironman Virginia 70.3 (the race formerly known as Rev3 Williamsburg) I’m scoping other early-summer options. Plus I’m spending money like a real optimist purchasing a new saddle and shoes on Speed Sherpa’s team day at Conte’s Bike Shop a few weeks ago. I apparently do still plan to 140.6 this year.

Even plans to go through with the fulls I’m registered for don’t feel fully hopeful. The threatre-kid on my shoulder is saying, ‘sure sure, you give it one last go to get it out of your system for good and then I’ll meet you in the green room.’ But then the jock on my other shoulder is giving the theatre kid a wedgie and whispering that this setback is just the very thing to propel me to my Kona-qualification. Nobody is in any agreement in here and I’m tired. (More sleep please!)

I don’t know which of my archetypes will win. I don’t know which I want to win. I don’t know if one needs to win. I just want to keep putting one crutch in front of the other and get through the next five weeks with the small bit of sanity I previously possessed somewhat in tact.