Torn between what is and what could be.
It’s hard to write the story
When the story’s writing me
— Great Expectations, The Outsiders
⸻
Those of you who have known me a while know I kept a blog of my cancer journey, Picking Up A Hitchhiker, for over a decade. It started as a simple way to hold onto memory when I was worried brain surgery would damage it so much that I wouldn’t remember my life story. I also had—and still have—full intentions of reading it when my time came.
Cancer, fortunately, has become less and less relevant to my everyday life. I’m not on maximum dosage of medication. It’s been over a decade since a seizure; the appointments are fewer and farther between. And for a variety of reasons—one of which is definitely that I’d stopped envisioning since my twenties—middle age has made me as much, if not more, afraid of aging than of dying.
I mean, let’s be clear: I’ve started middle age in style and wildness. The kid born 8/8/80 used to assume before cancer that he’d make 88, so I figured arriving at 44 last year was the midlife crisis marker. It started with skydiving with people I love and trust. It was followed by Burning Man where, well, let’s just say when in Nevada, do as the Romans.
But the wildness refocused, because I think I’m still standing by well—not standing still. In November ‘24, I managed to win, randomly in raffles, entries to both a six-day stage race, the TransRockies, and an Ironman 70.3. I had plantar fasciitis going hard, but despite a good friend saying, “Just because you win an entry doesn’t mean you have to do it,” I signed up for both.
Each of those events would have deserved an entry of their own in the old Hitchhiker days. But both are a bit past now, and they’ll have to rest in my limited and damaged brain. Just to add spice to the mix, I also did my first Spartan Trifecta during that midlife crisis—three of the hardest things I’ve done in about a seven-month span. Aging like fine wine in a damaged bottle, I suppose.
I miss the writing. I still actually do write to process thoughts—type at length—and then just select all and delete, somehow trying to both let it out and let it go. But I miss this intentional writing, where I describe the story.
I even played with the idea of writing a memoir of sorts, titled The Thrill of Hope: A Soundtrack of Quiet Desperation. Each chapter or entry would be labeled after a song, since I regularly think—and my heart often beats—in lyrics, in both Spanish and English.
A few days ago, Kiana and I went to see a musical, The Outsiders. I won’t ruin it, because before I went I’d never seen or known anything about it, but it had two songs that stuck with me enough that an old man downloaded them and has had them on repeat—enough to inspire this writing.
The lyric at the top of this blog captures it perfectly: “It’s hard to write the story when the story is writing me.” Perhaps the blog was never that different from putting off brain surgery to run a marathon, or walking out of ambulances. It was an attempt—quite literally—to control the narrative. But I think the story has written me just as much.
I used to ask my doctors, “Can I keep running, and am I fit to raise a kid? Because one is how I get through the day, and the other one is why.” I’m still running, but I know my PRs are almost certainly behind me, and Kiana’s a full legal adult, no longer sharing a roof with me—so both of those equations are less relevant.
I think about heading to Mexico and just restarting life where it started for me. But I still have some promises to keep, and no matter where, there are many miles to run before I sleep.
While I’m still thankful and grateful for each day, there are more moments—more days—where I’m trying to figure out what all this has been for. People offer things like, “Don’t you want to see [insert great idea here]?” But the truth is, the answer is almost always no. I didn’t stick around to be a passive spectator of anything.
I’m now officially working in race production, but unlike most race directors, I snuck into both the races I’ve done so far—fastest guy on my team at the first relay and third-place male at the second one—so there’s still something in the tank.
Parts of my brain, heart, and soul are broken—some through circumstance, some through choice—but I don’t see myself as a victim of either.
But I’m still running, still singing, still loving, and still trying—as more of my hair grows gray—to stay gold.
⸻
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
— Robert Frost
