Pulse

One year ago this weekend, 49 innocent people were gunned down inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.  Three days later, Melissa Etheridge released a single, "Pulse" in tribute to the victims, as a call for love and a condemnation of hate.  

I chose this music for my Ice Show Exhibition, and tomorrow night, my performance, like the song, will be dedicated to the memory of the lost.  

It will also be a reminder, to myself as much as to the audience, to be grateful for every beat of our heart, every breath that we are given.  Every human has a finite number of heartbeats, and none of us knows exactly what that number is.  Every beat, every pulse is a treasure, a privilege and a gift denied to many.  Wasting even one of them in hatred, intolerance or fear is to throw away that gift, carefully selected and hand wrapped for you by the universe, without bothering to open it.  

Two years ago, I had cancer, and spent six months in chemotherapy undergoing treatment for Hodgkins lymphoma. 

I returned to the ice in earnest this January, after healing from the surgical removal of my chemo port.  I worked hard on this, getting my thirty-seven year old body back in shape, rediscovering my center of balance, learning to manage my stamina with the diminished lung capacity that is an irreversible side effect of the bleomycin that helped to cure me.  

  My skate in the exhibition tomorrow night is my first public performance since remission.

It is a celebration of love and life, a reminder that every moment matters because we don’t know how many we have. It is a testimony of survival, condemnation of hate and a plea for love, understanding and acceptance. It is a prayer of gratitude for every beat of my heart, for every beat of everyone’s I love.

This is my costume.

Yeah, I put the sequins on myself.  I'm crafty like that.  And yes, yes that is a crop top and hot pants.  Yes, I am aware, it is not a traditional skating dress.  I'm aware there may be people who think it's not the best idea to skate an ice show because it exposes certain things. 

And they're right.  It does expose things.

 It exposes the scar where they pulled my gallbladder out through my stomach.  It exposes the empty navel piercing that partially closed up while the gallbladder wound closed.  It exposes the double brown line that the Vinblastine decided to draw permanently across my abdomen sometime between my 8th and 9th round of chemo.  And it exposes the tiny, baby, almost-sorta-abs that I worked hard both on and off the ice for six months for.

So, yeah, there's exposure.  But, you know what?  I’m tired. I’m tired of worrying about exposure, fretting over what others will say or do, tired of caring about other people's judgment.  

I got cancer and did not die. My own body tried to eat me. You think after that, I’m scared of some ignorant opinions? I have no fear left for opinions.

I didn’t mainline poison to waste a single second of the remainder of my life.  And I didn't do it so anyone else would have to either.  

I wish I could tell you that after surviving cancer, I'm no longer scared.  But that isn't true.  There is still fear in me.  

The world is terrifying right now, I'm not going to lie.  The shooting at Pulse last year is sadly not anywhere close to the only example of the true danger we do face.  But every second something like that is not happening, is a second we have a chance to prevent it.  A second we can make the choice to live in hope, to share our love, to reach out a hand of tolerance, of acceptance, to initiate a dialogue, to foster a friendship with someone different than ourselves, to focus on the fact that we are all human.  Race, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality. Take a chance and get to know someone who think is different than you because of one of those things.  See how quickly you find common ground.  

Underneath our skin, we are all human.  We all have a pulse. 

I'm not going to tell anyone not to be afraid.  But don't let it paralyze you.  Don't let it trick you into wasting precious heartbeats hiding, or avoiding, or skipping adventures.  Don't let it silence you from speaking out for equality, for justice and for freedom.  Don't let it trick you into hating what you can't understand, because if you do, you'll miss out on so much life, so many beautiful heartbeats.  You'll whimper through your lifetime and never feel your pulse.  

Don't do that.  Open the gift, even if you are scared it's another ugly sweater from Aunt Victoria.  

To everyone who's scared (like me) and brave enough to keep trying anyway, I'm skating for you.  

To everyone who's survived a hate crime or loves someone who has, I'm skating for you.  To everyone who is LGBTQ+, everyone who isn’t sure, everyone who is an ally, I’m skating for you. To everyone who believes in love and is committed to extroverting that love to combat negativity and intolerance, I’m skating for you. To everyone who survived bullying, injustice, abuse, discrimination or neglect, because of the way they were born, I’m skating for you. 

To everyone who fought their way back from cancer, I'm skating for you. To everyone who’s still fighting, especially those who aren't going to win, I’m skating for you.  

If you believe in love and justice and equality, think of me tomorrow night. 

I’ll be where i belong, on the ice, skating for you.

PS: Speaking of exposure, I'm well aware that very few people read my blog.  But if you do happen upon this post, leave a comment & I'll donate $5 each toward the elimination of cancer and LGBTQ youth homelessness.  (Up to the first 10 comments, because I've got a budget and a mortgage.)  

To the Artists, the Magicians and the Ice Dancers

To the Artists, the Magicians and the Ice Dancers,

You look at me, through my glasses and over my engineering degree, around my thirty-seven patents and you say things that make my soul hurt.

You say things like you should have at least forced yourself through that Calc 1 elective on your way to the fine art degree I could never achieve, or that you wish you worked at something more useful than a subjectively judged performance sport, or you belittle yourself that your entire contribution to the planet this year was twelve episodes of a goofy television show.

When I could lose days just watching you draw, marveling as you carve beauty out of nothing, pulling it from the air and out your magic fingers, when I drive four hours one way to watch you balance your bodies on a sliver of steel, crafted by deliberately accepted pain to disguise their power as grace.

You look at me and you call me a producer.

But you'd have passed Calc 1, and in a million lifetimes, I could never foreshorten the proportions of a human nose. You could hold down a nine to five before I could produce a dove, and if I spent forty five hours a week at an ice rink I could eventually master a level 4 twizzle sequence, but I could never reproduce the shared and living soul that dances between the pair of you as you skate turns and rip our collective breath away.

Maybe you're right. Maybe what science and engineering produces is more useful. But what other need is there for infrastructure, if not as a conduit for beauty? If art did not exist, what reason would there be to build a structure to house it?

You think you have no worth, because you are not a soldier, not an engineer, not a doctor.  The truth is you are the opposite of worthless.  You are the creators of everything worthwhile.  You are what the sword protects, you create what the infrastructure was built to support, what the medicine was brewed to save.  Your work is the most important of all.  It is the reason for ours.

No one needs an ice dancer to survive, but we all need things to live for.  When I was fighting cancer, I missed a lot of days of work, but not a single event in the Grand Prix of Figure Skating.

So thank you.  Thank you for the truth.  Thank you for the beauty.  Thank you for being brave enough to share your soul with us.

If Tech is the atlas that carries the world, Art provides the purpose for the effort.

Because of you, the artists, the magicians and the ice dancers, the weight is not a burden.

It is a privilege.