Up River

First and foremost, I apologize for the lack of Blog’s this weekend.  And since I am so brutally honest I shall tell you that Saturday I had a really crappy day, didn’t feel well and Dad and I had another battle royale…that Blog would have been hateful and angry and I didn’t want that.  And then yesterday I decided I wanted to sit in the river and fry myself to a crisp, which I succeeded in doing…and I sat alone, for hours…until Dane and Tara showed up to keep me company.  At first it was sad, as in, wow, you have no friends.  Then it was like, shut your brain off and enjoy the sounds around you…and find inspiration for your next Blog…and honest to God that took hours.  Sometimes I am inspired, other times I am just numb and lonely.  There have been moments in my life where I can be in a room full of people and be the most alone I have ever felt.  I am pretty sure this happens to everyone.  I don’t know what I am looking for when that happens though.  Don’t know what it is I need to not feel so empty and lonely.  My friend Dana used to call this phenomenon “discontent.”  You want to go somewhere but you don’t know where, you are hungry but you don’t know what for, you want to be around people, but you want to be alone,…a battle of oneself I guess…it doesn’t matter what you choose, it isn’t going to satiate the need because you don’t even know what the need is.  This is where I found myself yesterday…discontent.  So I just sat…for hours…looking to be inspired...and watching a catrabillion dragonflies mate…good for them…glad somebody is getting some.

As I am sitting, I am watching…listening…observing this River, which has been such an integral part of my childhood.  And the memories came flooding in…interesting choice of words considering when it does flood, it does deeply affect my life as well.  When life was good and my parents either really enjoyed one another or tolerated one another for our sake, we would all go down and build mudslides and we would play for hours.  I only fished in it once…I think Aunt Joyce and Uncle Danny took me…pretty sure whatever I got ahold of, probably a log, snapped my pole in half and I never went again.  The F.A.R.T.S. would take me around in the boat checking bank poles…mostly because they needed a sober person in the boat I think, but it was fun…my brother will still occasionally do this, put out bank poles, but has never included me.  I have only tubed the river twice in my whole life…seriously.  Then many years back, my cousin Donnie brought a group to 4-wheel and the Labor Day Rodeo was formed, which for 4-wheelers is a little like Sturgis…hundreds show up to camp, and ride, and sit and drink a lot of beer or other various things.  Mostly it’s a chance for the boys to see how far they can take their wheelers in the river without “milking” them…a chance to show off.  And every year I am amazed at the people who consider this place a vacation…this place I have grown up on.  This dirty river that my father wants his ashes thrown in because it has been trying to kill him for years.  (if you aren’t aware my father is a farmer and farms mostly river bottom ground around this river)

So I am looking at this river and seeing where it cuts into the banks and turns this way and that, the whole time making its way to its destination, no matter what stands in its way.  The beaver dams, and let me tell you they are some industrious little suckers!!!  The fallen trees…the low spots creating sandbars in the middle of the river.  You get the idea.  If it can’t get through it, it gets around it…and then it occurred to me…that’s the easiest thing in the world…to go down river.  And that for my entire life, I have been going up river. 

When I was 7 I was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis.  I thought only old people got it.  I was told I would have to quit sports.  So I played harder…embarrassed my parents by wrapping every joint with ace bandages just so I could play.  And I did play…track, softball and basketball…my true love being basketball.  I played them all until my junior year when I gave up track and softball and because my rheumatologist at The Mayo Clinic said I could not continue on.  THEN, I had to quit Basketball right after senior year started…I thought it would be the most devastating blow of my life.  I was wrong.  My doctor asked me what I was going to go to college for and I said Fitness Management.  She laughed and told my parents to be prepared to handle my heartbreak when I failed.  Well, I didn’t.  Even when I was told by my guidance counselor at school that I was not 4 year college material…I did it anyway…and despite the fact that I was told I could not complete it in four years, I did.  I started an internship in Minnesota at a Corporate Fitness Center and on my first day my internship coordinator asked me what I wanted to get out of my internship…I said “your job”.  And in two years I had it.  I realized at the age of 24 what was so different about me…it would have been the easiest thing in the world to conform to society and pretend to be a straight person, but once I found out I wasn’t, I began one of the biggest upriver battles of my life.  Hurt my family, hurt my friends, realized that life was about to become as hard as it had ever been.  And I thought that was the most devastating blow of my life.  I was wrong again. 

My point is from the time I was 7 I was given the opportunity to take the easy route…down river.  Quit playing sports, go into a field that lets you sit at a desk, pretend to be a straight person, you have for 24 years surely you can for another 24 years.  If you told me I couldn’t do something, I did it.  At some great expenses, but I did it.  And I had one person right there the whole time cheering me on, no matter how frustrated I made her, but she did it anyway…thanks Mom…you have always been my biggest fan…She always used to say, “you have had so many obstacles, don’t you want to just do the easy thing?”  Then at some point I think she realized that I wouldn’t do it at all if it didn’t present a challenge.   Very few people know this, but I bought the bar because a man told me I would never make it into anything…he was wrong.  So very wrong.

The moral of this story and I should warn you, the Blogs will not be short very often…I have a lot to say, you don’t have to listen or read them.  Anyway…it’s easy to float down river…let the current take you wherever and the path has been formed and created for you…just go along for the ride.  OR, you could just swim up river and make it the hardest thing ever…in the words of my friend Mandi, and of course Dori in ”Finding Nemo”…just keep swimming.  I will leave you with this quote, because I love quotes and because it sums it up:

“Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.”