It’s over. The dream I’ve cherished for weeks has been shattered by a bug to small to even be visible. I will not be racing tomorrow as planned, but rather Guiseppe will be taking my spot. I was feeling better, so I attempted a short (8k) paddle this morning, with somewhat disastrous results. Not disastrous, I suppose, but clear: I won’t be able to row tomorrow. The row was bad (I couldn’t even really sit up straight) and I felt terrible afterwards. A race would probably kill me, and I would die losing. Disappointing as my withdrawal is, there is no decision to be made, so in that respect, it’s easy.
In fact, FISA has assisted in making it easy: I’ve been quarantined to my hotel room. So now I have nothing to do but lie here and talk to myself. Will Guise take my seat for good? He might. He’s fast. What if they win without me in the boat? What if they set a course record?! I decide I want them to do well, but would be a bit ambivalent about a course record. This is yet another instance in which personal and collective motives are slightly divergent. It is still MY team though; whether I’m actually rowing the boat is a mere triviality. Yes, I will be cheering for them, if I have the strength to lift my hands up.
I haven’t been sick in ages… This thing must be nasty…What if I don’t get better soon? What if it takes weeks and puts me in the hospital?! I won’t make the team this year, AGAIN. Man, I am going to feel like a loser, and I will be justified. I pray that nothing keeps me from racing in Poland. As it is, every one of my teammates has raced overseas for the US, and I have not. I’m feeling a little old to be so new at this. If I were any good, I would have made a boat by now. In my better moments, it’s an inadequacy I can brush away. In my worst, it’s a source of resentment and anger. It was all going to end this weekend. Finally! No more brushing or resenting, regardless of mood. Nope, not yet. Hence the disappointment. There must be something I haven’t learned here yet, or life would not be so stubborn.
At least this isn’t Poland. Damn right. Or London. Am I wasting my life working for four years for something that might be destroyed by a germ? Probably, if it weren’t so fun. Someone gets sick every Olympics. But then, in the end germs are going destroy everything I am anyway. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that the Olympic adventure is any more fragile than life itself. An injury could prevent any of us from racing in 2012, just as a miscalculated turn on the highway could send us headfirst into a dump truck. Even a dump truck can’t change the past though. (I don’t think they can even go 88 miles an hour.) No matter what happens, I will still have trained for the Olympics, and it is pretty sweet. Hence: “Living the dream,” not “living to achieve the dream.” This is it. Even while sick.
A flu isn’t so bad. I will be OK. There is nothing good on TV, so I spend my time reading everything English in the room: two guidebooks, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, and thankfully, The Ruins, which Brett left here before the Iron Curtain fell around my hotel room. (It took me a bit of searching to find the latter.) Then I try to take exciting photos of the things around me, which are mostly wrappers from foreign medicines. My room looks like a hospital. I open the blinds and windows today, which makes things seem more cheery. Korzo brings me my meals on a tray, which is very nice. Time to sleep.
