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It’s okay, because on a Sunday morning in April on the Putnam College rugby pitch, I can feel the softness of the earth beneath my cleats. I can smell manure, sharp and sweet, in the wind that whips the hair out of my ponytail.
I can look to the sidelines and see Krishna and Frankie and West sitting on a blanket. The white of Krishna’s smile. The light in Frankie’s face when Krishna teases her and West ruffles her hair, tickles her until she’s collapsed, laughing, over his legs.
I can look to my right and see my friend Quinn, big and solid, wickedly funny.
I can look to my left and see my friend Bridget, slight and freckled and redheaded, nervous because this is the first time we’ve managed to get her out on the pitch to give rugby a try.
I told her not to sweat it. Tackling another human being is easy. All it requires is a willingness to throw yourself at their legs and a complete refusal to let go.
That’s it.
Swear to God.
I’m not big, and I’m not strong, but I could bring down a three-hundred-pound woman through the sheer force of my will. I could bring down a fucking elephant.
Facing off across the line from us is a team of strangers in red-and-black jerseys, stern mouths and ruddy cheeks and wind-whipped hair, and they’re going to do this, too. We’re all going to do this.
We’re going to throw the ball, catch it, and run as fast as our legs will carry us.
We’re going to get a bead on the carrier, sprint after her, launch ourselves through the air until she’s down and we’re breathless, sweating, tangled up in limbs and dirt, grass stains and grit.
I have what it takes to claim what I want. I always did.
All of us do.
That’s what I tell West when he loses faith. That’s what I’m always going to be here to tell him.
It’s what I’ll tell Frankie when she asks me, when she doubts herself, when she needs to hear it.
It doesn’t take anything special to fight back against the world and all the ways it wants to box you in, hold you down, limit you, and keep you from thriving. You just have to know what it is you want to accomplish. You have to know who you want to be with and what you’ll give up to get them.
You have to let yourself want what you want as hard as you can, as deep as that goes, even if it scares the fuck out of you.
Even if your want and your need are bottomless, timeless, and your fear is so big that it’s hard to breathe around it.
Because in the end, fear doesn’t matter. Pain doesn’t matter.
You get kicked in the nose, and the disaster of the blow blooms across your face and screams through your nervous system, but then it’s over.
It’s over, and you’re on the the other side, one blow closer to the life you want.
I’ve got my life locked in. I’m right in the middle of it, my friends around me, West on the sidelines, our unconventional little family together and happy.
I’ve got that because I went after it.
I chased it and jumped it and fucking wrestled it to the ground, and I am not ever letting go.
Ahead of me is all the work I can do in this world.
I’m not afraid.
I’ve got this.
West
“I don’t know why we weren’t doing this last year,” Krishna says. “I don’t know why I haven’t been doing this every single second since I came to college.”
We’re sitting in the grass on the sidelines, passing Krishna’s flask back and forth, sipping whiskey and watching muddy girls bruise one another. Frankie’s twenty feet down the sideline, worshipping Quinn, who’s taking a breather after playing the entire first half of the game.
