Thirty-Four

Today is my birthday.  I am 34.  This day has always felt magical to me, like anything is possible.  On this day, 17 years ago, I wished so hard that I would get kissed for the first time so I could stop practicing on my forearm.  Yes, I was a gigantic nerd, and I never did get that birthday kiss.  But in the last 17 years, I have kissed a lot of guys.  I mean, A LOT of guys (unless my parents are reading this, in which case I have kissed only three).  So I guess that means I’m kind of a big deal.  I am usually remiss in sharing my age; I’ve been 22 for the last twelve years.  But I am still smokin’ hot and being 34 gives that statement a lot more gravitas.  I mean, you don’t get to kiss ten (million) boys in your lifetime by being ugly.  More than that, I’ve got some battle scars from the last year and at 22, I couldn’t have done them justice.  I realize now that what makes this day, Boxing Day (the best thing about Canada), so special to me is more than having one magical day.  It’s about having one more magical year and using this day to stop and reflect; to count my war wounds and count my blessings; to set goals and wish for moments as exciting as my first kiss.   

Thirty-three.

I got laid off from my job this year.  Again.  It was scary and humiliating and frustrating.  I had a brand new mortgage.  I had a brand new surround sound system!  My juice cleanses were cut off.  I stopped shopping at Neiman Marcus.  It was terrifying.

I got my heart broken this year.  In an email.  On Thanksgiving Day.  Which I happened to read while (surprisingly enough) I was with my entire family.  It felt like I got sucker punched.  Through the smiles and jokes I forced for my family, all I wanted to do was crawl into a deep dark hole and cry.  I wanted to shed tears that sounded like a two year-old having a temper-tantrum, with random high-pitched screams and fist pounding and feet stomping thrown in for effect.  I wanted catharsis. I wanted comfort.  I wanted him. 

Those were two pretty hard blows, but 33 was still the most amazing year of my life.

I moved to a new city and made incredible, life-long friends.  I travelled to different countries and to Navy football games.  I saw my first Foxfield races.  I danced until the roof caught fire.  I bought an apartment, on my own, with my own money; and it is the most beautiful apartment in the history of apartments.  I drank my first gin-martini and it was absolutely delicious; I didn’t even have to pay for it.

I fell in love.  However fleeting and painful it turned out to be in the end, it was passionate and fun and beautiful and sexy.  And it gave me the promise for what I am capable of feeling and what someone, someday will be capable of feeling for me too.  As it turns out, that someone is probably going to be Jamie Foxx.  And we are probably going to get married.

Most of all, I got a fresh start.  Again.  I got a new job.  Lots of new jobs, actually.  After just over two months of being unemployed, I had my pick.  Having recently been rejected professionally and personally, it felt amazing to feel wanted again.  It felt magical. 

Thirty-four.

I’m moving to Manhattan.  It’s bitter sweet.  My new tenant came to look around the house and as she was telling me how much she loved it I got a lump in my throat and wanted to shove her out the door, then throw her jacket and purse out after her.  I love the life I had in Boston, but I’m so excited about moving to New York that I sometimes have difficulty sleeping.  That city catches my breath every time.  It is magnificent, electric, seductive; and moving there (again) scares the shit out of me. 

Turning another year older is daunting.  I don’t look quite as fresh or chipper first thing in the morning without makeup as my 22 year-old self.  I carry Tums to fight off Indigestion, my unwanted travel partner.  I worry about how many fertile years I have left and think about when the right time is to freeze my eggs.  I never had a thought of these issues in my twenties.  My thirties, layered with independence, responsibility and lactose intolerance, have been happier and more exciting than the entirety of its previous decade.  Thirty-three, with its highs and lows was truly extraordinary.  Thirty-four, with its wrinkles and achy bones, will be my greatest feat yet.  I am going to be the most fabulous version of myself and take Manhattan by storm.  Not just for today, but for the whole year, anything is possible.  My adventure starts now.   

World Domination or Certain Death

I broke my knee and arm in a skiing accident when I was 17.  I had surgery on that knee when I was in the Navy and have since had chronic pain.  For this and other reasons, I am a disabled veteran and am entitled to free health care for the rest of my life at any Veterans Administration’s (VA) Medical Facility.  This is a blessing, but much like Peter Parker’s brush with a radioactive spider, also a curse.

I’m familiar with hospitals all over the country.  My broken knee and arm were neither the first nor the last bones I would break on my 5”7 frame.  A friend (in no way associated with the medical community) recently diagnosed me with small-footed-syndrome™, a condition which limits the body from maintaining its balance due to its too-small base paired with its too-tall height.  I accept this information as fact and have since begun purchasing shoes a half size larger and stuffing them with socks.  Like millions of men before me, this is to give the impression of genetic superiority to potential mates, lest they believe our children would suffer from the same small-footed-syndrome™ as myself and search for a better (larger-footed) genetic match. 

Aside from my newly diagnosed disease, I am also a borderline hypochondriac… surprisingly enough.  I once had pain in my chest that was so intense that I convinced my parents to rush me to the ER before my impending heart attack triggered by the early onset heart disease that I so clearly had.  It turned out to be gas.  I walked out, head held high, with Mylanta and a few hundred dollars worth of co-pay.  As I explained to my parents all those years ago, this was a small price to pay for the peace of mind knowing that their healthy, athletic pre-teen daughter was in fact not having a heart attack. 

I recently had my yearly appointment (code word, pap smear) at my local VA hospital.  Like the others I have visited, these buildings are dreary, soul rendering institutions suitable only for the 47%.  The results came back abnormal, showing the possibility of pre-cancerous cells.  This is extremely common and is generally followed by a second pap smear to rule out irregularities due to different stages of menstruation, inflammation, a drop in the Dow or a regime change in the Sudan.   Naturally, in its infinite wisdom, the VA prescribed me a colposcopy, a highly invasive and unpleasant procedure.  This was like treating the common cold with an intensive round of chemo.  

My gynecologist knew nothing about me.  She didn’t know that I was an (Half) Ironman or that I floss every day.  I mean (Half) Ironmen and regular flossers do not get afflicted with pre-cancerous cells.   But the rational side of me took over and I realized that if I was having this procedure it meant that I was both barren and dying a slow, painful death.  Obviously. 

Leading up to the colposcopy was an arduous process that took about an hour.  The nurse practitioner took my vitals.  I told her I always have a low body temperature, but she didn’t believe me; they never do.  The thermometer read 94.6˚.  She took it twice with the same result then used a second thermometer, again testing twice.  She recorded the highest result of 96.4˚.  I’ve always had a very low body temperature, which I am convinced is preserving my skin so I will be the hottest 50-year-old on the planet (invest early, fellas), which leads me to believe that my life’s purpose is probably genetic world dominance, establishing the first true Gattaca* (after first researching prosthetic-foot-elongation™).

The nurse followed up with an extensive dive into my family’s medical history.  She glanced at my online medical record and then casually announced that I tested positive for Hepatitis B. 

Readers: slow your role.  If I had tested positive for HepB, “The Adventures and Missteps of a Boat School Diva: Shenanigans, Tomfoolery and Other Bits of Ridiculousness,” would hardly be the forum I would choose to announce this.  Continue reading, please…

I broke out into a cold 96.4˚ sweat.  My heart raced and I thought of all the reasons that my life was now over, of course knowing nothing about Hepatitis B, its causes, symptoms or treatment.  I nearly burst into tears, asking what this meant in an octave so high it rattled the windows. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said flatly.  “It shows you were vaccinated for Hepatitis B.  You don’t actually have it.” 

Somewhere, somehow, I hope that I am wracking up points for my non-violent behavior.  “You see, Officer, I know I snapped this one time, but what had happened was…”

I moved into the treatment room where a matted brown sterile table with cold, sharp metal stirrups taunted me like a fat bully waiting for school to get out; no escape but to face it.  Having already been positively diagnosed with small-footed-syndrome™, and falsely diagnosed with Hepatitis B, which in my mind was every bit a life-ending, painful, humiliating disease, the pressure was too much and I broke.  I started sobbing, knowing that the worst was clearly in store. 

I had cancer. 

Contagious cancer. 

Leprous, contagious cancer that would spread through my uterus, breasts, skin, clothes and anyone I came in contact with. 

My life… was over.

I have always been a mass of contradictions.  The little girl who played with Barbies and planned her wedding to Ken in a beat before plastering mud on her face and playing Army with all boys on her block; the girl who was interested in fashion and makeup and went to the Naval Academy; the woman who loves her independence but yearns for a family.  So, for me, it’s not terribly shocking that I’m the same person who took those moguls head-on and fearless at 17, but dramatizes life in extremes that cause my 96.4˚ body to react with tears and trepidation. 

Either way, what hangs in the balance is simple.  World domination or certain death.  With stakes this high, I'm going to start flossing twice a day.  

    

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

Get Out of the Street

You fucking nigger!

I read these words days later, and they still hurt.

I grew up all over the country, but I managed a pretty long stint in Louisville, Kentucky.  I imagined as I was moving from New York all those years ago, that Kentucky was lined with dirt paved roads and wondered if people still traveled by horse and buggy.  The idea of moving out of an apartment building in the city into an actual house, with my own bedroom, backyard and picket fence was so exciting that I would have traded the luxuries of running water for the outhouse that surely waited for me in my new city.  Louisville, as it turned out, was every bit a metropolis, with concrete sidewalks and gas-fueled automobiles.  Incidentally, using the bathroom outside eventually proved to be frowned upon. 

I live in Boston now. They’ve had running water since the 1800’s.  Clearly, this city has arrived.  I share a neighborhood with Senator Kerry and his billionaire wife and Tom Brady and his leggy supermodel.  I have a good job.  I’m educated.  I buy my groceries at Whole Foods.  I share a dentist with Mick Jagger.  Clearly, I have arrived. 

I went to the beach on Saturday morning with a new group of friends.  I left my apartment at 8:45 to hail a cab, dressed in J. Crew from head to toe. Traffic was thin and I stood in the road giving myself easy access to taxis approaching from either direction. A couple of angry cars honked their horns at me.  One angry woman held her horn for seconds and threw her arms up at me. “Yatta Yatta!” I yelled back mockingly, not taking offense.  I knew I was wrong, but I was in a hurry.  I stayed in the middle of the street until a pretty, well-dressed woman my age in a brand new Nissan blew her horn, slowed down in front of me and yelled with venom that burned like poison, “Get out of the street, you fucking nigger!”

Like breaking a bone, the first reaction I had was numbness.  I stood slack jawed as if I had been slapped in the face.  Emotions raced through me as my mind began to process what had just happened.  I was immediately transported through time and was no longer the beautiful accomplished woman I believed myself to be, living in one of America’s biggest cities in the 21^st century.  Instead, I was back in 1990; an awkward little girl in Louisville, struggling with my identity, starting fist fights with boys who called me nigger. 

That woman, dressed like me, could have been any one of my friends.  She wasn’t a white supremacist.  She wasn’t old.  She didn’t have a confederate flag mounted on her window.  And as far as I know, she didn’t have magical powers. But in the course of five seconds, she was able to strip me of everything that I was.  In that moment, I wasn’t smart or kind, ambitious or quirky, funny or interesting; I was just a black girl, a nigger. 

I got into a cab and tears started flowing.  I had a lump in my throat and my breathing was shallow and quick, trying to prevent myself from sobbing.  As I went to meet my white friends, all I felt was humiliation.  They would know what this woman had called me and they would believe it too.   They would see my brown skin, full lips, curly thick hair, round button nose and they would think I was ugly.  They would see my clothes and think I was an imposter who wandered into the wrong side of town, the white side of town. 

More than that, they had probably always believed, as she did, that I was just a nigger. I felt bamboozled, betrayed by every white person I had ever met.  Because no matter what our background, we were all lumped into the same category and they referred to us this way behind our backs.  They were waiting for me to annoy them, to step out of place, to fail; then they would tell me how they truly felt about me; about all of us.

This woman could have been any one of my friends, but she wasn’t.  She had no idea what it was like to love me or be loved by me, to nurture me, laugh with me, learn with me, be annoyed with me or fight with me as so many of my beloved white friends and family have.  I have been struggling to find a meaning or lesson in all of this, but a social message seems a little boring.  Instead, I’ll share with you some thoughts I’ve had on the issue since it happened:

1)      I acknowledge that all white people are likely not out to get me.  I am fairly certain that this is probably true. 

2)      I imagine she will develop the strain of HPV that turns people into trees.  I mean, I’m not saying I hope this happens to her, I just kind of have a feeling that it will.

3)      I hope no one ever calls me this to my face without the luxury of fleeing in a car; not just for my sake but theirs as well.  Any one of my friends and likely any one of my blog posts will confirm that I truly am bat shit crazy.  Earrings will come off and Vaseline will come on.  I believe that there are certain situations where a good stomping is not only understandable, but well deserved.  At least I’ve got my insanity plea all but locked up.

Resurgence

I can tell you with absolute certainty that my happiness is 100% correlated to my level of physical fitness. I can pin-point the exact moment it happened - I mean, my spiral into complete and utter despair. Last June after running a 22 mile race (on the heels of a Half Ironman) – true to my obsessive compulsive personality – I got burned out from exercise. It’s taken a year, but I’ve pretty well burned through my supply of endorphins as well. Lately, it’s all I can do to keep myself from mailing strangers anthrax in a strawberry scented scratch and sniff.

Fast forward to present day. I live in a new city; a place, my priest promised, littered with eligible Catholic bachelors of the 6”3, handsome, Cape Cod-summering persuasion waiting to date me. Liar.

My work outs are sporadic at best. I’ve become that girl who was at the gym every day in January and now is nowhere to be seen. A year ago, I would have thrown a Slurpee at someone matching my description, and then shoved them in a locker with sweaty underwear. Now, I walk with my head down trying not to make eye contact with the kool kids.

Replacing my triathlon obsession, I’ve taken to a new hobby: longing for the days of yore. The days when I could wear a dress barely long enough to cover my squat fashioned glutes and know that my legs were killin’ them. Now, they’re just killing me. Yes, men still stare, but now it’s because they’re counting the dimples of cellulite all over my thighs. I know this, of course, because I can read the cartoon bubbles coming out of their mouth. Naturally.

I wake up in the morning and search for a pair of pants that fit. I try one leg on at a time planning my move back to Panama where jeans are fashioned to cut off circulation and camel toe is par for the course.

I sit in my chair at work. I can feel a flab of fat from my stomach hanging over my clothes. It’s humiliating. When I get up to go to the bathroom I have to politely ask my co-workers not to talk about me. Because they, like everyone else on the planet, spend their days thinking about how much weight I’ve gained.

And because I apparently do not know any better, I tried gimmicks. I paid $250 to do a 3 day juice cleanse. With absolutely no fiber, this meant that I was constipated for three days; and ravenously hungry. I celebrated my successful completion with a juicy cheeseburger and truffle fries. In fact, I still have that extra pound I picked up to commemorate the experience. I do not recommend.

What is left? I guess doing what I know best: ridiculousness. I signed up for a Tough Mudder this summer. July 14th in Vermont. Ten miles. Twenty five obstacles. One blog resurgence.

These days, fear of death and humiliation are the only things that seem to motivate me out of bed to run. As you, my readers, are my witness, I will not rest until I have exposed myself in the shortest shorts possible and the cartoon bubble coming out of your mouth reads ‘Now, there’s a girl who does not know how to dress age appropriately.’ Then, and only then, will I know that my life, and by extension the entirety of humanity, will be blissfully happy.