None of Those Things

I went on a mountain bike ride the other day when I was feeling absolutely every emotion under the sun. 

I was in the deepest chasms of heartbreak, but I was also hitting strides professionally including being only weeks away from launching my first book. I was devastated, excited, lonely, proud, terrified, lost, and about a hundred other opposing emotions all at once. If anyone would have tried to pull me over on the trail and talk to me, they would have thought I was crazy. 

I also kind of thought I was crazy. 

Within the first couple miles of riding the trail that day, I had already laughed out loud to no one, and then started crying while I was riding up a series of unrelenting switchbacks. I was huffing and puffing and doing seemingly fine, and then, boom. My face crinkled, my throat closed up and I started to cry. 

I don’t know what triggered it, I don’t even know if I was thinking about the man I had so recently cut ties with. Perhaps a tree reminded me of a night we slept in his car in the woods of northern Arizona, or the smell of the trail brought me back to other trails we had ridden together. Where he’d stop riding, and hobble towards me with his bike still between his legs and awkwardly tilt his head in a way that our helmets wouldn’t hit each other, and he would kiss me. Or, maybe riding my mountain bike would always remind me of him simply because we both enjoyed riding mountain bikes. 

Whatever it was that kept triggering my sorrow, I tried pushing it down and just kept riding up the hill. As much as I’d tried though, I couldn’t repress the loss of a man whom I’d thought was whatever version of “it” I had in my mind. Someone who had made my life full and so lovely for the year I had known him. Who had supported me even past the end, who I believed in with all my heart and who could laugh and make me laugh until the late night numbers of the clock would surprise us both. Someone who had broken what we had before it was even broken. I couldn’t not think of the unfairness of it all, and so, I cried. 

I felt it coming through my chest first, then my eyes got tingly, then my throat started to close all while I was also trying to corner through a sandy turn. I pushed my way through as best as I could with blurry vision; up the turn, up over some rocks, and made it to a part of the trail where I could stop my bike, wheeze through constricted airways, and just sob. I cried in the middle of the trail harder than I had in weeks, harder than I had in my own private home where I live alone; apparently, I chose to cry on the trail instead. 

It didn’t make any sense why I couldn’t have mustered up these tears anywhere else; say, on my couch with my morning coffee, or even while taking my dog on a walk where my lungs could be assured oxygen, and my eyes weren’t required to watch a trail. It didn’t make any sense why I could only muster up emotions while I peddled up rocks, and it didn’t make any sense why he broke up with me when there was still so much love and mutual respect. It just didn’t make any sense. 

Was it because I’m not a good enough mountain biker? Was it because I’m bad at turning, or slow on the downhills?

Or was it because I’m not a great skier? 

Was it because I curse too much, or because I’m too tall? Was it because my clothes are dull or because I hate painting my fingernails?

Of course it was probably none of those things. 

It was probably because we weren’t right for each other, or the timing wasn’t right. Or it just wasn’t meant to be, or one of those other reasons that ensures our sanity when we think back and wonder why something so good had to end so fast. 

These are the reasonings we use to help us move on with our lives so that on some nights, we can sleep without a broken heart, or that on some days we can go on a mountain bike ride without crying.