Uncontrolled Fall
Falling is easy. Getting back up is the hard part
I wrote "Uncontrolled Fall" after my first lap swim in over a decade. Something about the water—the weight, the memory, the movement—brought everything to the surface. The poem came quickly, but it speaks to a long journey: of loss, of love, and of reclaiming what it means to stand again.
Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about gratitude. Hope is at the heart of everything I do, but it’s just as important to tell the tough stories. I need to remember where my joy is rooted. Before a tree blooms, there is dirt. There are trowels. There is hard work. And sometimes, there is pain. That’s why I write—to hold both the ache and the bloom.
This post includes both the poem, "Uncontrolled Fall," inspired by the origin story, "I Close My Eyes and Look Up," which I first published on Medium after workshopping it in my MFA program. I hope this piece help you, too, in whatever waters you find yourself in.
Uncontrolled Fall
I listen to Eva Cassidy as I rinse the chlorine from my sun-kissed body
My first lap swim of the decade. I glance at the pool deck,
a phantom wheelchair fades before my eyes
Lowering my tender palms to the concrete pool deck
My mom supports me in a controlled fall I rehearsed in rehab with my physical therapist.
“I know how to fall”
“I know you can fall. I want to see if you can get back up,”
I still feel my body shaking from laughter as I sat crumpled on the floor almost a decade ago. I went home the next the day, having proved I could.
The day you married your love.
I tell my friends if you couldn’t stand the hard times,
Would you have stood by me while I sat in my wheelchair, oxygen in my nose, Dilaudid making each breath bearable?
I open my eyes and the water, my tightrope, ripples before me by kids jumping in with laughter, not knowing the weight of plunge on a heart.
My arms outstretched, I take a step forward. My legs submerged.
The resistance of the water forcing my quads to do something
Anything
Stay afloat
Or sink.
“Anniversary” runs through my mind. Eva crooned in your messy ass car filled with sheet music and instruments, ever the music teacher as we kissed in the moonlight before our couch time, breathing in our day before bed. The movies, pizza, ice-cream, hot cheetos (your midnight idea not mine because we felt sick as dogs in the morning), stories of how you missed your mom, and how I checked in Gary Sinise at the hotel I managed, and delivered a pizza to his room the night before, and he shook my hand. Such a cool guy.
I wish I could remember all we talked about as I advance my legs forward, nerve synapses firing and misfiring time and time again until I want to shout for help. But I remember this is just pain. It will not kill me. Just keep standing until I can walk.
It’s ok to just stand still until your body remembers what to do.
My Apple Watch says I’ve walked three yards through water
30 feet
My burning heart warns me to stop for the day, but I don’t want to live in a world where love and walking and eating cheese fries and sharing kisses at midnight won’t come without the risk of a burn.
Tonight, would we be watching “Mamma Mia” again with my head on your lap?
Or sharing a basket of cheese fries while you accidentally play footsie with me under the table? Would I be trying on four different outfits that didn’t make me look fat before heading to an organ concert because that was your jam? And I didn’t know the difference from a major or minor chord. A major chord being the moment I stopped being your mirror and spoke my opinion. A minor chord that brought our whole concert down until I was standing on the other side of your door holding my empty key chain with my key now on the table where you left me a raspberry bundt cake next to the table where we shared spaghetti and planned anniversaries that never came true and I couldn’t control the fall.
I feel the burn in legs that carry me forward one more season. My 18 month anniversary of walking. But you don’t know that because you never saw me in my chair to begin with. Someone told you I was sick, but the table where the pain meds I couldn’t reach without help, and the slide board to get me from the couch to my wheelchair where my mom would take me to the toilet and help me get my pants off before I could have an accident from the meds stayed empty. The get well cards from those who never knew me as intimately as you papered the walls of my apartment that sits just sixty yards from the bar where we first met and I fell so damn hard for you.
The cruelest goodbye isn’t always death. It’s closing the door without saying why. It’s the body shutting down without warning until you crash into space you never knew existed.
Tonight, I sit and reread my goodbye story to you I published years ago and my legs are quiet. Eva plays in the background. And you’re not here. Would we be dancing barefoot? You on my feet because like everyone else in the world, you were shorter than I with that brown hair and highlights that caught my eye on that first night in the bar that still sits about 66 yards from where I fell into space.
But as I learn to walk again and keep getting up each time I relapse into treatment and immunosuppression and chemo and physical therapy, I remember how beautiful it is to stand when I can.
Tonight would be fifteen years of dancing and I still love you. I always will, but
I love summer nights more.
I love my cat more.
I love Eva just a little bit more because I now know what the hell she was talking about.
I love teaching more because that’s where my light shines.
I love the night sky more because I know the sun is just behind it.
I love my family more because they helped me get back up each time I fell. Literally.
I love me more with every damn yard I fight for.
Falling is easy. Getting back up is the hard part. Moving forward is the world.
Taken about a week after graduating from rehab. Circa June 2016