We finally got to the top of the black diamond, which they should just freaking call a blood diamond already. I had learned to snowboard, like, ten feet, so I figured I just had to do that ten-foot stretch about a thousand times and I could get down the mountain alive. Codependence has this magical ability to spin fear into confidence because the fear of seeming incapable eclipses your fear of hurting yourself, so off I went. My scam was actually working until I started doing so well that my inner voice crept in and said I wasn’t doing well enough. I had mastered a toe turn, so my self-flagellating brain had the audacity to heckle me: “You can only do toe turns? You should be doing heel turns! You suck! No wonder your show got canceled!” Alas, you go where you look.
As I glided down the mountain, my boyfriend yelled something inaudible at me. Looking back, I’m sure it was something encouraging or supportive, but when I can’t hear the words someone says to me, I make up what they’ve said based on what I think about myself. It becomes a real live fill-in-the-blank test where I insert something only a verbally abusive person would say. In my head, I heard him agree with my nasty inner monologue—“Do a heel turn!”—which I am now certain he would not have yelled. Unable to say no or acknowledge any human limits, I tried to do the move I had learned only a couple of hours ago, at a speed I had never gone before, on a mountain you can see from space. I looked down to see if I was doing it right. The thing is, you go where you look.
You know those giant body-shaped balloons in front of car dealerships that collapse, blow up, then violently collapse again? They fall sternum first and head last, which I guess for some reason is supposed to make you want to buy a new vehicle? Well, that’s how I looked as I fell face-first into the snow, except the incline was so steep that just when I would have blown back up, I smashed into the icy ground. It happened too fast for me to fathom. All I could hear were snowboarders ripping past my head, filming one another with GoPros, since I guess there aren’t already enough shitty snowboarding videos on YouTube with six views.
Perhaps it’s the female predisposition of having a high tolerance for pain, perhaps it’s not being coddled enough as a child, or perhaps it’s the brain damage I got from years of gel manicures, but I promise you, I felt no physical pain after I fell. All I really felt was shame, so I tried to get up as quickly as possible in order to laugh it off and pretend I was fine. No dice. When I tried to lift my right arm, I simply couldn’t. It wasn’t painful; it was more like my arm wasn’t responding, like it was “rebuffering stream.” I pushed my ass up in the air, trying to roll onto my back with a very sad twerking motion.
When my guy finally got up to me, I had a smile on my frigid face and made a joke (probably a corny joke about cocaine/white powder in my nose if I were to guess). I promised I was fine and that I could snowboard down the hill myself, even though I not only still couldn’t snowboard but was also seriously injured. But that wasn’t going to stop me from being fine! I did snowboard the rest of the way down the hill, falling many times, this time mostly on my ass but catching myself with my arms. With each fall, my shoulder hurt more and more, but that pain paled in comparison to the thought of possibly being considered someone who needed help.
Back at the house, I started taking my gear off, only to realize I couldn’t do anything with my right arm. Lift it, push with it, take a bra off with it, even gesticulate for comic effect—which my shoulder injury made me realize I do way too frequently. To distract everyone from how much trouble I was having putting clothes on or lifting things up, I did impressions of Kristen Wiig’s tiny hands character on SNL, which I must admit, I am excellent at when my shoulder is intact.
Two days later, when I finally went home, I couldn’t lift my right arm more than four inches or so and I couldn’t put a bra on to save my life. I finally gave up and went to a doctor, who told me I had broken my humerus, which felt like a cruel prank the universe was playing on me, given all the ways I was trying to use humor to minimize the gravity of the situation. I had also bruised my rotator cuff, which as far as I knew, was a car part. Long story short, I needed three days a week of physical therapy for six months. He also told me my shoulder would “never be the same.” The only thing more unsettling to me than a doctor saying something that dramatic and vague was that all of this could have been avoided had I just said no thanks to the snowboarding offer.
It just didn’t occur to me that I could say no to men until very recently. I’ve gone on countless dates with guys I had no interest in because I felt guilty or didn’t know how to turn them down without hurting their feelings. I’ve slept with guys I wasn’t even attracted to because they “drove all this way” or “they split the bill at McCormick & Schmick’s, and I did order the fancy salmon.”
I regularly put my sexual health at risk because I was too insecure to say no or stand up for myself. I was so afraid of abandonment that I couldn’t ask for simple things: “Hey, dude, how about we wash that before you put it inside my body?” or “Let’s use the hole that’s specifically engineered for intercourse instead!” and let me tell you, the sooner you can say these things, the sooner you’ll stop getting UTIs.
It’s healing for me to make light of it, but I also feel sad for the person I was back then, for that girl who had no boundaries and was terrified of being thought of as annoying or weak. The irony is as soon as I stopped pretending and performing for people, I started attracting way more amazing ones. When you’re authentic, you attract people who want a self-actualized person, not some Mrs. Potato Head who is customized based on who she’s with. I started meeting guys who were excited about the prospect of being with a girl who has her own identity instead of some blow-up doll who acquiesces to whatever they’re into. To figure out who I was, I learned to look inward instead of outward. Folks, you go where you look.