MA to UT

I kept it together until I stepped foot into the Boston airport today. That was when I lost it and finally had a complete melt down.

I am not sure I can take all this AGAIN. 6 weeks of this already this season is quite enough. What makes it worse is that just got done with that injury and out of my cast last month!!! How strong can one person be in 2 months time? Although parts of me want to just throw in the towel more parts of me want to fight this through. I mean after all, if it didn't mean that much to me I wouldn't be crying rivers right now right? But by the same token, it was quite the fight I had to take on before while in my cast to maintain both my fitness and my outlooks on life. And unfortunately this time around my broken hand is worse than the broken thumb. I just want my hand back! Is that too much to ask? This summer... it certainly is.

Can I get through it again I keep asking myself? I think the answer is that you will get through it no matter what because time will continue to move forward but its just a matter of what you do during that time to make it easier (of all things!) in the end. It's up to me to determine that and how much suffering on the trainer I want to do in the 90 degree, beautiful, sunny weather in order to get there. I just feel so beat down at this point though. Plus I don't know what exactly is going on with this break that is yet to casted. So much is unknown and that leaves me in a very vulnerable state of limbo. Quite unsettling in fact.

And of course I keep wondering WHY this has happened AGAIN? I may never know the answer and maybe I don't want to but I can't help but pondering all the possibilities: am I supposed to quit this sport? Move on while I am ahead? Do I need some more family time because something terrible is going to happen? Is cyclocross really supposed to be my focus in future years? Should I just hunker down and get a job?

Or.......... is all this just affirming my love and extreme passion for cycling based on my emotional reaction?

I will have to wait for the answer in between shedding tears. But the more I cry the more I think I know the answer too.....

Unfortunately I just cant help in being extremely disappointed in having to have to fly home early and miss the National Championships in VT, in having very broken metacarpals, to be suddenly at the end of my season in July, to ditch all my East Coast plans, to have worked as hard as I did to overcome adversity before; race in a handful of races only to go through it all over again, to have the same hand casted an immobilized again, to spend the majority of the 2008 season with a cast, and to spend my off season LIKE THIS of all things.

At the same time I try to look at the glass half full but can't quite do it yet and not because I don't want to, because I can't. I just haven't seen the light at the end of the tunnel. For instance I will try to tell myself:

• at least its not winter (so I don't have to struggle with layers) and then I think...oh man, its NOT winter.
• then I say at least cyclocross will be awesome for me! and then think to myself but what happened to mtb racing this summer?
• then I think I can catch up on computer stuff but then realize just how long that is going to take with one hand pecking each individual letter key (you do not even want to know how long this took to write).
• or then I say maybe this is the time I can do house stuff like paint.....but then remember that I have one useful hand.

Oh well, at least I CAN always go back to: at least it is my left hand an not my right (I am right handed). I can also use the "it could be worse" saying too which helps some.

I just need to get through this phase is all. Time. I just need time right now to work through the massive amounts of emotion that seem to build up, burst then repeat itself over and over again.

On a good note, I have been overwhelmingly impressed with the general public. It goes officially without saying that people don't like to see other people suffer. I have never had so many people OFFER to help me when they saw me struggling: The curbside check in guy, the TSA checker, the lady who couldn't stand another minute of watching me try to load and zip my backpack, the guy on the plane who looked at my teary eyes as I passed down the aisle as if HE were going to cry too, the guy who helped me fill my coffee, the 2 ladies that COMPLETELY reloaded my back pack for me at security along with putting my shoes back on the floor, the countless empathetic persons merely wondering what happened, the lady who walked my drink to me at Starbucks, the other lady who zipped my purse shut for me, the little girl who had to know what I did, the flight attendant who helped me once again reload my pack. This was all in one day too and again, totally unsolicited.

We do live in an amazing country with really good and caring people, if this day is any indication. That right there gives me something to finally smile about.