The Shipwreck of Injury

Every athlete teeters on the edge of injury and progress. We are explorers, navigating our ships through treacherous waters, icebergs of injury lurking in the night. Seafaring captains must be brave. They would not survive if they could not sail courageously through stormy waters.

However, brave does not mean foolish. A captain can choose to charge ahead despite the leaks and shudderings of her ship, simply to get out of the storm, just as an athlete can fight through pain to perform at a culminating tournament. The ability to withstand pain is an important one, but it is a much more subtle skill to be aware of what your pain means. It is a much rarer ability to know and understand the location and severity of your ship’s leaks. Some might even say it takes more courage and will to stop amidst the heart of the storm than it does to blindly continue forward.

I am the captain of a sunk ship. Here is my story.

I am an athlete. Ultimate Frisbee is my sport. Recently, I acquired a bone contusion on my ankle, making it painful to walk, let alone play. This is the third time I’ve been out due to an ankle injury, and as innocently as the injury started (hit it against a bike pedal), the wreckage was my own doing.

Leaks sprang through the hull of my ship and I ignored their warnings, charging further into the hidden reef until the flood of water was unmistakable. It was too late — I was sinking, sinking, sinking…

I am underwater and it is more peaceful here where the pounding fists of waves cannot beat my skull, but there is no sound to distract me from the darkness of my drowning.

A beautiful eel with beady, hateful eyes finds me as I sink. He takes one glance and whispers, “You did not heed the warnings and you have no one to blame but yourself.”

I know he is right but I cry because it hurts all the same. “I read the maps and charts and stars correctly, I swear of it, and they all told me my path was straight and safe.”

“The only voice you did not heed is the one that mattered the most,” he whispers again, and I know he is talking about my vessel, my home in this world. The words slither across the ocean between us and settle on my soul. I am poisoned with regret.

“My ship…” I let out a mournful sigh. Sinking is exhausting and I am lost in the ocean now, so let it take me, let it take me.

“How stupid of you to believe you could ignore the pain and presence of a simple leak. Any experienced seafarer knows to adjust in accordance to the warning signs, yet you foolishly sailed onward.” His whispers propel me deeper into the abyss. I tried to be brave! I wanted to protest, but my voice and my will were gone.

“This was your second chance. You’ve already destroyed this ship once before. Now you are alone in this watery grave and you will watch others sail and live where you have failed. Never will you push the boundary of what is known and never will you bring glory to your name. You are doomed to a life of shipwreck, to a quiet death, to a future of being forgotten. ”

Thunk. My sinking has been halted by stones far under the sea and a departed piece of my mind muses, so this is how it feels to have hit rock bottom.

“Pity, too,” the eel comments, no pity in his voice at all, “you have so much drive in you, so much potential, so much desire and now it will never go anywhere.”

His job is done. He has matter-of-factly torn me apart, and he knows it. He slithers away into the darkness and soon there is nothing.

I am alone. The words echo.

pity…so much drive in you…so much potential…

I am brought back to a time when I was younger. My brother is showing me how to drive a manual car and during his demonstration he presses the gas pedal while the car is in neutral. Vrrrrrooom vrroom the car groans, even as it remains stationary.

I see it now. I have been trying to drive a car in neutral. Being driven means nothing if you don’t know when to burn your gas. You cannot mindlessly floor the gas pedal to propel yourself forward. You have to learn the details of patience, of shifting gears and transitioning, even if it is in your nature to just gogogo.

Too late to realize that, I think. I lie on the bottom of the ocean for a while, hiding in this sunken retreat where sunlight cannot reach me. I am glad of it. The sun showed me all my successes, successes that shined so brightly yet felt so cancerous. Here I am safe from the pressure and the relentless ultraviolet, safe from all the constructs at the surface that did nothing but blister my body.

Safety brings me a startling realization.

Success has made a coward out of me. I have spent so much time at the surface swimming in currents of my self-created, lofty images (“elite U23 Ultimate frisbee player”, “savvy Google APM/Intern,” “experienced Data Structures and Algorithms teaching assistant”). These currents have been so swift that they’ve demanded perfection. One wrong stroke will tear a limb off. After all, any mistake in a river of such high expectations is bound to hurt.

In these rapids, a monster was born. A monster named Fear.

Fear has a burning touch.

Despite all the sunlight of success I have yet to feel the serotonin. Success means nothing without Failure, who can sunscreen the ultraviolet of Expectation. I forgot to apply Failure, SPF laugh-at-yourself. Now I’m singed all over with skin so thin that the faults sink right through. No wonder I can’t take the heat. No wonder I hurt so easy. Who knew victory alone could make such a fragile heart.

How can you learn when you never fail?

Sinking in the sea, I was despairing. Drifting in the sand and rocks, I was sorrowful and self-pitying. The dust has settled now. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness and the calm sea floor presents itself to me. I am in the midst of a dazzling universe, a universe I’d forgotten in the rush of waves at the surface.

Color my life. Dance to the light. Sing the green and the blue. Staccato heartbeats. Thoughts a-stutter. I cannot breathe. I am underwater. I am in the dark. My eyes are reborn. Reborn to see and see that I am alive. I’m alive, and I’m not alone. There is wealth down here in the quiet. I have a treasure trove to heal upon.

I will not stand for this moping. I don’t. And I do. I stand. I feel the warmth and comfort in the deep sea of release. The ocean sings. Spend some time down here with me, I’ve been just a little bit lone-ly. It is an easy invitation to accept. I know I can live in this world of indulgence. Of introspection. Of vulnerability and of discovery.

I examine the pieces of my ship that lie on the seabed, tumbling in hibernation.

Things fall apart.

Shipwrecks happen. So do injuries. Sometimes they are as unavoidable as the oncoming night.

Anyone who has been injured can tell you how difficult it is. The worst part is not the physical pain. It’s not the knives into your pride, nor the unwanted pity or attention. It’s almost, but not quite, the longing ache in your heart to play a sport you love and instead, watching from the sideline. The worst part is this: knowing what it feels like to be whole, remembering you are not, and believing you have lost pieces of yourself—your worth, your usefulness, your self-value.

Simple tasks are transformed into enormous obstacles. To get to class you must first hike Mount Everest. To pick up a package you must first learn how to juggle with flaming batons and oh, you’re only allowed to use one hand. And laundry. Laundry is another beast entirely. But having these simple struggles ahead each day has helped me truly appreciate the small, happy things that just occur.

Like when your bread pops out of the toaster perfectly golden and crispy on the first try! None of that ‘toast-me-once and I’ll be warm bread, toast-me-twice and I’ll be black charcoal’ business.

Like when you walk up to an elevator door and right as you get there it opens AND it’s going in the direction you were headed. Thank you elevator gods.

Like when you wake up without an alarm and and you are saturated with an exquisite bliss because the dream flitting on the edges of your consciousness was nothing but joy.

I was foolish. I tried to drink the ocean with a tiny glass cup. The shipwreck was destructive, but in the wreckage I have been humbled. The quiet has allowed me to observe. And I have found my breath taken away by the spirit of all the unnoticed.

Yesterday I called an Uber. Climbing into the car, I asked my driver a routine, “How are you?” expecting nothing more than the usual blanket answer.

“Remarkable!” He exclaims, smiling at me through the rear-view mirror. It is 6:00 am.

At first I am annoyed — how can anyone be “remarkable!” at this time in the morning? Then a slow, delighted wonder tiptoes through me. I cannot help but smile when I ask, “Why so remarkable?”

“Oh, it’s a choice.” And that was that. The rush of respect I felt for him was enormous.

Happiness is a choice. But it is also a process, and sometimes a slow process. You need to be able to learn how to willingly make that choice.

J.D. Salinger once wrote, “I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”

I wanted so badly to be somebody that I forgot how to be okay with just being me. A me that turfs discs and stumbles over words and messes up teaching and makes really, really, god awful jokes and then laughs at them. I still want to be somebody, but now that somebody isn’t somebody. It’s me. Just me. But it’s the best version of me I can be.

I’m still sad sometimes. I still miss the adrenaline of a sprint. I miss the feeling of muscles working together and moving the same way James Bond picks up a girl—with utter ease and absolute skill. I miss being able to use my hands while walking and I miss being able to just dance. But all these things are not lost, just waiting. Waiting patiently for me to rebuild myself. My decision to be happy comes with my decision to accept and love myself despite being broken. And I know now what I would say to the next shipwrecked soul who wandered down this way.

“You are whole. You are strong. You have all the support of the earth and the stars and you need only to focus on what you can control. Process your feelings but don’t feed them. Claim the shipwreck but don’t let it claim you. Even broken, you are valuable.

You are not perfect and you never will be, but imperfection is only human and we are all human. Your mistakes fertilize the soil from which you grow. Embrace them. Be vulnerable. That in itself is a certain kind of bravery.

Choose to be happy and appreciate the small things. Most of all, remember: you cannot be brought down so long as you have hope. So never forget that. You always have hope and a splendid tomorrow waiting.”