The small moments have been the hardest The vertigo has been in my brain for 5 weeks
I’m lying on my back on the floor, staring at the ceiling, and I’m afraid to move.
The vertigo has been in my brain for 5 weeks. And though symptoms have subsided enough for me to function, I still feel like I’m falling off a cliff every time I sit up or roll to my side.
And I’m not ready to run.
My body. My mind. They’re tired, worried, and unnerved.
It’s in these small moments, staring at the ceiling when I think about the person I used to be. Before the brain damage. A young man unafraid to throw his bones to the wolves and stretch his muscles into submission.
I hear my children playing basketball in the backyard.
I pull my head off the floor and jump off the cliff. My stomach drops and my fists clench the carpet and I breath slow and steady, through my nose, out my mouth, until I stop falling.
I move to the window and the late summer sun is big and falling behind the backyard trees and the kids are dribbling and jumping and shooting and laughing. Easy and effortless. A perfect union of brain and body.
My ability to run next weekend is in jeopardy. It sucks. This was going to be a big moment for me. Physically. Mentally. Spiritually.
But there will be another race. And I believe, with bone certainty, I will train again and I will run again.
If anything, I’ve learned that hope is not waiting, fingers-crossed for a cure. Hope is when, in spite of everything, you feel privileged to be alive.
So I won’t be able to run in 7 days. Yet, more importantly, right now my children are playing basketball on a warm, September night and I want to be out there but I’m watching them from behind a window.
It’s not easy but when they smile, I smile.
The small moments have been the hardest.
Be well,
Jay
