December 26, 2012

• limitless

  Christmas was good to me. I woke up next to Cosmo and we took our morning slowly. Little sips, little sips. The kind of morning where hands and hands touch and you take the time to smile at and tease one another. Where the whole world is yours because you aren’t anticipating any sudden knocks on the door. Where, instead of holding and holding on and waiting for the screaming to be over, you remember what it’s like to be present, at peace, in control.

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  I have very precise needs from the sports that I’ve chosen. I don’t much care if my team wins or loses in ultimate or dragonboat. I’m not like some of the other players who break out in tears after a loss (mostly back when I played in more hardcore leagues). After a cubicle life of deskwork and racing-rushing to the next and then the next deadline, what I need is to be under a big sky, either flying on my own two legs and making small work of the grass field, or forgetting friction as I glide over the water. After shouldering heavily textbooked backpacks and the other kinds of weights that you can’t see, I like to get into a hot yoga room where I can force my body to obey, where I can stretch my muscles to beyond their capacity. And only when it hurts do I know that I’ve conquered my limits, that I’ve resisted my constraints and won. 

  It’s probably a really bad approach to exercise, however. My glory high school days are past and I’m not as fit as I used to be. Sometimes I can still push myself to perform but I don’t recover like how I used to. I was so P.O. when I realized because, hello, I’m still pretty young here. Shouldn’t I get a bit more time on the free ride? I used to play 8 hour tournaments and then do the same again the next day. I would be sore but the consequences were never dire. I was a kind of limitlessness. I probably need to be more careful from now on and do things more gradually until I’m in shape again.

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  Thanks everyone for being here over the last couple freakout posts. I’m really a stiff-lips kind of person IRL so it helps to write and to know that there are eyeballs on my story.

  You have to understand: I don’t get so violently upset because I lack self-discipline. This isn’t like when Trumon got mad because his teacher took away his cell phone in class. And it isn’t because I lack empathy for and perspective on those who are suffering (vastly) more. I’m no impoverished third-world child but that doesn’t diminish my experiences.

  It’s because I can see all the things I can become and I know I can be limitless. I know I was meant to be without limits. I know I can be the person with the enviable work-life balance, the friends and the one-after-another socials, the superstar job, the almost 4.0, the we-argue-sometimes-but-he’s-still-perfect boyfriend. I can see all these things in front of me. I have the determination and the ambition and it’s so cruel to weigh me down, to hold me back because of sexist traditions, irrational fears, a poverty of respect, and a lack of education on interpersonal communications.

  It’s so petty. I have to be more than that. It’s what we all want. To be limitless.

  And I know I’ll get there eventually. Sometimes I forget that, or it’s difficult, working hard and always waiting.

  But I remember who I am when I’m with Cosmo.

  • 3:42 am
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