I wasn’t very strong, and I was only a little fast, but I was a pretty effective sufferer. I learned to just dissociate and grind it out. It started out as an effective strategy for long marches and pushups. Then it got me through three days of an intestinal bug in airborne school – they said “we’d like to put you on an IV and just wash you out, but feel free to drink this bottle of Kaopectate and stay in the course.” It was late in week 2 of jump school, so no way I was going to write off that time: I wanted those goddamn wings.
It eventually became an entire project of on-demand dissociation, looking back at a wall of hash marks like prisoners do in the movies, and saying to myself “no way I’m going to write off that time.”
I didn’t let much of anything or anyone touch me. I was an affable presence who made good martinis, and I was a bad friend.
My very last jump – timed to guarantee hazardous duty pay for the rest of my enlistment – ended up with me coming down in a stand of trees after losing my helmet on exit. I walked off the drop zone shaking, having finally lost my capacity to feel untouched by my own bad choices.
It’s true, though, that sometimes the things that help us survive or succeed can stop working for us.
When I first got back into running a few years ago I kept burning out and hating it because my 50+ body doesn’t respond well to dissociation. I kept hurting myself.
Then Al invited me to join her on her runs, where we stick to her pace. It’s slower than I know I can do. Sometimes, when I start pulling ahead a little, she says “low and slow” and I rein it back in, choosing to just enjoy being out there at all instead of straining at some limitation I’m trying to smash through.
There are other ways, though, that I remain a pretty effective sufferer, and I need to give that some consideration.