Running in the Rain

I go to my college to support my friend D. as he is inducted into our Athletic Hall of Fame. It is a good and bad weekend. It is great to see people I haven't seen in a very long time, but it is also hard because I am very sick and struggling to get out of bed. I have the headache that is relentless, my neck is stiff, my period is killing me. By sheer force of will and medication I get myself to the dinner.

The dinner and athletes inspire me and remind me how when I was an athlete I went to practice every day no matter how cold, windy, wet, or nasty it was. It reminds me that I spent hours throwing a lacrosse ball into the net, lifting weights, running miles in the rain, just to be better. And sometimes, despite my hard work and that of my teammates, even after leaving our guts on the field and playing as hard as we could, we still lost. But the next day, I went to practice again. I didn't complain, I didn't think, "why do I even bother going to practice if we're going to just lose?" I showed up, I ran my drills, I joked with teammates, and I marched forward. It is like that with lyme disease; I do my research, I eat healthy, I try to get to yoga, do what the doctor says, take my medicine even if it hurts. But I feel like there are so many days that I lose. But thinking about being an athlete inspires me because after a loss I never would have made the choice to just quit. It never would have crossed my mind. If anything, it made me more fired up to go back to practice the next day and play harder.

I am so depressed today because I am now going to start another round of antibiotics and am waiting for test results yet again. But if the choice is to give up or move forward I realize that the athlete inside of me will not allow me to give up. I will keep relentlessly running in the rain.