Note 2

Yep, that's me–many years, several pounds, and a whole lot more hair ago, but that is definitely me.

Most people gasp for air when I tell them that I never wanted to be a writer. I like to hook them in with that line because they seem to think this was always my path. It definitely was not. Many moons ago, I dreamed of bouncing a basketball up and down a court or slapping a softball across a diamond every single day. Softball and basketball weren't simply hobbies I'd endured due to overbearing parents who wanted to live their dreams vicariously through their awkward, painfully unathletic child. No, they were my life.

From the time I was seven years old until I was fourteen, you could catch a charred version of me in some Midwest state on some golden, brown softball diamond or lugging a bag that was nearly the same size as me out of some painfully Midwestern gym. Softball and basketball were my life–well, whenever I wasn't nerd-ing out over the latest Broadway show or having a panic attack about getting 90 percents on chemistry tests (more on that in another note). I found the way my skin turned dark brown in the summer quite magical. Not only because it displayed the beauty of Blackness, but also because it made me stand out.

Most times, I was the only chocolate drop on my travel softball teams. I was too young to truly notice the difference that melanin creates, but I'm sure my adolescent, subconscious brain still felt it. Nevertheless, I shined on the field and the court each weekend, each weekday. I remember distinctly when my sixth grade basketball coach told me that someone would surely pay my way to school if I kept playing like I did during one of our major games. Sixth grade–damn, I was good. And I kept getting better from sixth grade on out, until there was no more better to get.

At the tender age of fourteen, I split open this long, strong ligament in my knee. Yes, folks I tore my ACL...during the very first basketball game of my high school career. And if you're not familiar with sports and the injuries they cause, tearing an ACL is like losing the bid on a house you've been saving up for your entire life. You can try and bid again, you can build yourself back up to go after the next big house, but the devastation, the reality of having to start from the ground up, is worse than actually losing the home. ACL tears require two things: reconstruction and rehab. I did both, and I still lost my second bid.

After a grueling recovery–and a hospital stay that left me on a morphine drip a few days after my reconstruction surgery because the pain was so excruciating (which is not normal by the way)–and nine long months of physical therapy, I tried to return to the court. The nascent lyricist in me decided to give up my beloved softball; I needed poetic justice for the sport that had ripped my knee open–I had to avenge the wrongful hand that basketball had dealt me, so that meant quitting travel softball entirely. I was going to get a full ride to some school to bounce a ball up and down a court and no one was going to tell me otherwise. Or were they?

My sophomore year, I returned to the hardwood, slower and stiffer than ever. My body simply couldn't catch up with my mind. My knee lagged like a buffering web page; each time I moved it looked as if I were a tortoise who thought she was a hare. I needed to be the hare. I couldn't be the tortoise. I had never been the tortoise. My movements had always been characterized by their speed, their precision, their strength. I was more than fast or quick or any other adjective that describes being the head and not the tail. I was the hare...until I wasn't.

Needless to say, I didn't end up bouncing a ball up and down a court. And I for damn sure didn't leave my four years–well, five (perhaps more on that in another note as well)–of college debt-free. Instead, I spent my days writing, crying, and trying to exist without the love of my life. Now, don't take that last line as an invitation to feel sorry for me. Yes, tearing a major ligament in your knee a year after you've been crowned a teenager is devastating, debilitating, and more than a little depressing. But, it didn't kill me–well, it nearly did...but, I am typing this now so it didn't.

I won't go into clichés about "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"–I am not Pink or a Black middle-aged preacher. I was fourteen years old and didn't need to be made stronger. Honestly, it didn’t make me stronger at all. It’s more accurate to say it made me aware of the fallacy of dreams. Please bear with me, for I am not a killjoy, just a realist. I had a dream all those years ago that consumed each and every part of my life. It was a highly probable, extremely grounded, peer reviewed (see sixth grade anecdote above) dream. There was no reason for me to believe whichever being governs this simulation we call life–in my case God–wouldn't grant my wishes. One year into teenage-hood, who would dare understand such verities? But, I still had to contend with the deeply guttural sorrow of losing the love of my life. And not merely losing it, but watching it die in front of me as I tried to nurse it back to health.

What does a fourteen-year-old do with that? How does a fourteen-year-old recoup from the agony of that sort of loss?

If I knew, I'd definitely tell you. But, it's been nine years, and I still glance at the three inch scar descending from the center of my knee from where they sliced me open and the symmetrical dot-like scars that flank it from where they put the screws in, shake my head, and think: I am made of bone, fortified by metal, and still feel broken. Who knew a ball and a wooden court could carry so much weight? Who knew they'd introduce me to the fallacy of dreams.

Nevertheless, I still dream. I still make plans and hold desires like I did nearly twenty years ago. And a good part of me knows those dreams and desires are bound to be given life; that their fate won't get caught up in metal and bones and abstract looking scars. But all of me knows that purpose is bound up in loss; that true destiny is unearthed alongside a dusty morsel of pain, maybe even a smidgeon of sorrow. And every part of me wishes that that wasn’t true; that purpose wasn’t painful, that destiny wasn’t intertwined with loss.

One day, maybe it won’t have to be.

Peace, love, and hair grease

–Dierra