Finding your strength, and losing it, and finding it, and…

Five months ago, I began taking a foundations class at a local Crossfit gym, or “box” — wait, don’t stop reading. I know that these words might illicit some sort of negative, oozing emotion from your brain, that manifests itself as either insult, curiosity, or warning. Something about your nephew’s girlfriend’s uncle did Crossfit and his knees magically disintegrated in two months time. Julie from the old neighborhood went to a boot camp and lost the baby weight. Sometimes I just hear “I could never do that.”

Maybe you’ve also heard that if you do too much Crossfit, your kidneys will fail, because I have definitely heard that one.

I’ve been hearing that my kidneys were going to fail for over a decade. Long before Crossfit was the dirty word. As a teenager I had to sit and listen to doctors tell me that they were functioning at 40 percent, then 30, then 20, then 10. I had to hear that there was no cause and no cure, just that it was chronic. And two years ago they finally failed, completely, without much fanfare (just a surgery). I don’t know what my old kidneys look like now… I picture them as small as the kidney beans I eat for protein, but dried and shriveled and utterly devoid of life. They sit on my back as a constant reminder of a source of frustration and anxiety to which I had no solution.

There was a point in my childhood that I can remember so vividly, realizing that I was not as strong as other kids. Tiring easily. I was born small and stayed petite for many years. Even though I was not a natural athlete, a part of me yearned to be athletic. My parents, ideal 90s parents, encouraged my whims — shuffling me to ballet, tap, jazz, gymnastics, karate, swimming, skiing, field hockey, soccer. For as petite as I was, I was also graceless. I landed on a soccer field, skinned knees, out of necessity.

I wish I could explain the chronic fatigue of organ failure to a “normal” person. It’s like, when that escalator into oblivion is suddenly out at 53rd and Lex, and you’re walking up that long flight of stairs, every minute, every day for 26 years… and when you finally get to sleep, you can sleep 6, 8, 10, 12, or 24 hours and the end result is always that you’re tired. College on fatigue. An steady stream of adderall and coffee failing your body as you drift into sleep in your afternoon ecology seminar.

But I didn’t want you to know how tired I was. We’ll save that for another essay. This one was supposed to be an introduction — to me, the one with three kidneys (one from my mom, two bum ones that somehow got me through 26 years of life) who just discovered Crossfit isn’t so bro-y and that the people are pretty great. The one who misses LiveJournal and hasn’t been able to hold down a blog since her teenage years, who fought kidney disease and eating disorders and a bunch of other crazy crap. The one who does yoga, but has no balance, and is planning on thru-hiking a 133 mile trail in the Adirondacks just for fun. The one who worked in music and had to leave it, the one who worked in film and chose to leave it, and the one who now works outside of the entertainment industry for the first time in her life.

What I will tell you about is that I went from losing strength, to finding it, to losing it, to finding it, and now I am somewhere else entirely.

Keep reading this space and see what it turns into.