how an NFL game brought me back to life
There’s death in everything, which denotes there is life in everything.
This is a story like many, if not all, that I write, framed by the infrastructure this planet operates through, duality.
Adult parenting is the most anxious parenting I’ve yet done. The necessary directional decisions that occur when kids fly the nest will inevitably and undoubtedly generate pain, which for me ignites a desire to protect and prevent. Primal mamma-bearing.
When our oldest son decided to enter the NFL draft I was deeply concerned, which contradicted the celebratory nature of achieving that level of athletic success and certainly dampened the ‘coolness’ factor. I kept my vast and overwhelming concerns about the corrupt corporate industry that is American football, and the inevitable physical damage yet to come, the financial indications and complications that come with money, and the emotional triggers that high demand lifestyle produce, to myself. As to not come across unsupportive, as to not suggest I didn’t trust his chosen flight path or him.
Many of my anxieties about what he could experience, found their way to reality, and a few have not. What I wasn’t expecting was the life saving energy I found in my own NFL experience, attending a game, watching my son in flight, hanging out with him as he is right now, saved my life.
My body continually expresses disturbances and complications of an unusual nature. Maintenance, repair, and recovery of this human suit has been an overwhelming theme in my lived experience. I’m weary of it. Weary enough that I resist the reality of this ongoing curriculum when the body messages me something is up.
Resistance, such a human thing to do.
The body will only let resistance occur for so long before the siren song of suffering gets loud enough that the truth can’t be avoided.
I turned towards the song with more intention mid-october, and wearily began preparing for a season of unwinding anatomical riddles, and creating space for repair and recovery. Scheduled intimacy with the body, the body that has gone to the edges for me and against all odds survived it, time and time again.
In my experience when I turn towards the song, towards the lyrical body there’s discovery of meaning, and actually sometimes that’s what I am avoiding. The discovery that dropped in not long after I turned towards anatomical cries, felt dark, deep, and death connected. Complex medical PTSD showed itself immediately. I knew I was going to have to do this one the way I had done many medical sojourns, scared.
I’ve mass accumulated medical trauma, it’s one of my core life curricula.
I knew the texture of what was calling me, and yet if I had actually known what November and into December would feel like, I might have buckled or perpetually avoided. Sometimes it’s better to not know.
This last month included, eight straight days in bed, curtains drawn, literally in the dark battling compounded illness. Shingles induced meningitis and influenza swept me, and that was before finding out an expensive and painful infection clearing bone grafting procedure done 18 months ago failed, didn’t work in the slightest.
I found myself driving home from the appointment that delivered the blow, wondering how life was worth living, tears flowing like a broken faucet, sourced by a well with no will to live, a desire to disappear, to cease to exist.
I wasn’t planning my death, but I had no will to live. Completely encapsulated in defeat, exhausted and deflated by this seemingly endless and inevitable plight.
Not yet a corpse, still rotting. Escorted by suffering.
I’ve previously believed that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. My beliefs are being tested, which perhaps is at least one of the key points. To hold this again, allow all the emotions to be felt, and then release the suffering, feels insurmountable. It’s hard to let go, and yet I think that may be the only way life could feel worth living.
The day after impending doom surfaced I got on an airplane to head toward witnessing my son at work, and in life. Those above cloud vibes invited reflection, being up in the sky does that for me. I started to consider that this perceived waste of time, money, pain, and recovery could also be for me. I had not been able to lean into love before that moment.
A battle with resistance, the breath of the dragon potent and fiery in close proximity. And a sudden awareness of what was also happening in the margin between me and the beast, my breathing, my aliveness, my flickering belief in love.
Duality.
When I got to my son, I found a reflection of my status there in him, a desperate desire for a will to live. Together we found a little dose of life, through validating words and cleansing work.
The next day I stepped into his place of work with 67,000 other humans, including my lover and king. I witnessed him and he witnessed me absorb the container and energy of entertainment and athletic performance. Most notably watching him play catch pre-game with our son. We felt a broader capacity of what we had been part of all along. The aliveness in the pursuit of fun and joy amongst fandom nourished me. Nourished by an environment I usually find overstimulating, fed by creations I’ve primarily seen as corrupt. The other side of the coin was good to me.
I think maybe life curriculums, the repetitive experiences happening, have the greatest capability of blocking duality from view.
Have you identified your life curricula?
The major and minors in your human education?
Maybe something around money or food, maybe money AND food.
Perhaps relationship dysfunction is your game?
Do you block intimacy out of fear and perpetuate rejection, keeping the connection you are craving at bay?
Or maybe sex or sexuality are showing up?
Do you experience chronic housing instability?
Our collective curriculum is revealed by societal dilemmas, we can look to society to see where we are struggling. I’m not the only one wondering how and when life is worth living.
Not yet corpses, but still rotting.
What does living look, sound, taste, and feel like as we decay?
I think I’d like to sit with other humans, witness them as they witness me, rather than spend energy trying to eradicate disease from a perfectly imperfect body.
There is death in everything, and in that there is life.