On Climbing and Suffering
Do you know there is over 200 bodies on Mount Everest? This is one of the many useless facts that I know, after another insomnia-fueled Wikipedia wormhole session… truthfully, it’s logistically very dangerous to recover the fallen bodies of these alpinists so most of them remain on the mountain. Some of them (such as a body of a fallen climber they’ve dubbed “Green Boots”) even act as a reference point for future climbers.
Well… balls…
And this lead me to where I was currently: plastered to a wall, tied off with a simple figure-8 follow through knot and a harness around my thighs. My forearms burned and my knees quivered as I told myself to look forward and not down. I’m absolutely terrified of heights, the irony of which does not befall me as I know I am a pilot. Flying is different… hell even skydiving is different. There is something about being high above ground, attached to a rope, that unnerves me.
When I was on a confined space rescue team, one of the trainings we did was lowering a rescuer 100 feet down into a pit of a rocket motor testing facility. As I stood on the steel grating of the several platforms that surrounded this massive pit, my stomach grew oily at the sight. Straddled by three, thick concrete walls, the pit below was dark and foreboding. I dropped a rock down and listened for its familiar splash as it hit the water that flooded the floor of the pit (from ground water seepage and rain). The sound seemed to take an eternity to come… And that’s when I decided “fuck that, I’m never going down there.” Fortunately for me, I never had to go down there
Almost a year ago, I didn’t really care if I lived or died. Now, climbing to 30 feet above ground I am very aware of my mortality, and a I very much want to live. Dying seems very painful and very permanent. So why in the holy hell am I plastered to this wall?
Fortunately for me, I am nowhere near Everest, nor am I actually anywhere near a mountain or actual rock face. No… I am 30 feet high on an indoor climbing gym wall. Instead of being surrounded by snow and Sherpas, I’m surrounded by folks who practice climbing in between their trips to Moab and Timmys who’s parents could afford to have their 10th birthday party here.
Every year I tell myself that I will learn or try 5 new things. One year I learned Spanish, another I learned jiu-jitsu, and another I learned to fly. By trying new things, you’ll never know what you might like or what those things can teach you. You might find something you want to fully adopt, like I did with Jiu-jitsu. You might find confidence that you never knew you had or, conversely, find out that you really don’t like an activity (which is what I found out about surfing). Last year, before my life imploded on me, learning to rock climb was at the top of my list of 2021 goals along with getting my personal training certs and getting my instrument rating. I’m a year late, because I spent all of 2021 just trying to survive. Better late than never!
Back to the wall… yes, so here I was, stuck on a wall with only a rope and my four limbs (and my partner belaying below me). My Apple Watch tracks my heart rate at 170 BPM, an alarming increase for someone who’s resting heart rate is 50 BPM (a C4 energy drink may have exacerbated this situation but… we won’t delve into that). “I am not anxious, it’s just the energy drink. I am not my thoughts, I am the thinker of my thoughts,” I remind myself. Just as I am not defined by what happened to me the year prior, or the trauma I’ve faced throughout my life… I am not afraid of this wall… I am more afraid of not succeeding.
In many ways, I was a lot stronger in 2020 than I am in 2022. In 2021, I learned so much about being independent, appreciating what I have, being comfortable in uncertainty… The TRADEOFF (or the thing that I regressed on) was being unable to accept criticism. “Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria” or whatever it’s called… the name for being a chronic people pleaser and perfectionist. For years I had worked hard on getting over this perceived weakness of character in me. I would break out into sweats every time my boss would call me in, assuming the worst. I’d obsess over the thoughts that everyone in the room secretly hates me. In 2020, I had made huge headway on this side of me, as I sat confidently in front of the Army Officer Candidate School board taking criticism and owning to my shortcomings. Then again, I took the bull by the horns and became the youngest and only female manager in the safety department, surrounded by men twice my age who doubted my knowledge, credibility, and tolerance for taking bullshit. I stood strong, unfaltering, unmoved by anyone’s attempts to tell me what I didn’t already know: that I’m a bad bitch. These paid off huge, in that I got accepted to OCS and earned the respect of my peers around me, but like the rope I’m dangling on now, I’ve slipped and lost my footing on it.
How do I get that level of confidence back? It starts from within.
So it’s even more important, now than ever, that I climb this fucking wall. For myself. Not to impress my partner below… or to not be shown up by the cake-encrusted Timmys that are smashing the 5.11’s beside me with their sugar fueled youthful exuberance. I have to do this for me.
And soon I find myself addicted to climbing the wall. It becomes less about my fear of heights, and my determination to solve puzzles. I am defeated at the very top by a 5.9 with a mishmash of underclings and tiny foot holds. And again I am defeated by another 5.9, riddled with jugs, and a giant sloper. Then by another 5.10a with red bubble formations and tiny hand crimps. Climbing for hours, I’m physically suffering but unrelenting, but I’m not on Everest… I can leave and hit the big ol reset button. I go home, rest my destroyed hands and toes, and vow to come back and conquer them.
This story has a little bit of everything… suffering, fear, and adventure. Truth be told, there is so much to be learned in all three. Western culture rejects suffering, because put the “pursuit of happiness” at the forefront of everything. Hell, it’s LITERALLY in the United States Declaration of Independence. What Western culture FAILS to instill in us is that the byproduct of the pursuit of happiness is the tolerance of suffering. If you get everything you ever want in life, and are always happy, you lack appreciation for it. How can you appreciate light when you have no concept of darkness? You must have both… this is what Eastern philosophy teaches us. That with suffering we gain wisdom, perseverance, appreciation, and a spiritual connectedness with the rest of humanity (shared experiences fostering compassion). I’ve known this through doing sports my whole life, and through doing jiu-jitsu which literally beats these ideas into you. Climbing mountains in sub zero temperatures, clinging to walls with just the tips of your fingers, or trying to breathe when you have a 240lb man sitting on your chest is not fun by any stretch of the means. It’s the feeling that comes after. It’s that first breath after using everything you got to free yourself, it’s finally nailing that wall you couldn’t do before, it’s testing yourself to your absolute limits. It’s the same I felt waking up in my own home in Texas, after spending 4 months couch surfing. It’s what you get out of it in the end… the delayed gratification. Things taste sweeter when you wait for them, like grapes on a vine.
That has become my fuel, and I encourage you all to adopt the same. Some folks live their life to prove a point to an invisible audience; I know at many points in my life I did so too. Living in spite of others is exhausting. Live for you.
Oh…. And I crushed those three annoying climbing routes a week later….
