Coming in Hot

The hyping up I do to try to pretend it's all in my head and to try to just out-muscle it, only to be beaten back by my body.

The mornings I get out of bed, determined to conquer the day, and just fall down.

There's only so many days you can just give up and go rest at the beach, right?

The things I do to fight it. The way I tell myself it's important not to admit that I just can't work past it. How I try to "do my part" and push back at it.

I've been coming to accept that maybe I am sick. Maybe my body does control me. Maybe I'm not getting better.

I've had the total body pain and sensitivity since I was a child, the intense knee pain since junior high, the hip and back soreness since college, the eye oozing and constant need to pee since 2010, the wrist/arm/hands weakness and pain and lack of function since 2011, the stomach problems since 2012, the overwhelming fatigue and muscle pain and emotional overload and brain fog since 2013, and the apathy and weakness ever since I came home and gave up the stuff that is "bad for me" but made me feel normal to try to be healthy. Maybe there is something wrong with me, and it's not aches and pains, and it can't be fixed by me being told to "exercise more," and I can't out-will it.

But maybe I can?

I've lived a life of compromise and just getting along for so long with this pain and illness that I'm afraid I'll forget how to live otherwise. I'm sick of being mediocre. This constant need to do only what is necessary, to live within limitations, is a foreign world to me still, and I blame it for my shortcomings.

But then, I was digging through some of my things the other night, and I began to wonder. I wrote hundreds of songs, both words and music. Were any of them any good? Hundreds of poems. Articles. Stories. Novels. A book. Thousands of photographs. Graphic design. Newspaper pages. Magazines. Have I always been mediocre? The way I play sports scares me, because I don't do anything the textbook way — it's all adapted to fit me and my weird pains and body parts. Or I taught myself a different way just because I wanted to, because for some reason I thought I didn't have to do it like everyone else. Is that how I handle everything in life? Am I some diva who's always tried to get by on talent instead of putting in the time to do it right? Is all I have left shells of what could have been, with no hope to resurrect them or continue now that I'm weak, and since I never took the time to build the bases I should have?

I stopped being afraid to really try around the same time I lost the ability to try.

I see it in sports, when the ball is coming at me hot, and I know everything I should do in my brain, and I'm screaming at my body to get down, get down, get the ball, and my body just stays up, not letting me get anywhere near where the ball could hurt me. Is this from day after day of running into walls and coffee tables or getting bruises from someone barely touching me? Has my body decided it can't take anything else that will hurt it and throb for days and days? Has it overridden my will, my fight? The ball is coming in, and I'm a coward. Was I always a coward? I have all these valid health excuses why I might not make the plays as well as others, but I still want to stop the ball. I want to do what I know I can do. I want to help my team. I want to add some value to life. I'm no longer the punk kid making excuses why she can't do things the way everyone is supposed to. I want to do what I'm supposed to, yet now I legitimately can't. Did I bring this upon myself by being that punk? Can a coward never be retrained?

Our identities should not be based on what we can do, but I still wonder. If I can't dribble well anymore, am I still a point guard? I have the talent, locked away, more locks being added against my will. If I can't take grounders, should I still be playing second base? My shortcuts, lacking raw talent, make me unreliable. If all I've ever written are simple songs, why pick up the guitar? I can't put in the time to get better. If I don't write, am I a writer? It's all in my head, waiting, but stuff stuck in people's heads never changed the world. If I can't do anything but eat, sleep, and exercise, why am I alive?

The answers lie in Jesus, and His Father, and the way they value life as life. But I don't understand it. No matter how many times I've rinsed the questions, how many times I've gotten revelations that seem to completely change the picture, this remains a chief question. I have a feeling I'm asking the wrong questions, but that doesn't get me closer to asking the right ones. What does God love so much about broken toys that seem like they'll never be fixed?

I'm not despondent; I have firm beliefs as to why I am still alive and that I shall remain so until God chooses otherwise. But in this place where the body parts fail one by one, healing does not appear to be right around the corner, and no amount of will or positive energy has seemed to make a difference, I am wondering not so much what my new reality is — I have grown used to it in recent months — but rather how I am supposed to approach it. Do you still dream? Do you still run out to second base? Do you still try to play pickup basketball against people you know are going to destroy you? Do you still pull out the guitar? Do you still sing songs in a strange land? If the key to this, as it is with everything, is to draw closer to God and to love Him for just Himself, what then is preferable, the seeker or the white flag? And how are you supposed to find the right questions, or find Him, when your brain is a brick?

The ball is coming in hot. I can see it. My encyclopedia of a mind knows everything about it. What kind of pitch hit what kind of swing, lending itself to what side of the field. I know why Derek Jeter consistently hit to that side, as opposed to the few times Mark Teixeira does (right-handed). I know who plays second base on dozens of major league teams, and who played before them, and before them. I know batting averages and Babe Ruth, home runs and Honus Wagner, left field and Larry Lucchino. But I don't know why my body won't get down and stop that ball. Why I'm mediocre. What being mediocre has to do with anything, including my character and identity. Why things as simple as softball are suddenly referendums on my life and purpose. Whether all that information in my head was a waste of time, or perhaps the cause of my current problems. Why nothing seems to work anymore, and I can't even care enough to check what I've done, to make sure it's clear, to try to get some good out of the rubble.

How to restart the engine. How to understand that an inability to function might be the whole point of the plan. How to fix something that is definitely broken but perhaps is not meant to be fixed.

The ball is coming in hot. Am I just supposed to go to the beach?