"Beyoncé would be proud of you!"

I'm an anxious person by nature - a huge part of how I deal with that is creating routines within my daily life. When those get disrupted, I really struggle. It takes me more time and energy to do the simplest things, and of course the first things to fall down the priority list are the things that I do for myself.

After wrestling with my Crohn's symptoms a couple of weeks ago, I was so ready for everything to be back to normal last week. But then, the night before Labor Day, my husband started having abdominal pain that wouldn't go away - we spent Labor Day figuring out his appendix had gone bad and needed to come out. So we spent three days in the hospital. 

Five days after my husband's appendectomy, there was an Open Scrimmage scheduled with my roller derby league. Normally I wouldn't be able to participate in scrimmages - I've been skating for a year-and-a-half, but I still haven't cleared all of my Minimum Skill Requirements, which is a prerequisite for scrimmaging and bouting. But my league specifically designated an hour of this month's open scrimmage time for non-MSR cleared skaters - it was an opportunity that hadn't come along in the 18 months since I joined the league, and I didn't know when it would come around again.

I'd been looking forward to scrimmaging for *weeks* - after my week of being sick (and not being able to eat or work out properly), I had been planning to really fuel up and work hard for a week so that I could participate. But then came the Appendix Adventure, and I was even lower on sleep, protein, and skating time. I thought to myself, "there's no way I can skate in scrimmage" - I thought for sure I would be setting myself up to fail.

But something about it really tugged on my heart. I had had two weeks of struggling, two weeks of putting what I wanted last. I finally told myself that I'd scrimmage, as a gift to myself, as a gesture towards my goal of treating Present Sarah as well as Future Sarah.

So I went to scrimmage. I was SO NERVOUS. To psych myself up, I wrote "Beyoncé would be proud of you" on my left calf, and "Hulk out! Have fun" on my right. I made my husband help me write "FEARLESS" across my knuckles, to remind myself of how I wanted to be.

But, once I hit the track, all of my nervousness went away. All I felt was excitement. And I skated my heart out - I listened, and did what my teammates on the track needed me to do, and I didn't get a single penalty! It was one of the most fun things I've ever done in my life - I felt so strong and capable and powerful and present in my life, for *days* afterward. It all felt sort of miraculous, to be honest with you. 

I'm sure it will be a really long time before I forget that scrimmage, and how it made me feel, but I hope that I also remember what led up to it - me making a choice, one that felt like flying in the face of logic and lots of reasons why I couldn't or shouldn't do something, that was just for me, that was in support of just me and my goals and what makes me feel good. And that the result was super powerful and positive and rewarding, so maybe I should make that sort of choice more often.