Swinging Back

I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve dislocated my left ring finger. I’d probably have enough to retire on…ok that’s a slight exaggeration. I’d probably have about $20. But hey – that’s dinner and a movie! I could go on a date with myself and apologize to my body for the punishment I put it through every day.

Oh, wait, I have POTS. My body sucks. Never mind.

On a happy note, I got my first collegiate start last week, and we won, and Kerri Walsh was on our flight! If you’re like my mom and don’t know sports, Kerri Walsh is a three time Olympic gold medalist in beach volleyball. If you’re like my sister and don’t understand why that would matter, having three gold medals means that you’re awesome and I want a picture with you. So that was a good day. I feel  like I should have those days more often…seriously though, finally getting to start and play a full 90 minutes took a huge load off my shoulders, and I can’t even begin to describe the amount of confidence it gave me. Up until then, I hadn’t really had a lot of playing time since high school. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could do it, and it wasn’t that I really thought anyone else didn’t think I could do it, either. But, when you haven’t actually done something before, there’s always that little doubt in the back of your mind that says, “What if I don’t even get the opportunity to see if I can?” Or worse, “What if I get the opportunity and blow it?”

In a lot of ways, our whole fight with POTS is like that. We know that we can beat this, we know that we are beating this, and yet there’s always that miserable voice in the back of your mind whispering, “What if you lose?”

Let me ask you something – what is losing? What does failure look like in POTS? 

Is it having a bad day? No. You can’t control that. No matter how fit you become or how much sodium you consume or how much water you drink, your body’s going to say, “Screw you,” some days. That doesn’t mean you’ve lost – it means you’re winning and POTS is fighting back. Is failure riding the struggle bus for a whole week of practice? No. You may have barely made it through the week, and you may have felt miserable, and you may be asking yourself why you ever bothered to roll yourself out of bed every day because the week was just that bad. But the fact is that you did drag yourself through the week, your body kicking and screaming the whole way. That’s not failure.

Failure is not when you’ve been beat down. It’s not when your eyes are swollen or your nose is bloodied. It’s not when your body aches or your soul is tired. It’s not when you’ve been suckered punched so hard by life that you’re lying face down in the ring with a metaphorically broken jaw and metaphorically cracked ribs. It isn’t even feeling like you’d rather stay down there, either. Failure is when you don’t get up and swing back anyway. 

So get up.

Swing back.

My name is Amy Swearer, and POTS stole my life. I'm taking it back.