I was just in the garage, longingly and lovingly staring at my bikes. Before that, I was reminiscing about the “good ol’ days” with my Strava app on my phone. It indicates that I’ve logged 1,201 rides, resulting in 1,200 without any broken bones. All those times I didn’t break my arm when maybe I should have? Warms my Gumby heart. That’s the optimistic perspective this brain wants to convince this heart: You know, glass half full mindset, which is all the rage these days.
Don’t get me wrong, I think perspective is good, even essential. So long as it’s not wearing rose-colored glasses, floating down Denial River, and the baby is thrown out with the river water.
(Too much?)
A week ago, I got into a fight with a curb, and the curb won. I broke my right arm–my favorite arm. You could say this incident curbed my enthusiasm. I’m officially *“One-armed Pam.” And just when my ping-pong career was about to take off! (Bah dum ching. I’ll be here all week, folks, don’t forget to tip your waitress.)
(Too much again?)
The truth is, when the urgent care doctor confirmed I’d broken my radial head last week (I thought she said Radiohead) and that it might be displaced, necessitating surgery, I broke out into tears. And I told her why. Because that’s what I do now. I sometimes expose my broken heart to strangers. Sometimes that goes well.
Why did I burst into tears? Because biking is a tiny savior for me… but the Skyrizi commercial jingle wants me to think that nothing is everything.
Google unpacks the philosophy Skyrizi employs: “Nothing is everything” is a paradoxical statement that explores the relationship between nothingness and the totality of existence. It suggests that the absence of things, or nothing, can be a source of everything, or a state from which everything can emerge.
I need to think about that.
I do know that now I have some outside brokenness to match my inner brokenness, so I’m checking that Feng Shui box quite nicely.
I’ve been doing some heavy lifting over the last few years, and now I’ll do it without my right arm.
Yes, it could be worse. I don’t need surgery. And as the days pass, I am regaining some usage of my fingers and can now tap away on my keyboard. Lucky you! Before my orthopedic appointment on Monday, I thought both riding and writing would be stripped from me for six weeks. Riding and writing are my mental health one-two punch.
I started reading my brilliant and beautiful friend Kirsten Mickelwait’s new book—a historical novel, The Ashtrays are Full and the Glasses are Empty. I’m not too far in, and it’s already resonating as I collect treasures and truths. Her words, “an unimaginably wonderful, terrible life,” remind me of the quote by Glennon Doyle: “Life is brutal, but it’s also beautiful. Life is Brutiful.”
I once wrote, “This life is both exquisite beauty and excruciating pain. Expect nothing less. Accept all.”
So, I guess that makes me smart like Glennon and Kirsten. One can dream.
There are numerous advantages to having a broken right arm, and when you get an opportunity like this, you can create some cool hacks. I’ll spare you the gritty details.
Some polite conversation benefits are that you get the chance to find out if your Apple Watch can really call 911 if you crash on your bike.
Getting ejected from your bike creates an instant and free bone-density test. Sweet! When someone asks how you broke your arm, you have opportunities to use lines you’ve always wanted to use, like “You should see the other guy!” and “I do all my own stunts,” and “Tis’ but a scratch” and “Just a flesh wound!”
It’s like the world is my broken oyster!
A week before I broke my arm, John and I created a “rage room” of our own. We sledgehammered and hurled forty $1 plates at a wall, which represented all the accumulated injustice, grief, loss, and stress. Best forty bucks we’ve ever spent. I’m so glad we seized the day before I couldn’t hurl or hammer. I suspect in a couple of months I may return to the wall (AKA “tunnel of conflict”) and see it as free physical therapy. It’s been said that in any tunnel of conflict or pain, the only way out is through. And the light at the end may even help guide the way.
What’s your light?
On the back cover of my friend’s book, the blurb says, “The Ashtrays are Full and the Glasses are Empty follows Sara through her very modern life to reveal how tragedy can be healed by faith, unconditional love, and a creative mind.”
Before, during, and after the tragedy, I want to be a testament to all three.
And I’m still mulling over the paradoxical statement, “nothing is everything.”
I can see how being stripped of so much I have previously relied on is making space for something new and unexpected to emerge.
Faith, unconditional, bottomless love, and a creative spirit? I’ll take those.
I want to be that girl, as Kirsten wrote, “… on the subway platform, so unsuspecting, about to jump into an unimaginably wonderful, terrible life.” It’s the baby and the bathwater.
…Stronger in the broken places—not despite but because—with adjusted eyes, I’ll follow the beam of light that leads the way through the darkness.
There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”—Leonard Cohen
*See “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” episode 8, season 8. For a deeper dive, Harrison Ford in “The Fugitive.”