Someone in My Corner

What a fucking week.

I have whined on here, and in my fucking book, about wanting to expand my leadership role. Well, apparently the universe was listening, because be careful what you fucking ask for. I got it.

Look, I know I’ll be fine once I learn the ins and outs of the new role. I know how I operate. I’m not scared to take on new fucking things. In fact, I relish it. I seek out opportunities to expand my knowledge and skills. I like being challenged. I like being uncomfortable. That’s usually where I learn the most.

But there’s definitely a learning curve, and right now I’m standing way the fuck over on the left side of that curve.

This was my first week, and it turns out the previous manager shielded me from a fucking lot. I knew there were things happening above me. Of course there were. But knowing they exist and suddenly being the person responsible for dealing with all that shit are two very different things.

So I spent a good portion of the week fumbling my way through the new role, learning things I didn’t know I needed to learn, figuring out things I didn’t know I needed to figure out, and generally trying to look like I knew what the fuck I was doing while occasionally thinking, What the fuck am I doing?

You know. Leadership.

And because apparently one new source of stress wasn’t enough, we’re in our fucking rainy season. Monsoons. Every fucking day, I’m riding in the rain.

I’ve talked before about riding in the rain. The only way to get good at riding in the rain is to fucking ride in the fucking rain, and I stand by that. I don’t stay home because it’s raining. In fact, there are days when rain becomes the motivational factor for leaving the house. Bad weather teaches you things about your motorcycle, your abilities, and yourself that beautiful sunny days never fucking will.

But make no mistake: riding in the rain still fucking sucks.

And right now, I have a shitty rear tire.

Yes, I know it.

Yes, I’m scheduled to have it replaced.

Next. Fucking. Tuesday.

So my morning commutes sucked even more because the rear tire was getting a little squirrelly on wet pavement. Nothing makes your asshole pucker quite like feeling the rear end lose traction on two wheels at 80 mph in traffic.

New job. New responsibilities. Rain. Shitty tire. Wet roads.

It was a stressful fucking week.

But there were bright spots. And one of them hit me harder than I expected.

I go to bed fucking early because I get up fucking early. It’s just the way my life works. Dawna likes her late nights. We run on different schedules sometimes, but we make it fucking work because we fucking love each other.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to a surprise.

No, not that.

For fuck’s sake, get your mind out of the fucking gutter.

While I slept the night before, Dawna went downstairs and cleaned my motorcycle.

Nyx was fucking trashed. A week of riding through rain had coated her in road grime and all the gritty shit kicked up by cars. I’d been looking at her all week knowing she needed to be cleaned, but I simply hadn’t had the fucking energy.

Dawna did.

She went downstairs while I slept and cleaned my fucking bike.

So yesterday morning I walked into the garage and there was Nyx, beautiful and clean and shining again. And I just stood there looking at her.

It melted my fucking heart.

Not because Dawna cleaned a motorcycle. It wasn’t really about the motorcycle at all.

It was because, in this small, quiet thing she did while I was sleeping, she reminded me of something I should probably know intrinsically by now but am still learning how to believe: She has my fucking back.

Through and fucking through.

And Christ, that is something I’m still getting used to.

I’ve spent most of my life learning how not to need anybody. You build walls. You learn how to carry your own shit. You learn how to get yourself through bad days because relying on somebody else means giving them the opportunity to disappoint you. Eventually independence stops being something you do and becomes something you fucking are.

Then somebody comes along who actually wants to stand in your corner.

And apparently learning how to let them can be harder than learning how to stand there alone.

I forget sometimes that I have Dawna in my corner. I forget that I don’t have to get through every shitty day, every stressful week, every miserable ride, and every new challenge entirely on my own. There are two of us now.

We get through this life together.

That doesn’t come naturally to me yet. I’m learning. There’s apparently a fucking learning curve for this, too, and I’m probably standing somewhere over on the left side of that one as well.

I need to learn how to trust it. I need to learn how to lean into it instead of instinctively bracing myself for the moment it disappears. I need to remember that no matter how bad the day is, no matter how shitty the ride is, no matter how overwhelmed or exhausted I feel, I have someone who loves me deeply and genuinely gives a fuck about whether I’m okay.

Maybe that’s my lesson this week.

I thought the big challenge was going to be learning how to do a new job.

Turns out I’m learning something much fucking harder.

How to trust someone enough to let her stand in my corner.

And yesterday morning, there was a clean motorcycle sitting in my garage reminding me that she already is.