I have pushed my way through school while working a full time job, from my associates degree to my MBA, all while single parenting my kiddo. That was hard.
I have trained for a triathlon, even when I couldn’t swim, and managed to complete the tri. That was hard, too.
I have shown up for work in such miserable back pain after an injury that I couldn’t turn my head to the left at all, and that was really hard.
Harder, though, than any and every challenge I can think of is to let someone new be close to me. I can mend from broken bones and sprains, and I can coffee my way through work when I didn’t sleep the night before because I was working on a paper or sitting up with a sick child. I can say “I don’t know how” and learn something from scratch. I struggle, though, with being close to someone new, because when it implodes, that’s the hardest stuff to recover from…coffee and Tylenol doesn’t help that kind of hurt, and as the years go by, I know I’m less willing to put myself in those vulnerable places. Some people build a wall to keep their hearts safe, to keep their distance; I’ve built a fortress, complete with moat and dragon.
And of course, that reminds me of a song. What doesn’t remind me of a song? “Had to stop in my tracks for fear of walking on the mines I’d laid…”