In All Uncertain Terms

Nearly a week ago, I had my first bike crash. It feels silly to admit at the ripe old age of twenty-three, but I never learned to bike as a kid. I consider myself a pretty risk-averse person, so even when I taught myself to ride a bike at seventeen, I was cautious enough to never get hurt. When the crash first happened, my emotions flashed from fear to relief in a fraction of a second before settling on frustration, where I remained for the rest of the day. Fortunately, I was with friends who were able to lift the eighty-something pound electric bicycle off of my leg, then go retrieve my car for me. The kids were on the back, but thankfully were left entirely unscathed. I, however, though happy not to have broken a bone, gained a pretty gnarly scrape on my knee, in addition to a few small ones on my hands and legs.

After the initial shock of the crash wore off, I almost immediately began to beat myself up about it. While taking in the pretty country scenery, the goats and chickens and wildflowers and sky, my wheel had slipped just slightly off the road. There was no steep ditch to my right, so had I been thinking clearly, I would have come to a slow stop in the grass and then calmly gotten back on the road. What I did instead was panic about being off the pavement, immediately swerve to get back on, and fall flat on my face. “How could you be so stupid?” I thought to myself for days afterward, particularly when my tender knee caused me pain, which was almost constantly.

It was bound to happen eventually, though. Few make it through life without ever crashing their bike, and having now cycled around for six years, my time was due. Though I in no way wish to minimize the irritation my minor wounds have caused, they do not compare to the pain I always imagined would accompany a bicycle wreck. I realize this is a pattern throughout my life. I make something so big and terrifying in my head, and when it eventually comes about, the reality is almost laughable. When I fear, whatever it may be, the inevitability can come as a comfort. Before the birth of each of my children, the knowledge that the baby had to come out one way or another provided me with a kind of sweet nihilism. I had no choice in the matter of whether or not it would happen, but I could choose some aspects of how it would happen, including my own approach. I could be weeping and cowering, or stoic and brave, or probably the best option, weeping yet brave.

Often the pain I fear is not physical at all, but rather the sting of embarrassment or rejection. These, too, prove not to be so daunting once they’re over and done. There was a time when my ego was so fragile that I’d lie awake at night mulling over all the things I’d ever done to make myself look like a fool. While I’d like to say that I’ve completely conquered that particular vice, I’d be lying–after all, looking dumb in front of my friends was by far the worst part of my bike wreck–but I do think I’m not the person I used to be.

Recently, a friend and I planned to spend a night together, reading. She was craving a Piña Colada, so we headed to a liquor store. We grabbed a mixer and headed home, eagerly anticipating an evening of booze and books. Upon arrival, we realized that, though other mixers from this particular brand are ready-to-drink, this one did not have the rum. With no rum at her house, we had no option but to go out again to buy some, or else spend our night fun-beverage-free. The prospect of showing our faces again at the same store, to the same cashier, as we ashamedly acquired the second essential element of the cocktail, was mortifying to my friend. She planned to ask her husband to go get it for us, but I stopped her.

“No, we should go. It will make his night!” I said. She begrudgingly agreed. We laughed at ourselves as we spoke to the cashier at checkout, and I later had the good fortune of having it confirmed that it did, in fact, make his night. I was recounting the story to my father-in-law, when he excitedly realized that we were the people about whom the cashier had told him. Our small decision to swallow our pride for the sake of making someone else laugh was proven successful by the coincidence of my family member going to the same store the same night and hearing the anecdote.

I look back on that night and feel in some ways that the person who made that decision is foreign to me. I’m not a confident person, who lets embarrassment roll off her back, who is boldly herself and shrugs off bruises to her ego. I’m insecure, self loathing, and pitifully sensitive. At the same time, that was me, so maybe this is proof of growth. As a former gifted kid, I find it easy to wonder if I peaked in kindergarten, but this gives me hope. Sure, I no longer have metrics such as grades by which to deem myself smarter than my peers, but I’m finding that I like this new person who’s a little less scared of judgment and a little more happy to bring joy to others. Perhaps I’m aging like wine, and not like milk, and am doing so one confrontation of a fear at a time.

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