"You used to be tough."

“You used to be tough” the comment directed at me lingered in the air, from someone I’d known a long time.

I had just been talking about a highway in Guatemala that I avoid driving on. Hardly a week goes by without another devastating crash on that highway making the news. Huge semi trailers that have lost control, motorcycle accidents, you name it, even a giant sinkhole that opened up last year. It’s not a highway I directly need in my daily life, so I simply avoid it.

“You used to drive from El Salvador to Guatemala, alone, in a beat-up, smoking car,” she continued. This part is true. I have a handful of stories of my little Chevy Monza overheating, of pulling her over the side of the road as her bonnet gushes smoke, feeling like I’m about to be in an action movie explosion scene, flying twenty meters away.

It’s true, back then, being able to do that made me feel a little badass. Raw, strong and capable. As did renewing my visa, going solo on foot across the Mexican border and back to Guatemala again, sweat pouring down my back and Spanish hitting me from every side, back when I didn’t know it so well. The experiences felt fortifying, like I was being forged in fire. It was hard, it was sweaty, it was a rush. Ten years ago, El Salvador wasn’t the bitcoin and property investment haven it’s marketed as today. It was still considered one of the murder capitals of the world. I didn’t move there because of this of course: I simply wanted to learn Spanish and to surf. But constructing a life there did require grit and discomfort. Paying bills, public transport, sitting at dinners with new friends, as the conversation bounced around and I still had no idea what was being said. Surfing twice a day, on an extremely limited budget. There was a six month stretch where I didn’t even own shoes because my last pair of thongs broke and my only transit was to the surf and back. I guess, to some people, that might appear tough.

But what is interesting is when I look at my sweet wild twenty something self, I wouldn’t see her as tough. Yes, she was hungry, seeking, curious, idealistic, reckless, brave. I would also say she had almost zero capacity for mental discipline and let her emotions drag her around each day like a dog on a leash. It’s a wonder I managed to build and sustain a business. And then another one. I’m not denouncing her, I’m not saying I’m better than her, because I needed her to be exactly what I am now. But the idea that perhaps I have lost something fundamental in the becoming of what I am now, to me, was shocking.

Younger me didn’t have anything to lose and answered only to herself, so of course she could throw herself at life like a bat out of hell. She could ask the tattoo artist over the fence if he had availability that afternoon, roughly draw up a sketch and be inked within five hours. She could live barefoot, drive smoking cars that might explode any minute, write audacious and obnoxious poetry about why her way of life was the best way and every other way was simply being ‘constrained by society.’ She could do a visa run at the Mexican border and realize there were no free hotels in town upon arriving at 2am. She could do these things because no one was really depending on her to be solid.

I will never not be hungry, seeking, curious, idealistic, reckless, and brave. But I channel it differently now. My life isn’t something I tip upside down every time I feel restless. If I feel flat and uninspired, I check where I am in my menstrual cycle. I think about how I’ve been eating, sleeping. I ask myself if I’ve tried something new lately like cooking a new meal or trying a different trail at the bike park. If I’m emotional, I write, I create, I call my dad. If I’m curious I get down on eye level with my son and try see the world through his eyes, and learn something entirely new. I will always thirst for a big life, a life that fits my soul and a structure that makes sense to me. But things will take longer because I have a partner and a child in lockstep with me and it has to benefit us all.

When I crave that trial-by-fire sensation, I do jump lines at the bike park. Heights and distances I absolutely never thought I’d be able to clear, and that do come with real risk.

Few things in life have demanded more of me than growing a human, and then going through excruciating pain as its giant head leaves your body. There is nothing tougher than watching parts of yourself shed, and shed, as you become a mother. No matter how hard you promise yourself you ‘wont be one of those mothers’, you will. The baseline of your existence, before anything else, rests on whether your child(ren.) are okay.

Everything else still matters: my partnership, my hobbies, my work, my ambitions, my friendships. But now I pursue them with a different question in mind: Does this make me a better mother? Most of the time, it does.

Toughness, now that my life orients around keeping a six year old safe, loved and healthy both mentally and physically, is different. It involves keeping routines fairly predictable, with adventures interspersed throughout. It involves managing my own emotions in a conflict with others, putting pride aside, trying to see both sides, even if the twenty-two year old inside me wants to flip a table and storm out of the room or turn her phone off for a day.

It involves showing up to work on my business day after day even when the sales are poor for that month, when I feel like no idea is landing or inspiring, when I’m feeling like what we’re doing is an endless push upstream and there are ten other shiny ideas I could chase instead that would give me an instant high.

It involves sometimes stepping past the perpetual people pleaser in me, as I hate it, as much as it heats my blood, drawing a line and saying, “This far and no further.” Even if I know it’ll disappoint some people, even if it means some people won’t like me anymore. Will think I’ve changed.

“You used to be tough.”

I smiled.

“I’m still tough,” I said.

“Just in a different way.”

Leave a comment