Let's Take It Back

I know we’ve talked about my foot injury before, but I’m figuring if you scroll all the way back to that post your reaction would be something along the lines of like ‘wow look at her go’, or ‘she’s so positive’ and you’re not wrong. But that’s glossing over some very serious aspects of that time in my life that I didn’t want to talk about before because I thought it would take too long and I didn’t understand if the significance of it would matter.

I mean that was a hot second ago and I’ve had a lot of time to reflect…and quite frankly get super into self development and I came to realize hold on wait yes this freaking DOES matter. Granted this is all my perception so bear with me…

I was SO young when I was injured. I mean I was 19, it was the day before the infamous nipple slip Superbowl (I vaguely remember that by the way partly because I was in so much pain and partly because I was on a SHIT ton of drugs because of said pain and injury). Maybe the benefit to being so young is that I could bounce back quickly, maybe it eviscerated the thought of being invincible and maybe it helped shape my mindset for who I am now. Maybe it was all those things. 

But my head space when it actually happened was one of sheer fucking panic. I kid you not. Like freaking terror. Not because I was hurt or anything like that, I knew I would get better. But I literally had NO idea what to do with myself and with my life once I WAS better. I mean don’t get me wrong, I love America and all that stuff, but I went into the Army and subsequently ROTC (which is where I was when I got hurt) because it would pay for school and set me up with a career. I wasn’t thinking 10 year plan, I was thinking like 20 year plan. In the course of 30 seconds, all of that was stripped away and I was left thinking “ok if I can’t meet the requirements to be in the Army and I have to figure this out, then what am I going to do?”. Isn’t that kinda crazy? Don’t worry, I won’t be mad if you say yes. But seriously, I enlisted in the Army and went into ROTC right after 9/11. The year I was hurt was the same year we invaded Iraq (I remember watching the bombs hit from my bed while I was still on bed rest). I was more confident and comfortable with the assumption that I would be going into a freaking war zone, because I had prepared for that, then I was with the concept of staying home and creating a life for myself.

Yet sometimes God pushes us to do the things that make us the most uncomfortable because that’s when we become the strongest. 

In the immediate space of being hurt,  I was MAD. Do you know how hard it is to have pent up anger and be on bed rest with NO WAY to let that anger out of your body? Ya it sucks. I was so freaking angry at everything and everyone. Myself, God, the situation, every single person around me, literally no one was spared from the wrath that was me. Because I didn’t understand why I got hurt. People would tell me that God was sparing me from a potentially more significant injury but since I felt like I lost my whole sense of self, my community and my future, I couldn’t imagine much worse. My anger was really the result of being super confused and honestly a little ashamed.

I felt like since I didn’t get hurt while on active duty, in a war zone, since I was in ROTC, it didn’t matter as much. I felt like since there were people coming home with way more horrendous injuries than mine, it didn’t matter as much.

I let myself be angry. I let myself cower and I let myself feel all of those things. I got therapy (a long way down the line) because I needed to process all these things and realize that while my story is different than someone next to me, it still matters because it’s my story. It happened to me and I get to own all of it, even the ugly parts.

Now that so many years have passed since it all happened and I can finally talk about it rationally, I know that this drop in the bucket of time in my life shaped me more wholly and completely. It is what gave me the drive and ambition to want to empower the women around me to be their best in everything I’ve ever done and it propels me forward to be my best because when you get a second chance, you have to show up for it.