Embrace the Suck

Enough time has passed that I can share this story.

I just filled the last page of a journal and started a new one. As is my custom, I read through the complete journal before starting fresh with the new one. I had scribbled down snippets of so many forgettable dreams, mundane details of some days, and excerpts from books that I knew I would never recall. But one of the first entries–not a dream, but a reflection on something that happened–was wholly memorable, and I share it here, with a little editing.

I wrote this entry about a month after my heartbreak in 2024. With the support of family and friends, my heart is so much better now. I’m nowhere near forgiveness, but I am at peace.

And on with the story, March 12, 2024.

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I was walking along, minding my business, under an orange colored sky
When CRASH, BAM, ALAKAZAM!

My father used to sing this song when he pushed me and Dear Sister on the swings. On the CRASH, BAM, ALAKAZAM he would give a really big push. And in my memory, I am flying up to the sky, squealing with delight, and yelling “MORE!”

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DH left for a trip, driving the Honda to the Mennonite church and catching the 4:45 a.m. bus to the airport.

I decided to take the day off from work. I went to the gym, talked on the phone to a friend, and then set out to get the car. I’m wearing my dad’s Hawaiian shirt. But it wasn’t warm out, so I have my furry black jacket from Costco on over the Hawaiian shirt. Plus black yoga pants and my bright blue walking shoes from the Camino hike. Quite the outfit.

It’s a 10-15 minutes walk to the lot. I go through the tunnel at the bottom of our street and come out on the frontage road just east of Broadway [a major thoroughfare]. I’m glad it’s midday. The houses on that street are sketchy. The yards untended. Probably all rentals: maybe partying students or drug dealers or terrorists or all of the above.

I’m listening to This American Life. I don’t do earbuds. I have the phone in my left hand with the volume pretty high so I can hear it above the traffic noise from Broadway. The title of this episode is “Embrace the Suck.” The theme is bad situations that people leaned into. This seems like an appropriate message for this moment in my life. The first segment is a story about a woman who is facing a depressive time in her life. In the story, she is out with her dog and she finds herself trapped in quicksand. Actual quicksand. She is sinking in the sand while her dog is oblivious to her distress. The dog thinks this is some new game she can’t figure out how to play. The woman is terrified and frustrated, literally stuck and sinking.

She tries a few things, including making herself more horizontal. And she manages to escape from the mire. A few days later she realizes the depression is gone. She feels content. Perhaps the acute fury and fear dislodged the overall malaise.

Contentment. That would be nice. As I am thinking that, I look down at my bright blue shoe in the street stepping into a hole in the asphalt. I twist my foot and stumble. But then I catch myself! But then I don’t. I fall. CRASH. BAM.

I am on the ground. I crawl over to the curb at the bottom of the embankment. Across the road are houses. The janky, scary houses where drug dealers and terrorists live. Again, I am glad it is midday. Drug dealers and terrorists are probably still sleeping.

My ankle is probably fine; my right butt cheek hurts; my hand is scraped and really hurts. Really. I am yelping in pain, maybe wailing. I am not OK. Is my arm broken?

Someone comes out from the scary house nearest me. It’s a young woman! “Are you OK?” she asks. “No. I fell. I hurt my hand. I feel stupid.” She: “I’ll get you some ice.” I think, “oooh, that a good idea.”

But instead of bringing me ice, she tells me to come in the house so I can wash my hand. Hmm. I am not sure I want to go into the house. But I figure I can go into the house and if there is something not OK there, like scary people or scary dogs, I can leave. She helps me up the walkway. I tell her, “I am NOT drunk. I just stepped in a hole. I feel stupid.”

She has the door open and we enter into an open plan kitchen with a sitting room. She has the tap running for me. As we enter, she leaves the door open, which is reassuring. There is no one else there that I can see. The house is chaotic and messy, but it is garden-variety young-person messy, nothing nefarious.

It feels good and sensible to clean out the scrape. She brings me a soap dispenser. She does not touch my hand. After all, who knows what kind of exotic blood-borne disease the crazy woman in the Hawaiian shirt, black fuzzy jacket, and bright blue shoes has.

She says she didn’t know what happened. She had thought I had a heart attack. As I finish washing up, she closes the front door. By now, I am OK with that. The scrape seems clean. But now I am a little lightheaded. I tell her I am going to sit. I go to sit on the floor near the sink, but she insists I sit in an armchair. I notice the arm chair is further away from the door. I don’t like that, but I am trying not to appear ungrateful for the hospitality.

She brings me a two pound bag of frozen shrimp for my hand. I ask her if she is a student. I tell her I am a professor at CU. She says that she is sort of a student. She is doing a four-week cybersecurity course. She tells me, “In my home country, I am a political activist.” I didn’t quite see the connection.

She tells me that there is a nine-month program after the four-week one, but it’s very expensive. She tells me she is from [Eastern European Country]. She fights against dictators there. I say, “well it looks like we are about to have a dictator here. Again.” She says, “Oh, no. It’s really bad at home. People who run for office get 25 years in jail.”

I’m curious about how Eastern European political activists a) find their way to Boulder, b) can afford two pound bags of shrimp, and c) can even consider nine-month programs at CU. I do not ask.

I do ask, “is the cybersecurity field related to your work as a political activist?” and “how did you end up in Boulder?”

Yes, it is related. She helps make public the personal information about public officials in her country. Yikes.

I tell her there are lots of ways to learn cybersecurity that are more affordable than research universities. I want to be helpful to her as she has been helpful to me. I ask if she has a LinkedIn profile. Or maybe not because of her work. She said she did have one but she had taken it down. Because in her country…she is considered…a terrorist. Her name is on file with INTERPOL.

Oddly, this news does not make me feel scared. It makes me laugh at the absurdity. Me, in my Hawaiian shirt, listening to a podcast about how quicksand solved depression, sitting in a terrorist’s house, with two pounds of shrimp on my scraped hand.

She didn’t have to help me but she did.

The shrimp has noticeably thawed. There is some of my blood on the condensation on the bag. I tell her this. She says, “Oh, we’re not going to eat it.” I thank her and head on down the road.

A strange day.

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And with a year’s distance on this experience, what do I think?

How brave and kind of her to help me.

My bruised and painful hand was not a quicksand cure.

I am not the poster child for Embracing the Suck. But I do recognize the healing power of gratitude. And I am grateful for all the love in my life and my odd sense of humor!

Finally, after putting this down first on paper and then on the digital page, I see the connection to one of the first stories I wrote for this blog, my experience with The Marguerite, the Stanford shuttle bus. That was an even more bizarre situation in which someone helped me.