Learn to Love Me More Today

One year ago today I was sitting in a little cafe in San Francisco reveling in my new-found re-love for swimming. 

Munching on a giant walnut sourdough loaf, in quintessential San Fran flare, I remarked to Sar about the meet--my first meet back in the water in over a decade. We laughed about how nervous I was and for what a "big deal, little meet" this was. We joked about my post-taper cravings of Diet Coke and frozen yogurt. We acknowledged having broken four American Records, because previously there had been no such swimmer up to the challenge. We started making memories, not entirely understanding at the time how crucial they were all going to be for my own growth and self-reflection.

That evening, Sar and I met up with an old and dear college friend of mine to celebrate being back in the water. Over a divine balance of drip-droppy sweet, yet titillatingly tangy sangria, the three of us toasted to my accomplishments. I toasted for simply having the guts to try it...

Coming back to Colorado, I landed with a new song in my step and a new groove to my wheel. I had found a bit of confidence that I hadn't previously ever been able to put my finger on long enough to feel. That feeling started everything-- I quickly became and even more devoted 3AM swimmer, creating practices that left an encouraged taste of bile in my mouth. I trained, and trained, and trained. I lifted weights. I practiced yoga and stretching. I bought an ultrasound machine for my screaming muscles. I announced my desire to drop down to a part-time teacher the following year. I went to more swim meets.

And at those swim meets, I continued to gain experience as a competitor. I was gaining so much about myself, not only as a swimmer. I was, for the first time in my life, able to beat down barred up windows to a prior-concealed soul. I was able to uncover a few monsters under my own bed. I began training my insides just as much as my outsides (which I have found to be much harder to accomplish, and far more painful).

In that year, I began to understand that it was about swimming just as much as it wasn't. With every stroke I made, I did so with the greatest of intention and desire to become the most whole, most self-accomplished me I could ever imagine.

It was a long year.

Today, I sit in a little cafe in San Francisco reveling in my ever-growing rebirth for swimming and every uncovered, subtle life lesson in between.


Coming out of my second-ever Santa Clara Disability Meet, I feel much different that the first time around. I feel the weight of my own insecurities and under-bed monsters stronger than ever. But why?, is the real question that I've been gulping down this entire weekend.

In less than a year's time I have accomplished so much. I have broken a total of five American Records, with World Rankings in most of the events that I've swum. I have had the highest honor of becoming a part of the US Team to represent in the ParaPan American Games this coming November. I have done all in my power to spread the meaning behind one's own human effort and giving all that one can to make things real for them. I have joined forces with brilliant women to accomplish the dream of speaking at a TED conference. I have looked at my insecurities with an open heart and made every attempt to make peace with them. I have done a lot.

However, even as I sit here at this smallest cafe on the corner of 18th Street and Dolores, in the Mission District, I cannot help but create dissonant, interfering statements where all of those above periods sit. There isn't anyone else to swim those events. You swam well to get on the US Team, but you can't repeat it. Nobody really understands why you would sacrifice half of your job and most of your money to swim. People see my chair and feel better about themselves without event taking in a single word. You think you deserve this, but really you don't know anything about anything. 


These words, although just a slight example of what those subtle mind-daggers sound like, encapsulate my dream. I know, and I truly do--deep, deep inside of my orangish, circling soul-- that I will NEVER be able to accomplish everything in my heart until I find a way to silence the monsters and demons and naysayers and sheep-wearing wolves in my mind. I have never quite understood why my mind has to be such a bully over my heart, but this is something that I have GOT to take care of before it's over before it begins.

So, for today, I will try to honor my own accomplishments of the past year. I will attempt to raise my own glass (or water bottle) to my own dreams and desires. I will make a promise to myself to take time to find those words that speak to my heart in song, rather than some terrible disconnected cable television.

It is so incredibly embarrassing to know that--without a doubt--that I am the only one responsible for any sort of dissatisfaction in my life. I am the only one holding me back from going under a minute in my 50-backstroke, and I am the only one who is able to fix it.

Well, cheers to me. Bottoms up. Salutations. Congratulations. Salud... I will take this day as the attempted first day of many to pay attention and mind to all of my insecurities and mind-daggers. I promise, I will learn to love me more today.

Speaking of the Heart...

We were up next. The sound guy had secured one of those earpiece-type microphones over and around my ear, and I was feeling more like a Britney Spears wannabe than an inspiring presenter...

My heart felt like I was preparing to compete in a race. So, what did I do? I found a corner and I stretched and swung my arms around just like I would before any swim meet. I knew on the surface that this was a silly technique to public speaking, but it was only going calm my nerves before the start of my race... err, my speech.

My latest journey takes place alongside three other amazing women in the community. We have dubbed ourselves Team AWE (Able Women Empowering), with the hope of being able to really make an impact together. Having similar goals and passions brought us together as a team, but our drive and ambitions are what keep us together.

One of our missions is to help empower others and raise awareness of disabilities and differences in the community. Right away it was clear, we were going to have to be motivational speakers. Lucky for me, that is exactly what I've been dying to be!

In a single chance of fate and email forwarding, we got word that there were applications being accepted to do a local-type TED Talk. Now, if you don't know TED, you should! For a few years now I have been watching presentations on technologies and medicine, hope and inspiration, and education and progressiveness. Every single one of the speakers present with their hearts and project words of determination, knowledge, and passion. I wanted to be one of them.

It wasn't until much more recently, however, that I declared aloud that it was my DREAM to do a TED Talk someday...

Well, that someday was last Wednesday. And with my heart jumping right between my crooked ribs, I did it. I spoke from my heart with my AWE-inspiring team and we even got a standing ovation. (All of which was completely out of my grasp of thinking-- as I sat there wondering, "Man, these people sure do want to leave quickly!")

As I drove home that night in the rain, I smiled the whole way home. I smiled for my dreams and I smiled for my accomplishments. In fact, I smiled a little for me.

 There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits to the human capacity for intelligence, imagination, and wonder. 
 Ronald Reagan 

A DRIVE of More Than SURVIVE

A new friend and source of great encouragement asked me today about my training. Not in the how-much-yardage-sense or even in the what-kind-of-sets-do-you-do-sense, but rather in a sense far more meaningful.

He asked me about my DRIVE.

I babbled on about being on bed rest forever and how that made me rethink so many aspects of my life, and most importantly swimming. I continued on a sing-songy path of notions of undone dreams and resurfaced passions. I could have gone on for at least another ten minutes, when he stopped me...

"I'm sure that had an impact. But I know it's something else. Something inside of you that you don't even fully understand that you possess." He uttered so nonchalantly as if my shoe was untied or something.

Given a moment, I recalled the time I spent in the hospital after my initial accident. I often wonder about this time in my life, because so many people ask about it. People want to know about the struggles and deafening blow of realizing that I was going to be paralyzed. What I tell everyone who asks is that it wasn't that way at all for me. I woke up and started working. I started working on strengthening my neck enough to lift my head off the bed. I started working on breathing without a ventilator machine. I started working on sitting in a wheelchair. I started working on pushing a wheelchair. I started working on regaining muscle enough to be able to lift my legs with my own hands.

I started working towards this new life with little mind to what this life would actually be like. There was no dramatic movie-moment of me sobbing and thrashing as the result of learning I'd never walk again. It just didn't happen.

As my new friend pointed out that his thought of my DRIVE being inborn, I was brought back to those very early moments in the hospital. Perhaps he is right, and I should thank him twelve times over and invite him and his family for dinner. Perhaps I should also let that thought into my own brain-- let it swim around for a bit and give my good old confidence a good smack on the lips.

Yes, I think I will just that.

A Lot to Say

If you are wondering why I haven't written much lately, it's because I have been writing A LOT lately...

Apparently I am making it official by writing about it on my blog, because up until now, I have been sort of whispering about it from afar. I am writing a book.


Now, I have done this sort of thing before-- said that I was writing a book. After I got back from India I started writing a book, about eight different times. I kept thinking that it should be so easy to take those things that I had put in my blog and make it a book, but it wasn't. I scrapped it every single time and shoved it straight into my trashcan icon on my laptop.

This time is different, however. I can feel that it's different--not only in thought, but in heart, and also in form. I am sticking to it and enjoying every chapter and every word as it comes pouring out of my head and into my fingertips as they translate it into actual print that (hopefully) will be read by smiling eyes someday.

I was hoping to have this endeavor completed by the time I started back up at school in the fall, but that just might not be realistic. Writing is hard, but writing about your own life's struggles and victories is even harder. This book is going to be considered a creative non-fiction in genre, which means that it is based off of my life and I also get to be as colorful and poetic with my words that I want to be. This is a perfect combination for me here.

I am now ten solid chapters and well over 20,000 words deep into this thing and am glad that it is finally happening. This writing and storytelling is so therapeutic and cathartic for me, and I don't think this could happen at a better time for me. Within every chapter, I am uncovering things about myself that I wasn't necessarily aware of or wanted to confront. I am peeling back layers of decades and distractions. I am realizing that some of the most brief moments and encounters have made some of the most lasting effects.

I am realizing that I have a lot to say.

Latest FOX 31 News Segment

 

Camera Shy Ry

"Smile...smile? Ryan, is everything okay?"

"I am smiling!"

"You look like you just got hit on by the most repulsive man in the world."

Sadly, this is not the first time I've heard this. 

Last week, I had the potential pleasure of getting photographed with my new team as our first publicity shots to use in our media kits and the like. I guess I quickly forget my neuroses of picture taking, that is until that wide-eyed camera is blinking directly in my face. 

The girls were confused at first by my anxiety while I waited for my turn. I gave them the Reader's Digest version of my historical terror with smiling for photographs, but I am still quite certain that nobody really understood. That is, until it was my turn. 

When I was a kid, I used to create smiles of full-teeth and gums, as the outward attempt to show my overall, inward happiness. Isn't that what you are supposed to do? At any rate, that smile stuck and there was simply no turning back nor alterations possible to this frightening smile. 

As I grew up and photos chronicled those moments in time, I became increasingly more and more aware of this "cheesy smile" and less and less excited to show it off. So, I began doing the only thing I could think of: NOT smile. I found ways around it by making funny faces and shying away completely; which has worked for the most part, but now there was no getting out of it. 

However, in a few tortuous minutes the photographer had managed to make me laugh enough to capture those natural images rather than the ones that I had unsuccessfully prefabricated. Thank goodness for good humor and patience. 

Here's the final result:

Not too bad... but I really hope that this will hold me over for awhile...

Steamy Mayonnaisey Paralyzing Parasite

 In all my life and all my dreaming and fantasizing, I never imagined this.

I was hoping to share my experiences from the Olympic Training Center a few days ago, but I truly feel like it has taken me this long just to even process the whole thing.

Going into this training camp and meet, I knew that I had accomplished something and I knew to be proud of my efforts; however, in my typical detrimentally modest fashion I had no clue how BIG this actually was.

It first hit me when I saw tour groups snapping photos of my deer-in-headlights self while attempting to determine my strategy for entry into this pool completely not designed with me in mind. As moments ticked on, I felt glimpses of the intensity of being a member of the US Team for the ParaPan American Games. "You are now here to represent the US," kept buzzing in my ears.

The Team took "classes" on how to handle media requests, packing, and foreign competitors. We learned about the Village that was currently under construction and how Homeland Security would be our new best friends in Guadalajara. We even spent some time peeing in front of people to determine that we were as clean and sound in body as we appeared to be. The entire time, I sat stunned-- most likely resembling something of a codfish-- all the while attempting to keep a cool demeanor about it all. After all, I am the oldest member of this team, so I need to act like it. Right?

The meet was only a portion of these blurred events. Choosing to swim ten events, including the mile, was probably a bit optimistic in hindsight; however, I was glad to push myself through it (now that it's over with). I fared well in my events, although not particularly pleased with any of them. For the most part I felt as if I were swimming in a steamy whirlpool with the consistency of mayonnaise. I hate mayonnaise. My times completely reflected my dissonance with said steamy mayonnaise-- although I know I am stronger and more technically ready than ever before. I still don't know how to rationalize the meet. Stupid steamy mayonnaise.

Truly, I can only blame myself. I suppose the mayonnaise is really just a metaphor for that thing that always gets in the way: my brain.

Watching my competitors walk to the blocks, I couldn't help but wonder what I actually contribute to this team. I try as I might to keep a smile and a ferocious fight; however, once again my lack of confidence in my own capabilities prevailed.

This is starting to become a serious problem.

It feels like a virus that I can't shake. No matter the amount of rest or vitamins (which I am no longer advised to take, thanks to USADA) or protein I provide for my body, I can't seem to recover from this parasitic and paralyzing form within me.

So now it's my turn, really this time, to take care of this. My issues with confidence obviously bleed through in other aspects of my life and I am finally fed up. I don't deserve to live like this and I owe it to myself to take my live-in-paralyzing-parasite-of-a-feeling and smash it to pieces.

So, hear's to you-- steamy mayonnaisey paralyzing parasite-- may you be put to shame and rest in peace, my friend. Goodbye forever.