That elephant has taken too many bites to eat. I am full. I have indigestion. I fucking hate elephant.
I have used an analogy to describe what it has felt like of late to be at work, there in the midst of this life which surrounds that work, and that is where I will start and perhaps pause again. Because in all desperation, you have to start somewhere. Every journey starts with a single step, every story with a word. Every finish with exhaustion. If you are not exhausted you have not done enough.
But my good God I'm tired of this story. There I said it.
Imagine you are an expert skier, positioned atop the highest, most technical mountain going. Perfect clear weather, great snow conditions, you strap on your left ski and smirk at the prospects of attacking the latest challenge set before you. Crouched down, you position your foot into the right ski and just as you begin to secure it, a boot at your back sends you hurtling down the mountain.
You are flailing and slightly panicked, but the snow is in front, the boot is behind and you are only trying to not crash and burn. Your goal is to survive.
That is all.
Still, you are an expert skier. You know how to attack this hill. Even when the hill is attacking you. Crouch. Steer. Focus.
Conditions have become less than ideal and you are careening and flailing and panicking but lo and behold, you keep skiing.
You keep skiing. You keep skiing so long you start to hate skiing.
Somewhere in the middle of the hill, you hit a dodgy edge and fly head over heels, skis launched into oblivion despite how secure or insecure they really are, and you crash into that orange plastic net fence so hard it leaves a bruise with a fair bit of depth. As you creak to vertical, observers applaud that you are, in fact, not dead, which doesn't matter a bit when you drop your head so far below your shoulders you obliterate those delicate muscles in the neck that allow you to hold it high.
It will be days before you can. Months? Years?
Not soon.
You skulk down, down, down. To the base of the hill. Dragging the skis and your courage behind you.
And then you look up. Beyond the fence, up.
Past the crashing place, up.
Beyond the clouds, up.
Because the beginning of the bad run is not visible to the eye, it is fogged in and buried in mist and roiling and blowing and you won't see the same again until the next time you fall.
Because you will fall.
But.
You massage your bruise. Your bruised ego. Your bruised psyche. As purple fades, resilience falters.
But.
Relentlessness does not die. Faith is genetic, impenetrable.
The echo in your head is part crowd, part disappointment, part mind egging you on to try again.
Mind wins. You go back up.
Faster now.
The mountain is high. You go back up.
Faster now.
The conditions are variable. You go back up.
Faster now.
The ski is never secured properly.
Still, you go back up.
Faster now.
You go. Because that is what you do.
