Mortal

It is one thing to learn you are not invincible.  Kids feel a certain degree of invincibility from day 1, or maybe day 730, the terrible twos, and young boys feel this to a degree that is beyond scary, for their parents that is.  The first stitches I ever received was in fact when I was two, and the stitches, all to my head, kept coming from there; in my tongue when I was 4, the back of my head at seven, that was literally a bloody mess, and the worst one, at least to date, was the summer I turned 18, for which I got 18 stitches in my head, and a scare that to this day feels tender at times.

I definitely felt invincible when I was young, even after that 2 1/2 story fall from which I managed to land head first, and perhaps even more so.

My freshman year in college, and especially the winter term brought me down to earth a bit, and it was not more stitches, or even an injury of any kind, but being sick.  I, like many college Freshman, got "the kissing disease" at some point late in my fall term and it actually caused me to collapse after a time trial in mid-November.  I had the privilege of spending two weeks in the infirmary and then of being sick over the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays and that took a great deal out of my invincible spirit, probably aided by having lost a very good friend less than a year before.

Regardless of how much invincible luster I may have lost while in college, I have never felt mortal, as one good friend of mine has said this year, "Rocchio, your problem is that you thought you had forever," and that is definitely what I have been coming down from of late, I definitely thought I had forever until very recently, I do not.

I do not know exactly why I feel this way right now, nor would I want to bore any of you, anymore than i already do, with the details, but I have in fact very suddenly realized that I am quite mortal.  I no longer feel like I have forever, in fact I now feel that my days are very numbered.  It is a claustrophobic feeling, a feeling like I have been buried alive and Ii am struggling for air.  Also, I am left trying to figure out how I can in fact turn the clock back.  I want to be able to do some of the things that as recently as a couple of years ago I could do and could do relatively well.  It was four or five years ago that I was at y absolute fittest, at least from a cycling standpoint, and it was just two years ago, two years and seven months actually, that I was in solid running shape and as strong as I had been in no less than two decades.  Now, all of that is gone and more.

I am slowly working to regain what I have lost.  I am searching, mentally, emotionally, intellectual, and physically for answers.  I am working hard and trying to make better decision along the way.  It may sound crazy to say, but I do not want to feel mortal.  I want to feel invincible again, or at the very least alive.  I am a kid that has always gone a hundred miles an hour at all times in everything I did, and so for that not to be the case I guess it can be said that my spirit is broken, but I will get it back if at all possible, for Little Ant and Uncle Ed, and especially for Nini Rose.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.