Another Atttempt to blog in.
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It's been just over 2.5 years since I was hit by the truck while riding my bike. So much has happened in the way of health issues since and because of that one horrible second in time. One second in time can change every single thing you know about your life and yourself. Or everything that you built your life to be. All changed in a single second. A split of a second.
"They" say once you go through a life and death trauma you are never the same again. Oh, "they" were so very correct. You are not only changed physically but also emotionally and mentally. Just never really the same. You still try to be who you were but underneath you know, in your soul, in your heart, that you are different. I am the same but I am different. I almost went and got a tattoo saying this. But, even I realize that getting a tattoo right now would be a little unwise.
Don't get me wrong. I still love my life, the people in it, my business, my clients, athletes, etc... All of this is what keeps me going. That and hope.
Someone asked me how I have been continuing on so well with all that has happened. I said "hope". It is hope that keeps me going. Hope that I will be able to do all that I want to do. That I will look at this past 2.5 years and know I got through it and will have become a better person-not better because I had so much trauma but better because I will be able to help others and be a more knowledgeable person.
I wasn't able to go to Paris (Paris-Brest-Paris) in August. I broke my hip in July. About 5 weeks before we were to leave. I was riding to work, down a canyon road, took a turn, hit several patches of gravel, and just flipped my bike. It was one of the hardest things to go through. After going through so many surgeries to fix the truck accident injuries, getting cancer, having almost lost out house in the big Four Mile Fires, and making it through soooooo much, it was almost the hardest thing to go through.
I had come so far to make Paris a reality. My way of beating the truck accident. So close and so far-all at once. Talk about sitting in your own crappy mess and not really knowing how to get out of it.
Paris was my goal, the goal that drove me through all of the surgeries. The goal to keep moving forward. I wasn't even sure if I could ride that far. Riding is quite painful now. Not like it used to be. Riding before was only painful if I wanted it to be. If I wanted to do a Brevet really fast-well then, it could be painful. But, sitting on my bike all day riding was not really painful. After the accident-riding became a challenge. A big challenge. Hard on my back, my wrists, knees, all of the things that got injured. But still I looked forward and moved forward becasue that was my goal. Even if I didn't know I cold ride 1200km, at least I was going to try. This was my challenge. My challenge because I really truly had no idea if I could do it. But to try was to have hope and to have hope was to win over the accident. .....and then, I broke my hip. It nearly shattered me.
I've healed the hip but the accident injuries still remain more of a challenge than I would like. They are a constant reminder of who I was and they remind me of what was, what my goals were and what I had made my life to be. Perhaps it is a reminder that I had, without knowing it, built my life up around the future. Not really living in the present. I'm not sure. I cannot go back in time, to know what I thought, because I had no idea I would be where I am now.
I believe the challenge of life it to have goals, big goals, but to live each day in the present.
I still want to go to Paris. To do Paris Brest Paris and do well. What ever "well" is. It used to be to ride it fast and with ease. Now it will be a challenge to get to it and to complete it. Kind of like getting to, through, and past the accident.
Goals are good. Goals are future. But goals can also be the perfect place in time, that is now.
