"Click"

     Clicking in the first time is hard. You feel trapped. Anxiety builds in the pit of your stomach, making it harder to react correctly. Then you start forward pushing on the pedals. "Wow this is really easy," you think. You feel the different muscles being flexed as you pull up. Then the normal motion of pushing follows. You ride forward, a little wobbly at first. But at the top of the hill is a stop sign and there is a car coming. So you try to stop,and remember I need to unclip. You make the motion but it doesn't work. So then it hits you. "Oh crap it wont unclip" But at this point there is really nothing you can do but brace yourself, As the world tips and you crash into the hard unforgiving pavement. Your bike crunches along with you, but lets face it this is not the pressing matter. You have just fallen over like a 3 year old just learning to ride. This is embarrassing enough in itself. But Murphy says there will be at least 3 people watching. So as you squirm around on the ground attached to your bike, trying to figure out how to get out of this crazy trap. You can at least find comfort in the fact that, it happens to everyone. So you climb back on the bike laughing at yourself and trying not to limp. You put on a good face as you wave off the "crowd" that is staring at you.
    The next hard part is, you have to convince yourself to clip back in. Knowing this exact thing really might happen again. Possibly right after your re-attached. But this is something you want to do. Your heart is pounding and you have that nasty, tingly "cortisol shot" running through your body, which was left behind by the embarrassment, pain, and adrenaline. The words run through your head. "You have to get back on the horse after it throws you."
     So you clip back in one shoe and begin to pedal, frantically trying to get the other shoe to also clip in. Your whole body is shaking, this makes it very hard to ride straight. This makes it even harder to clip the stupid, tiny, little clip into the pedal. Finally you succeed. Your thinking about how everyone back there is probably laughing at you. But the dreaded event has now happened. In the peace of this thought it hits you again that "pedaling is so much easier clipped in". Your knee throbs... But hey a scab is well worth the gain.

The hard part

The hardest part for me is always the fear of failure. I struggle a lot with this. But how can I even hope to succeed if I never try. So this is me trying. If you are following me on this journey please leave comments. I can really use the boost. So if its weird or silly well its me. Thats why its so hard to put things down in words. Cause my words are very personal and very much me. Hence the total fear behind it. Plus I can never decide if the way writing makes me feel is the "real" me that I am hiding.... or the fake me I am trying to portray.

      I gaze at the ice covered water. It is freezing my body to just look at it. I know that if I just jump in then the heat pouring from my body will probably melt it. But what if when I jump in it quenches the fire and engulfs me. This is the fear I am battling as I stare into the grayness. I know that if I never touch the water I will always have this wanting ache in my body. It is not always strong, but sometimes the strength of it sets my soul on fire. This is how it is today a fire raging in my soul, begging to be let out. So slowly I reach my hand out and cup the water. I pull it to my lips and let the icy freshness roll across my tongue. Then I sit back on my heels and wait. Wait to see if touching the water will increase my thirst or quench it again for a time. But i know I will get thirsty again, So I wait as beads of water fall from my lips.

Danielle

My Sister has always been my biggest advocate for writing. She has always poured over my writings and gushed about them. Which is awesome cause she is an avid reader and I really think she knows something good when she sees it. She has asked me many times have you wrote anything recently? I miss reading your stories. So Dani this is for you and its for me. Cause as we both know I have always wanted to be a writer. So here goes I am writing. and thank you so much for your pushes. :)

Me