Yesterday started like any other day during the week.
I woke up in the middle of the fucking night and couldn't sleep. But I didn't feel like writing, so I fucked around on the internet for a while, eventually drifting off to sleep, only to be startled awake by my alarm ringing obnoxiously at five.
And, like every fucking morning, after cleaning up, pulling my hair back, and getting dressed for work, I looked at the temperature displayed on my iPhone.
Forty degrees, it said.
So off I went.
Loaded the bike, backed it out of the garage, fired it up, offered a prayer to the fucking wind, then slammed it into first and hit the throttle.
As I crossed town, Nyx started flashing a popup window at me, warning that the temperature had dropped to thirty-three fucking degrees.
Yeah, I fucking know.
I acknowledged the alarm and kept moving.
I had to stop for gas in Pojoaque. After filling up, I fired the bike back up, and there it was again.
Thirty-two degrees outside.
Yeah, I still fucking know.
I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do with that information. Is my bike telling me this for some operational reason? Is there something I'm supposed to be doing differently? Because I already talked to my mechanic about winterizing Nyx, and he assured me there wasn't anything special I needed to do.
So if this message is simply intended to remind me that it's fucking freezing outside, then please, for the love of all things holy, fucking stop.
And Harley-Davidson design engineers, take note: I don't need my fucking motorcycle telling me it's cold outside.
Because I'm fucking outside.
On a fucking motorcycle.
With about a ninety-mile-an-hour wind.
I KNOW IT'S FUCKING COLD.
That's why I'm wearing eighteen fucking layers and electric gloves. That's why my teeth are chattering. That's why I can barely feel my fucking face.
I don't need my motorcycle reminding me every ten minutes why I'm fucking miserable.
It's not helpful.
But eventually, I made it to work and started thawing out.
And like most days, there was a pretty steady stream of aggravations, interrupted by genuinely impactful moments. I love the leadership part of leadership. I love working with my people, helping them grow, helping them solve problems, helping them accomplish things that matter.
But fuck, I can't stand everyone's need to fucking know everything. Everyone's need to meddle in our business, to insert themselves into things they don't understand, to demand explanations for shit that doesn't concern them.
We're fucking fine.
I promise you.
Eventually, my team leaders assembled in my office for our weekly leadership meeting. It's our opportunity to make sure we're all on the same page about where we're heading and how we're going to get there.
And at one point, one of my team leaders pointed toward my right forearm.
Right at the tattoo I'd gotten to commemorate the date of my motorcycle accident.
"Happy anniversary," he said.
I looked at him.
"Huh?"
He pointed again, more emphatically this time.
"Since your accident."
And I'll be damned.
He was fucking right.
One year.
One entire fucking year.
And somehow, I'd forgotten.
Not the accident. Not what happened. Not what it cost me.
Just the date.
Because I was too busy living my fucking life.
And that realization hit me harder than I expected.
It feels like yesterday.
Not literally, of course, because that would mean a whole lot of lingering pain.
But when you're in the middle of clawing your way back from something like that, you don't see the miles. You see the inches.
You see the next movement. The next appointment. The next little victory. The next fucking setback.
You measure progress by whether you can get out of bed, whether you can walk across the room, whether you can close your mouth, whether you can get through a night without waking up in agony.
And then one day, somebody points at a tattoo on your arm.
And suddenly, it's been a year.
I won't ever be the same again.
That's a fucking fact.
That accident changed me in ways I'm still discovering.
I ride differently now.
Not recklessly. But aggressively? Yeah. Aggressive as fuck.
Not because I'm trying to be dangerous. Quite the opposite. I ride that way because I intend to stay alive.
I'm not giving up two wheels. I'm not retreating into the supposed safety of a four-wheeled cage because somebody else couldn't be bothered to pay attention.
So I ride on my own fucking terms.
Not the terms dictated by traffic engineers who spend their careers studying cars and treating motorcycles like some inconvenient fucking afterthought. Not the terms established by city councils and mayors who wouldn't know the first fucking thing about riding, or enforced by cops who don't understand what it's like to be exposed to every careless decision made around you.
I respect physics. I respect the road. I respect what happens when several thousand pounds of automobile meets a few hundred pounds of motorcycle.
And I ride with the determination that I will not be knocked down again.
Because it's still in me.
That call of the wild. That thing that beckons bikers toward the open road. That feeling that can't be explained to somebody who has never experienced it.
It's still there.
Even after being knocked the fuck down.
Even after almost being fucking killed.
And goddamn, looking back across this past year.
Holy fuck.
I clawed my way back.
Through broken bones that doctors missed. Through degloving injuries that were overlooked. Through healing that seemed to drag on forever, sometimes because of the injuries themselves and sometimes because medical schedules didn't seem particularly concerned with the fact that I wanted my fucking life back.
Through nights in the hospital when I cried because I was trying so fucking hard just to get into that goddamned wheelchair.
Only to have the bed alarm start screaming and a nurse come running in to tell me I couldn't.
Don't ever fucking tell me that, by the way.
Don't ever tell me I can't.
Because I fucking know better.
I remember the physical pain that followed me for months. The nights when I'd finally manage to fall asleep, only to wake myself up because I'd rolled over wrong and some broken part of my body decided to remind me it was still broken.
I remember my fucking lip.
Standing in front of the mirror, staring at a face I barely recognized, thinking I looked like a goddamned freak.
I remember trying to reclaim some tiny piece of normalcy by going out to a restaurant, only to catch strangers staring at me.
I remember how much that hurt.
And then there was the heartbreak.
The ending of a years-long affair that I'd somehow, inappropriately, confused with love.
And fuck, did that hurt.
When somebody you believe loves you tells you "no more," there's a particular kind of pain that settles somewhere deep inside you. It doesn't announce itself with broken bones or bruises. It just grinds away at the very fucking core of who you are.
And then there was the former "friend" who decided that while I still couldn't even fucking walk, it was an appropriate time to attack my integrity over a fucking work affair.
All of it.
The physical pain. The emotional pain. The people questioning how I was choosing to reclaim my life. The unsolicited opinions. The judgments. The disappointments.
All while my body was still trying to fucking heal.
And here I am.
One year later.
I still can't move my left wrist very far. My left foot still feels strange. The spot on my thigh where the degloving occurred is still sensitive. My chin and lip are still fucking numb.
There are reminders everywhere.
Some visible. Some not.
Some physical. Some emotional.
I didn't come out of that accident unscathed.
And I never will.
But here's the thing.
Through all of that pain, all of that heartbreak, all of those nights when I wondered what the fuck my life was going to look like, something else happened.
My eyes were opened to love.
Real love.
The kind I didn't even realize I'd been missing.
I had to walk through that fucking fire to get where I am today.
And where I am today is pretty fucking incredible.
I love a woman who is absolutely phenomenal.
A woman who shows me grace, intimacy, and strength in ways I never imagined possible. A woman who gives me courage when I need it, strength when mine is running low, and a kind of love that doesn't demand I become somebody else to deserve it.
She loves me.
Truly fucking loves me.
And I have never felt loved like this in my entire fucking life.
She grounds me.
And as you've heard me say before, she quiets the noise in my head.
That constant fucking noise.
The thoughts. The memories. The restlessness. The endless spinning of a mind that doesn't seem to understand how to be still.
When I'm with her, it gets quiet.
I feel at home.
Not in a building. Not in a place.
With her.
She is my fucking everything.
And the strange, almost impossible thing to reconcile is that I wouldn't be here, with her, living this life, if I hadn't walked the path of this past year.
I wouldn't wish that accident on anybody.
I wouldn't choose to go through it again.
And I sure as fuck wouldn't tell somebody who's suffering that everything happens for a reason.
Sometimes terrible things just fucking happen.
Sometimes people make careless decisions, and somebody else pays the price.
Sometimes life tears you apart without asking permission.
But what happens afterward?
That's where we get to make some choices.
And looking back across this past year, I realize something.
I spent so much time measuring the inches that I almost missed the miles.
The miles I fought for.
The miles I rode.
The miles I walked on a leg that didn't want to cooperate.
The miles between the hospital bed and the motorcycle.
Between the wheelchair and the open road.
Between heartbreak and a love that feels like home.
One year ago, somebody nearly took my life.
Yesterday, I was too busy living it to remember.
And I think there's something pretty fucking beautiful about that.
