Pushing Through The Toughest Days – February 11th
February 11th and the week surrounding it have become significant for me. For some reason, year after year it has become a symbol of pushing through a really hard day. Let me explain.
A year ago on February 11th, I took a pretty gnarly fall while snowboarding and broke my wrist. Just to be clear: I am absolutely trash at snowboarding. I fall every 5 seconds, I freak out when I pick up speed, and I throw myself to the ground. At the end of the day, I really just don’t like going downhill at fast speeds. I tried it a few times in high school and never really got the hang of it. Butttt I decided that I lived in MN long enough (my whole life) and it was time for me to embrace the winters. I thought maybe if I get into a winter sport, I will appreciate the season more. I wanted to give snowboarding another shot.
And I sure did. After a half hour of getting the wind knocked out of me on the regular hills, I accepted I had to retreat back to the bunny hill to practice the basics. It is there that I hit the ground for the last time. I heard the snap, my vision got dark, and I dreaded pulling off my glove to see what was underneath. Thankfully I was with a friend who got me to a hospital and sat in the emergency room with me.
Something people don’t know about that day is I was silently celebrating something. I think of February 11 as my “Stay Day.” One year prior (2021) I had really hit the point I couldn’t take anymore. I had sunk so low in my depression so rapidly that on a Tuesday I physically could not imagine myself surviving until that Friday. Every minute was an hour. Then, the next morning I was hit with a brutal physical illness. My body was shutting down. I felt like I was dying. At the end of the week, I was so depleted I couldn’t spit a word out of my mouth and my body felt so heavy I couldn’t lift my arms. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought I physically cannot live another day.
Well, spoiler, I did live another day. February 11th is the day I stayed. My dad and brother came to pick me up from school and I moved home. I continued breathing even though the breaths felt heavy. This was the rockiest of bottoms and when shit hits the fan, I’m just thankful I’m not me on February 11, 2021.
So one year later, I wanted to spend February 11, my “Stay Day” doing things that made me feel alive. I thought going downhill at fast speeds outside in the cold would make me feel pretty alive. I was also set to go to a concert later that night. Instead, I fell hard on the bunny hill 20 minutes in, broke my wrist on both sides, told I need surgery, and was on painkillers by 11 am. I thought the irony of the whole thing was funny and my dear friend Emma and I were laughing and joking in the emergency room while waiting for my x-ray.
I was upset I broke a bone, but mostly I felt like a rug had been pulled out from underneath me. Two weeks later, I was set to fulfill a lifelong dream of moving to Hawaii. I worked hard to make this dream a reality and lined up a work exchange position that I simply couldn’t do with a broken wrist. I knew the reality was that they may need to fill my position before I could make it there. I tried to keep a good attitude overall, but once the painkillers wore off, my move date was pushed back to a “TBD”, and my job position was a “we’ll see” I felt depleted once again.
But I trusted everything works out the way it’s supposed to. I got my business in order and accepted that it sucks, but the only option was to push through. And I did.
On February 11, 2023 (this year) My friend who was with me on the slopes that day sent me a memory of me in the urgency room one year before, casted up with a huge smile on my face.
I received it while lying in my dark hotel room, coming off a week of feeling depleted, sad, and defeated. This week has been a particularly tough week. I got hit badly with the inevitable traveler’s illness (food and water). I had spent the last few days calling my parents from the bathroom floor, socially isolated, and uninspired. I was sick in a foreign country alone and really ready to call it quits. But, I knew my only option was to push through.
Since then I’ve had some really great experiences and I’m glad I didn’t go home. This is still difficult every day, but my only option is to push through.
I don’t know why things seem to happen on February 11th. Maybe it’s just because I’m particularly aware of it. But I guess my hope is that for every February 11th going forward, or every “Feb 11-like” day, I’ll be able to push through.
