On Dependance

(source)

“Secret heart, why so mysterious? Why so sacred, why so serious?”

Skiing might be my least favorite thing.  I hate it. Abhor it. Despise it.  There are approximately three stories that I could tell you to illustrate the reasons for my intense hatred for this sport.  One of them goes like this:

When I was 14, I went on a youth group ski trip.  My first one.  I went to an arts school for middle school, so I wasn’t really friends with many of the other kids on the trip.  I went to youth group maybe once a month, and they all went to other schools.  So I was nervous, self conscious, self-aware, etc.  Oh, middle school.  What a blast.

We were told that we couldn’t ski without our “buddies”,  so if we got separated somehow, we were to return to the ski lodge where our youth leaders would be posted up.  So naturally, I went down the first slope, looked around, realized my other two buddies went down a different way, and started marching back to the ski lodge.   Maybe it was because it was so early in the day, maybe they’d meant a different ski lodge, but (naturally) I couldn’t find my youth leaders to save my life.  I walked around that resort for the better part of 2 hours.  2 hours!  But not surprisingly, I didn’t freak out. At least not on the outside. On the outside, I was pretty good at acting cool and collected.  Considering there were about a million people walking around the resort (yes, one million), the last thing any 14 year old would want would be to make a total stranger  think that they were a scared little kid.

But then, I caught sight of one of my youth leaders in line to get a hot dog.  I ran up to him, dropped my heavy skis, and burst into tears.  I wanted to beat him up and hug him.  I couldn’t believe he had the audacity to be completely oblivious that I had roamed around the resort for two hours, bearing the burden of trying to seem collected, together, adult… but I was so relieved to have found him.

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I woke up yesterday morning feeling completely sick to my stomach.  I tried to make it through work, but I had to leave around noon.  My body was shutting down completely.  I went home, ate some rice, and slept for 3 and 1/2 hours.  When I woke up, I felt groggy, sick, and hungry. I went to the grocery store, bought some soup, came home, ate the soup, immediately felt sick, and sulked.

No one is happy when they’re sick, but I take it to the next level.  Maybe it’s because the symptoms remind me so much of feeling depressed, that I actually force myself into a depressed state.  Everything is sad.  Everything is off.  Nothing will ever feel good or right ever again, yadda yadda.  But I can handle it.  I’ve lived on my own before.  I’ve lived on my own in Tennessee.  I’ve been sick before.  I know that soup and sleep will make me better.  I know that this too shall pass.

But then, Chris came to the rescue.  In this instance, rescuing me required fetching me water and rubbing my shoulders until I felt calm enough to sleep.  When I laid eyes on that man walking through my door, I immediately (say it with me) burst into tears.  I love that I can depend on him.  I love that I can depend.  It feels like such a victory, and I’m so relieved to have found him.