Sometime, about two years ago, an important part of me was hit in a storm.  The way trees suddenly sheer off branches, the way a cliff suddenly becomes a muddy stew of rocks, pine needles sludge.

I am built for recovery.  I'm not simply, strong, I'm adaptive in the heathiest sense I can ascribe to that word.  As long as I've had memory, reaching back to the smallest parts of me, back when I remember how hard it was to climb on a chair, or reach a doorknob, I have had hope.  It's not a delicate, golden, flitting thing, it's inside me, as strong as the as the ocean, and it batters to get out of me when the world becomes difficult.

Some people say "Derby saves," and there are varigated meanings of that, of course.  I think many things can save you.  

But most of all, you are going to have to save yourself.  Even if, even if we all get by with a little help from our friends, sometimes.

It's up to you.  I try to never forget this.  It's why loving yourself and loving your friends as hard as possible feels like the most important thing to me.  

And yes, this has everything to do with skating.

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I am passionately devoted to Valentine's Day. It has never bothered me to be unpartnered, I've never felt constrained to express my love only by traditional discourse, and Valentine's is the perfect day to celebrate the indulgences that feel native to my being: chocolates, glitter, elegance, perfume, jewelry, lingerie, paper, pens. I can't imagine a holiday that more exemplifies the contents of the first two drawers of my antique dresser.  

 I do not know what tipping point I reached when I lost my restraint for loving myself.  

When I realized that the important she was a person that I lived inside and that she was, for lack of any other better word, fun.

When I lost my restraint for loving myself, I lost it for loving other people too.  Now when I meet people they can either flee from the tidal way of my full force of energy or affection.  Or they can step in and be bathed in it.

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I was scrolling through messages to find pictures of my new Lolly Skates by Moxi.  And here they are.  When I first opened them, the day before I left for Europe to go on tour with a client, they were without wheels and laces.  I felt uncertain, I could not see the full vision.  I hadn't had time, see, to daydream the wheels, to contemplate the laces, to envision the toe stops.  I had only hours, to pack, to do those thousand small organizational things that make up a successful tour.  But my friend showed up and carefully wrapped my skates for me, assuring me that he'd take care of them while I was gone. 

When I came home I was startled a bit he offerd to get me from the airport.  Our friendship has been, primarily, in the dark and at the rink, but I was worn flat by the trip and ready for some discourse that did not relate to professional matters.  When he opened the trunk of the car, they were there, in their box.  I was hesitant.  I wasn't quite ready to think about them just yet. 

But I unwrapped them and there they were.  He'd listened carefully, and taken a few risks.  Risks that paid off because the moment I put them on they were perfect.  They held my foot and supported my ankle.  The nerve damage in my faulted left foot was less than barefoot.  I could not believe it.  

I have wonderful friends.  He's a newer friend.  I realized though, it's like the way I give Valentine's.  It's the point that you reach where all the restraint and careful navigation has become simply dull.  No one wants a compass and a map to friendship.  You might as well say what you mean and mean it.

"I'm not too much?" I said.

"Not scared by it at all," he said.

I'm pretty sure we are going to be friends for a very long time.  I would have hugged him but I was hugging my skates and I know that was just exactly what he wanted.

"Hey," he said, "I'm glad you are my friend."

And in a day and age when Woody Allen ruined it for those of us who absolutely fucking can be friends with members of the opposite sex by asserting we can't, that naming of me as friend is like someone put the most beautiful crown on my head.

Friends. 

They are the best thing this world has to offer.  Don't argue with me on this.

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The nerve damage in my left foot is a dull burning reminder of the dues I've paid.  Hours on set of long miles walked, sometimes as long as the Bering Strait.  Stairs and trucks, time on my feet, time paid.  Time unpaid.  I think of the Little Mermaid, how the burning steps she took were punishment for wanting beyond her means, for longing for a life that was, by Anderson's measure (or someone's) sinful.  My burning foot is from duty. And it now interferes with the step I want on the inside.  I need my foundation, I need my feet.  

This body belongs to me.  I make a doctor's appointment, I step up eschewing the pretty bag of spoils from Europe: real honey, creamy chocolates, apricot brandy.  The ability to step, to glide, to dance, is more desired.

I had to write about skating, and it's the silliest thing and I keep saying that, but who dedicates an entire blog to happiness?  Happiness is now a project, a thing that we are supposed to build and construct.  I don't and I can't.  Joy I can find, happiness is the result of unrestricted joy.  I don't want to read about it as it walks backwards anymore.  You don't fall in love by doing it right, just as you can't tickle yourself or give yourself a great hug.  Communion, action, reaction to without dreading the consequences.

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Someone asked recently about my name. I used to have a shirt, "I taste of glitter... and rock n roll."  And I do.  I'm not a faint impression, that's okay though. 

I am Queen because my entire life, I was the princess.  The princess that knew she wanted to grow up to be Queen and take over the world.  Who was never bothered that sometimes one might be saved by a prince or menaced by the dragon.  Princes after all, only become consorts in your own kingdom, so really they are just helpers after all.

Queen.  Queen of my own destiny, queen of the world, Queen of Air and Darkness, Queen Mab.  

Everything that is ridiculous, over the top, and too much that lives in me is in that name.  

I'm not saying this right.  The words won't come out of the air and sit down and play nicely on the page.

But I'll keep trying, that's the reason I write here.

Q.R.C.

I realize I'm not on week three of increased skating sesssions. 

My feet are gaining strength.  I do ballet foot exercises as I'm decidedly uninterested in any injury I can prevent. or the amount of couch time or bench time that would come with injury.  I have gorgeously healthy knees, ankles and hips, my back is a happy back.  My adult body is the result of a coach father and a mother who felt that "you only have one chance to grow bones and teeth" and fed us very well and with a great deal of thought and consideration.  I'm extremely grateful.

So it's not time to undo the gift now.

When I started derby, we learned to skate and hit fairly quickly.  From that point we transitioned into team practices.  For myself, I'd have preferred a far more gradual increase, to build muscle memory and also, skating uses lateral muscles and ... I don't know quite how to describe it but if you've skated in a rink you know... rink skating uses them unevenly.  Your inside leg develops differently than your outside leg.  I was in another sport for years and performed at a high level that also created a difference in my body like this: cross training was very important to long term structural health.  I'm sure each league does it differently, but skating is such a different activity and everyone enters at such different ages, experience and fitness.  I do daydream of derby again but I'll give myself my own year of rebuilding my skating muscles before I risk injury with the sort of punctuated, quick skating that you need to do to jam or the heavy hits of blocking.

For squad skating (I really don't know what else to call it) I want to take it long and steady.  I've set a week by week fo things I want to learn and work on.  So far so good.

So I've been going to the gym a lot more, and on the days I don't know, stretching and doing some additional work outs on that side of my body have helped.   I've lost about eight pounds in three weeks, which sounds startling but that's not from skating alone.  I've been lifting weights and on a structured diet as a project to reduce my weight - separate from skating and more related to a desire to be able to safely run long distances again.  I'm "up fifteen" now from the weight I've been my entire life.  My youngest is two and a half, for me I usually seem to be able to relinquish the weight when they turn three.   I've been struggling against this weight for the last six months. 

But it's amazing to feel the transformation in my body going into week four from week one.  Each session is about three hours at least, and by the end, I've been in constant motion.  Muscle definition is emerging from my legs and calves,  it feels like my body sings when it aches.  

So this was my third week.  I've slowly regained my feet and I spent most of last night skating backwards.  Not just skating backwards but working on weaving and remembering my comfort forwards or backwards.  I tried a few jumps - unsurprisingly to me I can jump and turn better than I can skate backwards effortlessly.  Next week I'm going to really focus on those turns and balancing on one foot to build my lateral muscles more.

That's the technical.  

But here's the rest.  Last night as I worked on things I said to a friend that I just wanted to feel what all the sensations of flying backwards felt like without the visuals.  Sometimes what I'm seeing, or the rink lights, seem to throw me off balance.  So my friend put out their hands and said, "Go ahead."  They are a steady, firm skater, and I doubt I could take them down.  

So I did.  with my eyes closed, I could feel the rink lights flashing across my eyes as I moved around.  The sound of the wheels underneath the music, and strangely and comforting, the speed, because for anyone who has ever been depressed, stuck artistically, or in a place in their life where things are less thank sink-your-teeth-into-it satisfying, momentum is important.  

It's not uncommon, I think, for adult athletes to feel very passionately about their sports. It's a chosen thing, for one, in lives that are largely dictated by smaller choices made against practical necessity.  

And in all of that, anything that brings that feeling of flying, that sensory experience that leads to an explosion of happiness in my chest, anything that brings that I will seize.