Personal Crisis at the Border Part 1: Saying Goodbye to the Past
Blood was everywhere in the bed when I woke up.
BLOG POST #009 - A Personal Crisis at the Border: Regaining Courage
How I learned to ride a motorcycle, speak Spanish and not die. Riding solo in search of adventure from Detroit to Argentina.
Blood was everywhere in the bed when I woke up.
It was the early morning hours of my second day of recovery, or maybe when I went to pee at midnight on the third day. I don't really remember. My mind was a blur.
Looking around at the mess I had made reminded me of one of those violence-porn crime shows where everyone pretends that graphic murder is "so terrible"...but we all still want to see the blood and guts. My ex-girlfriend "Larry" used to watch the ones with initials like NCIS or SVU, or maybe Chicago-RHSRT (Rape Homicide Slow-motion Replay Taskforce).
I imagined a Hollywood cast of hot, young detectives swarming my room while I was out getting fast food. One of them is wearing rubber gloves as she picks up a pair of my boxers, bloody from the abrasions on my ass-cheek. She holds them up to the light with the tip of an ink pen and makes a joke. I can't think of what the punch line would be right now, but then it wouldn't really matter anyway. Those shows are written for their gory shock value and unnecessary sex appeal, not their intelligence, or sense of humor.
I can't think of what the punch line would be right now. But with enough unnecessary lady-cop cleavage in the shot framed prominently by her badge, I'm sure it wouldn't matter anyway. TV execs often count on misogyny and cheap distractions, rather than actual good writing.
After my first serious motorcycle wreck, I was holed up in this hotel room for a few days to stay as still as possible. I didn't go anywhere, except when I needed food. I didn't see anyone or do anything. I remember a lot of TV time and multiple daily showers to keep my wounds clean. I slept as long as I could handle, without my eyes crusting over permanently.
I was missing the top few layers of skin on my elbow, wrist, foot, butt-cheek, and the side of my leg. They looked like red shiny patches of raw meat, that wept clear syrupy non-blood plasma down my arm. I don't know if "plasma" is the right word for it, but it was like human sap slowly trickling the life out of me. When I felt a certain tickle sensation like a spider on my forearm, that was my indication that I needed a towel to dab it up again.
The case for vegetarianism has never been so strong, and I find that my appetite for bacon is greatly diminished.
Once in a while, I would roll over in bed and find that the sheets were glued to the road-rash on my leg. If I moved too fast, it tore off the top layer of my freshly formed scab. I have heard that getting a bikini wax is super painful. Well, when they say that the burn is like having your skin ripped off, then this must be what they're comparing it to. The sad part is, I don't even get lovely tan lines out of the deal.
I was in the nicest, most expensive hotel I could find amongst these scattered rural Arkansas towns. With limited choices, "nicest" turned out to be a run-of-the-mill Holiday Inn Express.
Red blood on the stark white sheets made for some interesting abstract art. With a little clever marketing, I figure I could exhibit the piece as "Sergei M. Morris circa 2021,'Dumbfckkckery', in blood on cotton."
I kept the "DO NOT DISTURB" sign on the door the whole time I stayed there, to make sure the maid didn't freak out and call in the Arkansas-GVEU (Gratuitous Violence Entertainment Unit) when she saw my bloodied-underpants in the sink.
Queue the TV actor detective, "Looks like somebody couldn't keep their pants on! Hehe.”
It was amazing how much the crash took out of me — not just in terms of physical strength — but also energy and morale. God's honest truth was that I wasn't really injured that badly. I've been in worse hockey games. But I was feeling pretty low. I was bruised. I was cut. I was defeated. I was depressed and alone. I wasn't heartbroken over Larry (my ex-gf) at that moment, more just angry.
Oftentimes when I am super pissed off with someone, it really has nothing to do with the "someone." I can go around and around in my head about how badly they did me wrong; however, that doesn't give me much peace or resolution. I was not actually upset with Larry. But rather I was mad at myself for staying in that situation for so long. Unlike my marriage where I took an oath to trust and believe someone solely at her word, I knew about Larry's betrayal the whole time and watched it in slow motion.
As much as I feel like a moron about Larry, I have to cut myself a break. This was my path. It was what I needed to experience and learn from at the time. But, at that moment, I was simply angry and feeling low.
I guess if I was healing my skin and my bones, that was the right time to heal my heart and mind, as well. If a dark, sick, feeling of lonely-anger was the right therapy for me, then so be it, for a few days anyways. Riding the emotions and letting them flow through me was the very healing I needed.
I wasn't sure what my next move was, but I had the luxury to not even think about it for two or three days. I watched Harry Potter reruns in fast-forward-time-lapse between naps. Harry went from being a middle-school kid to an awkward teen. Then, after the TV marathon cycle repeated, he jumped back to being a little boy again — all in the space between my mid-morning nap and my pre-dinner-late-afternoon nap.
Make it stand out
I was just trying to heal.
Feeling quite embarrassed about my predicament, and the bloody mess I had made, I considered "stealing" all of the sheets. It wouldn't really be theft because I would tell the hotel that they were so bloody I had tossed them in the trash and that they could just charge my account.
But the woman at the front desk was super cool about it. She was nice and reassuring. She said things like, "It happens."
Her kindness was just what I needed at that moment. As I walked away, I was dumbfounded, thinking, "When does it just happen???" A minute later, I realized the thing about the secret lives of women. People who have menstrual cycles probably know all about this kind of situation.
My own ignorance is a topic of constant fascination and entertainment for me. There are invisible worlds that live all around me that I never see. When I say, "secret lives" and "invisible," I'm actually referring to my own personal blind spots. I have the tendency, like all humans, of seeing solely what we can be bothered to see. We often ignore all else. This amuses and amazes me. Things can be right out in the open; yet we look straight past them.
In any case, I am grateful to know a little more about the other one-half of our human population out there walking around on the planet.
After a few more sun-cycles of shadows drifting from left to right across my hotel room floor, I got stronger and ready to ride again. I was slightly terrified and super annoyed at the thought of sitting on a motorcycle. The little trips out to pick up food became a form of exposure therapy, to help me get back on that horse.
When the time came to leave, I was confident but cynical. I felt like I was in the second year of a third marriage. The honeymoon period had worn off. Every wrinkle and insecurity was more apparent. This was the moment when you realize that as much as you love her, there was also a down side as her jackass thirty-two year old son moved back home into your basement. It's slightly less about adoration and fun at that point. It's a little more about pitfalls and toil.
However, I'm still committed to La Barra. I still love her. I can't hate her for being fast or powerful or for all of the other things I admire about her. She has always done what I asked and, if anything, she should be angry at me. I'm the one who made the mistakes. I'm the one with no business in the seat of a powerful Kawasaki 900 miles from home with no prior experience on a motorbike. We're going to get through this. I just look at the road differently now, knowing what it feels like to slide forty feet across all that lovely sand-papery asphalt. What did Mike Tyson say, "Everybody has a plan until they forcibly rip a patch of skin off their arm?" That may not be an exact quote, but now I really get it.
Somehow, I did have the sense to do some practical things during my recovery time. I would be visiting my nephew on the next stop, so I had a few replacement parts shipped to his apartment ahead of my arrival. This was my last chance to get a new windshield, side mirror, and other miscellaneous supplies together at a confirmed location. For the next year, I'm not sure I can predict exactly where or when I might be at any given place or time.
It is still a little dumbfounding that I only thought of this whole idea of riding to Argentina less than a month ago. Yet here I am. I planned on learning how to ride a motorcycle, and live large in the big wide world. But now I'm also learning how to crash a motorcycle and not die in a narrow, little ditch.
A day after hitting the road again, I got over "my crash-o-phobia" and the ride was quite nice. The southwest is so funny. It lives up to the clichés about being the home of the original rootin' tootin' cowboy. Oklahoma and Texas are vast, dry, flat lands of endless brown. I pulled in for dinner to a dusty truck stop with dim lights and amazing beef. Further down the road, I swear I had lunch the next day at the same place. Then, I stopped for a break a hundred miles later at seemingly the same place again. I couldn't tell you a single difference between them. In my mind, it was one great-big movie-screen Western sound stage in the same saloon over and over again.
All the same, I couldn't take it back. I didn't leave because of her, but she wasn't enough to keep me from going. I didn't want to shock her or be mean to her. I didn't want to "win" this battle of love with a big spectacular finish. But my course was set, and I did my best with cruel-to-be-kind honesty on a pretty epic scale.
One of my many new battle cries became "¡Siempre al Sur!" meaning "Always South!"
I wouldn't blame her if she went running back to Mick after the way I ended it. I told her I thought she should. After all, he broke up with her originally, not the other way around. If it was up to her, they never would have split. I always worried that being with Mick was what she really wanted all along during our time together. So, my guess was that she would take a month before she got up the courage to finally call him.
Spoiler alert! It was only ten days.
If I did stop in on him while riding thru "Not-Dallas—McKinney," it might have been timed to the exact same day to when she did call. The cathartic comedy of this would have been legendary.
But again, all their bad behavior aside, I'm just mad at me. It was so clear, so early, that I'd never measure up to this guy. Trying too hard to make that happen is really the only thing I have any cause to be upset about. Yet the extreme indignity of being stopped at a red light staring up at that dogggammnn town name, burned in my chest.
Then, what I did next was amazing.
I didn't do anything.
I was sad and I was horrified. I was humiliated and pissed off. I laughed. I cursed. I shed a tear or two. All of the emotions ran rampant and I let every demon out of the bottle. But I didn't mix that with the real world. I didn't do anything stupid or hurtful to others. I didn't take any action that I'd be ashamed of later.
The truth is that, what I was feeling was all about the "Mick" inside of my head, not the "Mick" in McKinney. So, what would be the point in going there or interacting with him? This is real growth on my part. Far too many times in my life, I have sought satisfaction externally, when that is not the source. Therefore that is also not the fix.
More often, as I get older, I am able to look back on my day and recite what I believe to be the best thing a person can say to themselves: "I'm proud of how I behaved today."
As I rolled into Dallas, I was super excited to see my nephew, Matt. He doesn't have room to host me, and I didn't want to bleed through the fibers of his pull-out sofa couch anyway. My hotel was near enough to his place in a swanky part of town.
Matt is young and fit, with beefy shoulders and six-pack abs. He's also super driven. This kid will be king of the world. It was his first year after graduating college, having gotten a great job down in Dallas (unrelated, but in the general vicinity of McKinney). He studies finance and commercial real estate the way most people study sports. He knows all the stats, the players, and every page of the Corporate Landlord Mogul's Playbook. His drive and appetite to learn are a force of nature.
A few hours after I arrived, Matt came to my hotel to pick me up for dinner. I'm ashamed to say that I had not been super close with him while he was a child. He didn't live nearby and I was busy raising my own kids of the same age. But I have gotten to know him a lot more in his young adulthood. No time like the present and I've got nothing better to do than to show him the fondness of a long-lost uncle that loves him.
It is all a big joke — how injured I am, how messed up the bike is, how I don't know what I'm doing. Humor can often mask deeper emotion, but I don't think I'm faking it. This is pretty damn funny. I am breaking out to do many new things all at once. The universe is my guide as I trade wisdom and adventure for a few bumps and scars along the way. I'm not concerned I won't make it out alive. But Matt is pretty worried about me.
Seeing my wounds and busted up windshield, he has that "gallows laugh" nervousness about him. He's making ha-ha noises, but he's not amused. He takes lots of angsty cheap shots. When I say, "Maybe I'll stop and take language lessons once I cross the border." he replies, "Yes. Or maybe don't go at all."
I figured out later that my parents were in his ear, insisting that he give me the full-court press to just leave the bike where it is parked and come home.
I'm not super happy about the stress this crazy trip puts on the people who love me. I didn't want to make it worse by telling anyone at home about the crash. But Matt let the cat out of the bag with my family.
When I start going to a dark place about the upset this is causing, I often snap back to reality by whispering my own personal mini mantra, "(rage)." I recite this several times a day. Most of the time, the word just passes through my lips without me realizing. This journey is my passion right now. It is my curious exploration of everything external in the world and internal in my heart and mind. This trip, right here, today, is me living my best life. That is worth almost any price.
Matt and I have dinner, hang out, and watch a bunch of sports with his roommate. I'm so glad to be able to look in on his life like this.
After I leave Dallas (McKinney is further north, so no need to go back there) I'll stop to see an old friend in Austin, wander around, and enjoy the last few days of familiarity. Then my life is going to get real, when I cross the border at Laredo.
NEXT POST COMING SOON: October 09, 2024
