Back in the car, it was time to see the young girl I had convinced to be my 彼女(kanojo). I continued to grow nervous every time I glanced in the rear-view mirror. At the stoplight, the allure of the silvery surface arrested my gaze. Unkempt hair straggled in different directions, the usually clean-shaven face also had hairs protruding in a tangled mess, the skin of my forehead was replaced by oozing golden yellow snake scales. The face that looked back was far from my best-self that I was used to putting forward when meeting her, the spirit behind the face was also in shambles.
She exited the station with her backpack and a large bag over her shoulder, seeing her struggle with her luggage I instinctively rushed over and grabbed the luggage. After greeting one another we sat in the car and headed towards the meeting spot. For ten minutes only the slight hum of the roadway, wind, and the low rumble of sports exhaust filled the soundscape. Hesitantly, she broke the awkward silence.
The Nature of Human Relationships
“Didn’t you want to see me before you left?” the dense cold air weighed me down as I took a deep breath.
“Yes, but I’m embarrassed to be in front of you like this.” thoughts stacked up faster than my overdue to-do list. Wasn’t the point of a relationship to find that person who would stay with you through thick and thin? She had told me already that I shouldn’t worry about it, but why was it so hard for me to trust her? Why was it so hard for me to trust anyone? Was it because I didn’t even love myself? What did she see in me? It was only now that I’d realized other than helping her with her bag, I hadn’t been acting like myself. This whole time driving and I hadn’t even glanced in her direction.
I took in another deep breath and remembered that sometimes in life you had to let go. Whether you were Miles Morales taking his first leap of faith, a rally driver flirting with grip, or me learning to have trust other people again. . . at some point you had to learn to let go. True human relationships are built on finding those people that will see you at your ugliest and accept you even with all the monsters that hide in your closet. Finding those people you could disagree with, laugh, cry, argue, and smile with the next day. That ability to be open and vulnerable was also the path getting to know yourself better.
Hot & Cold
After she had broken the ice things normalized between us. I’d learned that she was almost done with her thesis, her senpai had given her a snowboard, and she was looking forward to a graduation trip. Now that things were lighthearted once again, I did what every good boyfriend does in moments like these. . . I went and ruined the mood again.
“I thought it would be a good idea if we went snowboarding with some friends” . . . the reaction I received was a lot less warm than the one I was expecting. Her face turned from dumbfounded to sour as she uttered.
“言ってじゃあ(say that next time)”she then looked away pouting. I was a bit confused because I had always thought the more the merrier. As a couple I realized if we were doing things together, we would have to start making some decisions together as well. I had flashbacks to my youth were my mom would sour over having friends over when I felt like it. While I was more than happy for my good friends to meet my girlfriend, girls usually like to make sure they look really nice when meeting new people, maybe she never realized that she always looked nice to me?
We sat in Ron’s driveway waiting for the group of drivers to finish their short rally. Her arms and legs crossed as she looked out the passenger side window, because of all those videos and articles I had consumed regarding social behavior, she didn’t have to say anything for me to realize that she was upset. Although I probably should have left her alone for a little, I couldn’t have her stay mad at me. . . not realizing what to do I reached over and poked and prodded at her. . . it was the juvenile way I used to tickle my sister as a child. Maybe it wasn’t the best approach, but I hated the feeling of her being mad at me and it did help to resolve the tense atmosphere once again.
Every now and again I would begin to scratch my face with the palms of my hands, there was a bone-deep itch that wouldn’t go away. During one of my scratching fits I felt an arm reach out and grab me. . . Yuna had reached out and held my hand, that was enough to get me to stop scratching. I wondered what I had done to deserve a girl as sweet and loving as her. The sound of sports cars in the quiet village signaled the arrival of Ron and Gerry. After some introductions and chatting, we found ourselves heading off to the snow park.
Winter Wonderland
At the snow park, everything was blanketed in white, Gerry was kind enough to let me borrow some of his gear. The thing I liked about the mask and snowboard goggles was that they hid the fact I was suffering through Topical Steroid Withdrawal. It was my second time snowboarding and while I was no means an expert I wasn’t as much as a fish out of the water as last time. There was a part of me deep inside that was laughing at the whole situation, in high school one of the phrases I remember saying was.
“Why would I want to strap myself to a piece of plywood and go to an oversized rock with frozen water at the top?” of course there were practical reasons, snowboarding was pretty expensive and I would have felt guilty asking that of my parents back then. Coming a long way in ten years, I realized the other thing stopping me from snowboarding was fear. What other things had fear had stopped me from doing? What was I afraid of anyway? No. . . I knew what I was afraid of.
The Thing I’m Afraid of
The fear of failure and setbacks had stopped me from doing more than snowboarding. Thinking back over my life there were more than enough examples I could draw from. Getting cut from the basketball team, the multiple ACL tears, the bombed staged performances, my attempted careers in art/music/gaming/YouTubing/etc, almost dropping out of college, and now the major setback that was the steroid withdrawal. Did everyone think this way, or was it only me where even small missteps scarred and weighed on my mind heavily?
As a result of the workplace I had been at for the past year and a half my relationship with failure was changing. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the fear of failure was keeping me from trying new things, improve at the things I like, and making life the adventure it was supposed to be. There were so many things that I wanted to do or try in life, it was important to start seeing failure and setbacks as useful sources of information rather than an indicator of my worth. There was a small glimmer of hope in my psyche that those small mindset shifts would snowball into a larger evolution in the grander scheme that was my life.
I was brought out of my deep thought as we began to go up the lifts, all my worries and hardships seemed to float towards the sky as we began the cycle of going up and down the snow-covered peak. Starting with the beginner section we made our way to harder and harder courses. Gerry’s time on the mountains showed as he carved across the slope, going up ramps, taking jumps, and traversing into deep snow. My descent down the mountain was less graceful. While I could snowboard okay on the beginner course, my runs were filled with large wipeouts and spills. Having so much fun I felt like a kid learning to ride a bike again, I wondered at what age we revoked the permission for ourselves to falter, fail, and fall only to get up with a smile and dust ourselves off.
Maybe It’s Okay to Fall
On our last run I stood at the top of the pass and looked at the world around me, the epic beauty was enough to make your existence seem insignificant in the cosmos. On the last run I had fallen so many times that I was having trouble getting up. I lay on my back and look at the sky, actually I would have called it quits a long time ago if I weren’t having so much fun. Going down the slope provides one with an insane amount of freedom, expression, and flow. And like drifting, playing music, doing art, or trusting others some parts of snowboarding are about letting go. Loosing yourself to the moment, gravity, and reacting to the flow of the slope beneath your feet. I’d realized that most people could snowboard on the beginner sections where the slope is gradual and smooth, it was only the experienced boarders who would carve their style into the mountain. How you dealt with the small hitches, sudden catches, and bumps was important on the slopes.
When the day was done I reflected on snowboarding as a whole, I couldn’t help but think of snowboarding as a huge meta analysis for my life. In snowboarding and life there were times where you were climbing up, coasting, and other times when you came crashing down. Why did I think it was okay during snowboarding to falter and fall, but not okay to have setbacks in where I wanted to be in life. TSW had come into my life where I wasn’t where I wanted to be financially, in my career, and in other areas of my life. I wasn’t doing as well as I wanted and now this I thought, but isn’t it okay to have setbacks in life?
The time I told the doctor I would no longer use steroids or dupixent was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life, but it turns out I made one of the best decisions I’ve made in a while. In what other areas of my life was I letting “experts” tell me what the best course of action was? I was willing to go against the grain here, so maybe moving forward in life it was time to accomplish all those things that were deemed impossible.
“Life can be so much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people who were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
Steve Jobs
One thing I’ll take with me into the future is to do more research on medications.
I would be heading to the Osaka hospital the next day. . . could I drive with my legs this sore?
