Just one more

One day I was paid a lot to do a speed vault

The only thing is I had to keep headphones in my ears while I did it and they didn’t fit.

The only thing is they didn’t need me to bring in any equipment for this gig, they got it, they gave me a bar that wobbled unpredictably every time

The only thing is they didn’t need the last one or the one before that

A month later I was in Times Square. I paid rent for months in a second ‘doing what I loved.’ My mom showed her friends. I could see the pain in my eyes, broadcast internationally.

I learned that my happy place was at the beach with my dog Bella, running. The demands of this moment, fighting myself to do one more perfect one despite no clear direction or understanding what they didn’t get last time or the time before that.

You have to smile.

I would sit there, in the moments between camera reset and I’d bring myself out of the stress, the overwhelm, the pain and to this moment of calm and bliss, my loving puppy.

I’d call this a technique for a decade. It sounds nice. It felt like an excavation. Like I was scraping the inside of my guts with a shovel to find that smile.

When it was over I wasn’t proud of my work. I didn’t want to go see it, show it off

It nearly broke a part of me. Twelve years later and there is that part of me that still doesn’t trust me for letting that happen.

Or the rolled ankle that I wrapped up and flipped onto. Over and over.

Or the stage in Central Park when it had a perfect leaf tornado and we just had to get the perfect shot

Just one more, a three word curse

I imagine feeling light, walking playfully and taking a step off of the rock in my front yard and doing a flip and walking out.

But when I try to flip…

The world spins. Reference distends. Time blurs. There is a heat and screaming that gets louder. A tightness that has no ceiling. Nothing to focus on. I am drowning. I am very far away.

You have got to be kidding me.

But I’m not.

I’m on a long and slow path, the hard way up the back of the mountain, the way no one has ever survived, the way for the disgraced.

A heavy path to a lightness, to feel at home in my body again. I promise now again not to force myself to do anything I don’t want to.

I had promised.

Time and time again I had promised.

I will set a limit. I will keep you safe. I will protect you.

But I didn’t. For a month’s rent I would do anything.

[you don’t have to do this, but you have to decide, because this, waving arms around, costs thirty thousand dollars an hour.]

The same question, the same rooftop, but only me, only me, and the answer is I don’t know. And that’s okay. I never needed to know.

No one I worked with put me in unsafe situations, didn’t care about me, wouldn’t listen.

Except for me.