Falling Down

Last night I did a head stand at yoga. I felt like I was on top of the world.

This morning, roughly 30 minutes ago, I tripped and fell hard in front of my husband’s girlfriend from college. I feel utterly disgraced. I am picturing this knee-nose dive as a metaphor for my entire life.

Which one of these experiences is true?

Both.

I am a woman who does head stands during yoga class then wakes up 9 hours later to participate in a one-hour morning boot camp.

I am a woman who was worrying about dropping off library books and filling the car with gas and copying the financial forms for Girl Scouts and buying toilet paper before I had to be home for the final inspection for our house remodel.

I am the person who has attacked exercise with vigor as a way to cope with my life being turned upside down by my daughter’s learning disabilities.

I am the person momentarily congratulating herself for not acting like an idiot in front of her husband’s long-ago girlfriend before completely losing her balance.

I am the girl who spent an hour this morning joking with other girls as we tried to figure out partner exercises that seemed more difficult than calculus at 6:30 am.

I am the girl who compares herself to the old girlfriend who is currently a lawyer and I come up short as the stay-at-home mom with the lame writing career that has never paid the mortgage.

I am the human being that spent one month not skipping one day of a five-day-a week harder-than-hell boot camp to prove to the annoying male instructor that I have true grit.

I am the human being that just sobbed for way too long about every sucky thing in my life.

Just for the record, it’s been a hard year.

Just for the record, it has been a beautiful year that turned my brain inside out with both its difficulty and grace.

And after I ice this leg, I am running a million stay-at-home mom errands, taking Annie to yet another tutoring session, and completing some meager freelance work.

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