Fractured

Fractured

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How two radically different places and communities with similar core tenants saved my life. And how I learned to love myself, scars and all. 

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My life was fractured for years. I spent far too long trying to be who others wanted me to be and do what they saw was best for me. I ignored my own intuition and struggled to find a place or even meaning in life. I was lost. I was scared. I was alone. The nice thing is that community can help you fuse life together again. The amazing thing is that there’s some pretty incredible, loving, and caring people out there in the world.

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I spent too long trying to figure out the puzzle of life with all the wrong pieces. But I finally figured out how to bring them all together.

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December 2021

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I’ve written and alluded to 2021 being the hardest year of my life. This is how that year ended. The snow wrapped around my car. Gusts of wind twirled around me. Daylight started to trickle away leaving just fragments of gray. Cars around me grinded to a crawl. I turned my attention to the road. Snow slowly packing on. The green and browns of the trees around us became bolder. My eyes darted to the right and left; seeing car after car slide and carom off to the side. The icy air from the outside started to seep into my car and then my brain. 

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My mind raced…. If I was one of those cars would anyone come help me. Would anyone miss me, would anyone know I was gone if I disappeared into the snow and trees.

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I’ve dealt with various intrusive thoughts my whole life. It’s one of the reasons I have struggled with maintaining friendships. I get a thought that my friend doesn’t care for me and then I spiral into overthinking and over analyzing our interactions, only to push them away. I’ve started to alleviate this by working through my own breathwork practice. A combination of 4-7-8 breathing and box breathing. A methodical way to slow down. Take a step back. Let the thought exist and then just fade into nothingness where it belongs. 

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But this one was cruel. It questioned if the people around me would miss me if I was actually gone. I’ve never had a suicidal thought. But that thought of just disappearing scared me. I just spent Christmas being around my family. I thought it would rejuvenate me. I thought they could help me feel a little more alive. But the whole time I felt like a ghost. I felt that if I wasn’t there nothing would change. They would have the same conversations if I wasn’t present. They would laugh about the tiny humans running around creating chaos. So the days dragged on and I plotted my escape back to the cold frigid Minnesota winter where at least my bed felt warm and like home, even if life was just empty gray. 

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I journaled some thoughts and prepared them for the next time I would talk to my therapist, again bringing up the concept of family and where I fit in with my own. A conversation that felt like it dominated many of our sessions. I was just trying to find my place. I was just trying to find home. I just wanted to belong. 

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I felt trapped with a law degree. A degree that wasn’t something I truly wanted but more of a testament to my ability to work hard and grind for something, even if I wasn’t the best at it. It was the academic standard that I could hold and no one could take away from me. It was my brute force methodology of silencing the doubters that I could graduate. But the law degree and law school was never my dream. It was the dream that fit the ideas and mold of what people saw in me. The dream that a kid that loved history and sport could find a calling beyond those two. 

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But my calling, my soul longed for sport. Not competition. But sport. The community, the belonging, the being part of something bigger than myself. Maybe that’s why I fell in love with group fitness. It reminded me so much of everyone pulling the same rope with the same outcome. No one cared how much you lifted as long as you lifted. You just showed up and the result was greater than the sum of its parts. 

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I had this dueling identity crisis. Unsure who I was now that my athletic career was over and unsure if I even fit into the professional environment I had a degree in. I felt lost. I was confused. I didn’t know how to talk about the uncertainty. I didn’t know how to bring up to my parents and family that I always felt pressured to go to law school and it was never really my place, even though there were certain subjects that I did enjoy. The weight of it all just was never me. 

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All these thoughts and doubts raced through my head. I tried to shake it, giving myself a reason to drive another mile without breaking down. 

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I eventually made it home. I never succumbed to the notion of driving off into the snow banks. I found my bed, wrapped myself in the blankets, curled up into a little ball like I was a kid again and tried to turn my brain off, if for only a moment. 

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I’m not sure if I ever hit rock bottom, but this sure felt like it. 

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My life felt empty. 

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After a week around my family I felt less alive then when I got there. In a previous low point in my life I found a gym. A place that helped me feel alive and that I was capable of something. That place became my recluse, my fortitude of solitude, a place I could go to and turn away from the noise and chaos of the world. It was a similar feeling I got from playing rugby. For 80 minutes I could just focus on my game. I could be an artist and nothing else going on would matter. 

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But this all felt different this time. I still had my gym. But it changed. I changed. Post Covid everything changed. A place that used to feel like home felt cold and foreign. So I changed the location I went to. I went running from the pain. I went to a place where others didn’t know me and I could just be.  

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This is when Elena and I became friends. She made me feel like I had a place to belong and be. She would listen to my struggles and just provide an ear to listen and then plant a small seed of encouragement. If you have ever met her you will know the power she has in making people feel bigger. To call her a friend is a gift. A couple days a week I would take her class and we would talk after. Diving into the things we were both passionate about and her just nudging me to take the leap towards passion I had living dormant inside my soul. She gave me a place to belong. She gave me a friendship I have never experienced in my life. She saw all of me, the flaws and cracks and never once made me belittled by them. I started to feel alive again. That spark and magic I had inside me that I hadn’t seen since college started to show up again. I started to show up again. 

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I found friends again and for a couple hours a week I had moments where I felt truly alive. I felt that spark of life again. My love for a place that has become my home and job (literally the best job in the world) became revitalized. I finally felt that I could become the greatness that my soul longed for. I found people who believed in the wild dreams and watered the seed of hope that I could achieve it. 

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Things got better. But life still felt gray. 

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I kept chasing the titles and accolades and achievements that others told me I should be. I chased the legal related fields and academic pursuits. Thinking that if I did that my parents and family would be proud of me. Then maybe my extended family would see me as an equal. That I was more than just a washed up rugby player. But none of it ever felt right. 

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Even my body rejected it. On March 27th I had a panic attack. Everything in life boiled over and hit a tipping point. I became paralyzed and couldn't function. Looking back it felt like my body rejecting all the fitting in and chasing what others wanted for me. I knew deep down in my soul what I wanted. I knew the things that lit my soul on fire and the things I was doing were out of alignment with that vision. 

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So my body reacted and I panicked. For 6 hours I cried and shivered and sweated. Motionless, scared, a part of me just wanting to give up. 

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Enter Nikki. 

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Nikki was my life coach but she has more importantly become my friend. I met her in the beginning of 2021. In my panic and disarray I clutched at my phone and texted her a message only she would understand was more than just a call for help. It was a text to bring me back down to reality. It was a call to take me away from the misfiring synapses of my brain and into my soul. 

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I tried to do my breathwork. I tried to sit and slow down but none of it worked. But then that notification came through. And for a brief second the world stopped. Instead of looking at what I was capable of. Or what I have achieved or been through. She saw my heart and my soul. She saw the fire and the spark and let me focus on that. The panic quieted. The twisted upside down world turned back to center. I breathed again. 

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Nikki was and is still always there for me. She saw the gifts of my soul after I buried them in the cobwebs. She kept reminding me of them and that text is forever that reminder. 

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So I started to let the soul lead some more. I didn’t expect the community I would find next to be exactly what I needed. 

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My whole life I have kind of been a bit of a misfit. I was the nerdy, academically interested guy on my rugby team in high school. I would be reading comic books before games, only to lace up the cleats come game time, score a couple times and lay a few big hits. Then get in the car and read about Egyptian or Greek mythology. 

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It was similar in college. I would often be content watching documentaries on things that interest me or playing strategy games then going out. And in law school it was almost the opposite because I was an athlete while everyone was more academically driven and focused. I never really had a place to call mine. I was always on the outside of whatever group I was associated with. 

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At the end of 2022 my brother introduced me to a game called Flesh and Blood. It’s a trading card game, so it checks the nerd box. But it’s also competitive and strategic with lots of agency. In a weird roundabout way it combines all the aspects of my life into a tidy little hobby. But as I mentioned, I always felt like an outsider in any group I became apart of. 

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I was hesitant to play the game beyond what I would do with my brother. I was scared to show up at a shop and interact with others. Scared to be the outsider again and not really have a place. Funnily enough the opposite happened. I met some of the kindest and welcoming people I have ever met. I started looking forward to events because I would see my friends and we could joke around with each other and just be nerds. 

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There were no extra requirements or hoops to jump through. My friends were just happy to see me and participate in a hobby we all enjoyed together. On a certain level it felt like college rugby again. Just a bunch of misfits coming together to do something they enjoyed with people they enjoyed. Our titles or status did not matter. Someone being better than another didn’t matter. It was just a bunch of friends coming together to do something they all enjoyed. 

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It was refreshing. The community welcomed me with open arms and allowed me to be present and just be me. In a certain way this game saved my life. I found friends and community and I could express another side of myself without fear or judgment. I was free and unburdened. What looks like a simple hobby was much more. It was a community, it was interaction, it was connection. Win or loss, I'm just here to have fun. 

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Slowly over the past year, the anxiety started to wane. I started being more intentional with what I wanted out of life. The expectations from others faded. I found places and communities focused on connection and comradery that I have neve experienced outside of playing rugby. 

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I gained self confidence and self conviction. I started living my life. I started living my truth and expression and sharing my experiences so I could help others. In November I took a leap to dive full time into the fitness space as a General Manager as a gym, leaving behind any tie to practicing law or the legal profession. 

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I didn’t think it would get better as I was driving back last Christmas. I thought I was stuck, I was hopeless - going through the motions at best on some days. The truth is I just needed the right people to show me that I was capable of more. My life was fractured and disjointed, but it just all somehow came together. All the puzzle pieces just started to fit and glide together. I just needed a community. I needed a support system and people to let me belong and be seen. I needed friends to be my friend without expectations. I just needed a little spark. I just needed a little magic. 

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I just needed to be me. 

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