Things become focused through a lens

Last Saturday, I spent the day getting drunk on bloody marys in a dingy hallway over a liquor store with my nearest and dearest rollergirls. What were we doing there? You ask. There is a documentary film being made about the rollergirls and we were there to do our personal interviews. So one by one we filed into an office and spent an hour in front of a camera, while the other five were in the hallway pouring bloody marys and gossiping about boys, rollergirls and Denver in general. When each emerged from the office, there was smeared makeup and tear stains - the interviews went deeper than any of us anticipated.

Not surprisingly, the majority of my interview was spent on my injury and the alienation that I felt afterwards. All the feelings that have been so jumbled for the last 9 months became amazingly clear during that interview. Before the interview, I really just thought it would come out as one big angry mess but that wasn't what happened at all. I even managed to take personal responsibility for my own abandonment of the rollergirls after my accident. Even after I could get around and drive myself, I couldn't watch them skate - it was just too hard - it still is, really, though I deal with it better now.

I was asked if my injury had changed me in anyway, I paused and, for the first time, really thought about that. I answered that, even though I knew that there was a possibility, even high probability, that I would be injured, the injury had taken away my sense of security. Not just in regard to skating but life, in general. And that with that loss of security, went my optimism and that I wasn't sure it would ever return. After I said it, I realized that simple answer explains so much. Some people may see that change as me being depressed but it isn't that really. It is that before I injured my knees, lost my job, got diabetes and every day became a struggle to keep my head above water, I really believed that things would just work out. Now when I say it, I am just paying optimism lip service.