When I was 21 years old, after graduating from college, my boyfriend Corey and I traveled for three months. We visited Costa Rica, Guatemala, Peru, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
During our time in Nha Trang, Vietnam we decided to rent a motorcycle one day and explore the Palace of Emperor Bảo Đại as a day trip from our beachside hostel. Growing up, my dad had always ridden motorcycles and I can remember going on one ride as a young girl and being terrified. I didn't know until this day in Nha Trang that my boyfriend could drive a motorcycle. We'd been together for three years and motorcycles had never been part of our life in Santa Barbara. But rent one we did.
We drove along the coast, breathing in the smell of fermenting fish. Nha Trang is a major production center for fish sauce, an ingredient as important to Vietnamese cuisine as salt is to the Western world. In order to produce fish sauce, hundreds of barrels are filled with fish and left to sit in the tropical sun as the fish dries out and the liquid drips from the carcasses. You can imagine the odor as you pass through this production site.
We drove through the rotting fish and made our way to Bảo Đại's Palace, toured the site and started back for our hostel. We had to stop and get gas before returning the moto and there was a little roadside stand selling gasoline in plastic bottles close to where we were staying. It started to rain as we drove and just as we turned to stop at the gasoline stand, the bike spun out and we fell over.
In hindsight, the accident wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as it could have been, but my leg did get stuck under the bike with the tire still spinning and the result was a very nasty case of road rash. Seeing as we were in a small fishing village, didn't have great skills communicating in Vietnamese, and had no idea where a clinic or pharmacy was, I walked back to the hostel while Corey returned the bike and to I set to handling my injury.
My 21-year-old way of dealing with the rocks and debris now burned into my flesh was to take a Vicodin that we had brought with us, open a bottle of wine, and get into the shower with some tweezers to remove as many stones, pebbles, and dirt as I could. Afterward, I slapped some gauze on it and called it a day.
My wound healed just fine and our trip went on unaffected except for me swearing that I would never ride on the back of a motorcycle again.
And I didn't for 11 years.
Years later, I moved to Costa Rica when I was 28, new boyfriend, new trip, new experience, but still, I refused to ride on the back of a motorcycle. I swore them off completely, terrified to get back on one of those metal beasts.
Seeing as motorcycles are a convenient and affordable way to get around small, beachside communities, it was no surprise that many of my friends in Puerto Viejo had them. After a couple years of getting up the nerve and some encouragement for a couple trusted friends, I decided to get on the back of a moto again and that started a chain reaction.
The more I rode on the back of other's motos, the more I wanted to drive one myself. My fear turned into curiosity, which turned into determination. It didn't happen quickly. In fact, it took almost two years of riding infrequently on the back of other's motos for me to get up the courage to ask my friend Stacey to teach me how to ride her moto.
After three lessons and a lot of confidence coming from her end, I was riding her moto and determined to buy my own.
Thirteen years after falling off a motorcycle in Vietnam, I bought my own Suzuki 125cc here in Costa Rica.
Today, I rode that motorcycle into town to put an offer down for a house that I want to buy. This is a sentence that I never thought I would say, ever in my life.
Sometimes when we fall down, it can take a very, very, very long time to get back up. Months, years, decades can pass before we finally are able to face those fears that take hold of us. Sometimes we don't even realize at the moment just what kind of ripple effect those falls can have on us. Seemingly small events can paralyze us from acting in areas of our life without fully understanding the connections between what happened and what we are afraid will happen.
But this is life. Trying something new, falling down, and eventually, when we find the strength, find the courage, find the support, WE GET BACK UP.
We may not spring back up into action. The older we get the more timid we become, having been hurt, again and again, having been let down by life, by others, by ourselves, we can become hardened, overly cautious, convinced that the next fall will be more painful than the last, and that we might not recover from it.
But as long as we are still alive, we must get back up. When a toddler is learning to walk and inevitably falls, we don't focus on the fall, we focus on the successful steps taken before the fall, and the next steps that will surely come. As adults, the falls seem to take more of our attention and those baby steps that we take, every day, do not get the credit they deserve. Our recoveries from our falls are small works in progress, day by day. Asking for help, crying, making mistakes, these are all steps to getting back up, and they are all important.
I have a very dear friend here in Costa Rica who consistently reminds me to praise myself and each other for our small victories and for that reminder I am eternally grateful. For each day that we decide to get up, out of bed, and face our fears, no matter how silly or insignificant they may seem to others, we are choosing to live in love, not in fear. We are choosing to get back up, no matter how many times we fall down.
I have fallen a lot over the years. And the falls are never graceful. But each time I get back up with a new scar that marks my attempt at living a full life, I am reminded of the times I have succeeded, of the moments when things have gone right, worked out, and ended up so beautiful that I am motivated to continue on with this wild ride.
I don't know if this offer on the house that I want will go through. It might not. I might be crushed, disappointed, and unhappy with the result. But what I do know, is that if I fall down after taking this chance, I will most certainly get back up again.
