I'm Not Sure How Today Happened...

I was just sitting in the shower, in the dark head tucked in that let the water roll over me and laughing laughing laughing, how the fuck did today happen?

Yesterday and last night after riding maybe somewhere close to 100 miles on a bike, I decided I had to get out and go to a party. This place was a palace at the top of Crescent Heights and I ate some food there and at home before I went and that was that. Around midnight, I was so exhausted I couldn't even hold a conversation...so I do what I do - slip out and away without telling anyone and start my walk home. In this case, I was coming back from the top of the mountain and something started to feel off. I was tired, so tired and I chalked it up that all I had to do was make it home and find my bed and watch some SNL and that everything would be fine. At 2 in the morning, I woke up. I was hot and dizzy and surging...surging everywhere. That first time, I threw up 4 times. I felt better, went to bed, than woke up at 3, 4, and 5, always doing the same thing - body just emptying out, chills, hallucinations, the works. It was brutal, brutal. When I was a kid, it would have made me cry my face off. Parts of me still wanted to. Every time I'd settle back into bed, feeling better, I thought that would be it, over and over and over. Terrible. And for 5 minutes every time I'd get up and walk to the bathroom, it felt like my world was ending. Throwing up is a beautiful thing if you allow. It is beautiful the way we work. I wish I could have just stood back and given my admiration and let things fall like that, but there was too much on my mind. At some point, it was 5 in the morning and I hadn't made my playlist for my 9 in the morning killer class - 50 Equinox animals looking to me to kill it, kill it, kill it. It's not such a heavy thing to think about unless you begin to fall terribly ill, and exertion becomes something so daunting. I had no idea how I was going to pull myself together. It was going to be impossible. But that wasn't all...

There was another class I had to teach at 3 in the afternoon. It was supposed to go down at the Avalon nightclub in Hollywood. I had people coming from a lot of different parts of California to fill my class - which was essentially this monster production where you had to pay good money to get in. I started to think about being up on that bike, trash can at my side, hitting a huge hill and then throwing up, throwing up, throwing up. It made me want to cry, the thought of it all, such a heavy fucking Sunday. Sundays are not meant to be so fucking heavy.

At some point, choiceless, I started to look at it in from a new angle. I sat down and forced, fucking forced myself to eat 3 bananas and choke down, fucking choke down a half gallon of water. At some point, I stopped sweating. At some point, my vision came clear and the shakes stopped. At some point, I saw it as a gift, this brilliant opportunity to look something so fucked in the face and somehow, somehow find a way to beat it, because I pick fights, because I chase battles.

I arrived at that first room at 9 and said something like this class is not supposed to happen...everything we do now is a gift. Then we slaughtered it. I blacked out at the end for a second, caught myself from falling over, but we slaughtered it.

I rode my bike across town lugging 2 backpacks full of thank you bags consisting of Kool Aid and CD's of the 3 o'clock class. Then I stood in the green room before going on and stood over the toilet and just spit and spit and thankfully nothing came out. Then we slaughtered it. I just saw clips on ABC News and it looked good. I set my recorder for Fox 11 - 10 o'clock news because I want to see how it looks - because I want to leave a mark.

I'm sitting here on my couch, hydrating, hydrating, hydrating. Football is on, Wokano is being delivered. Curb and Bored To Death are coming on in an hour. I'm trying to breathe, just breathe, not sure how today happened.

Growth.