InnerTeub

We had to write essay’s detailing why we wanted to volunteer at the Warrior Games this week. That’s a fair request – my company is paying for the whole trip, including our time away from our clients, they had a right to ask us to detail why we think we should receive such an honor.

It was an easy essay for me to write. If the purpose of the Warrior Games is to promote rehabilitation through competition and athletics, well, I can relate to that. (I was a heart patient before I was a triathlete, right?). If it’s to honor our troops who have sacrificed greatly in service to our country, well, I look at my veteran husband and can relate to that, too. But the essay was about me, and what the games meant to me, and that was probably the first indication that I had no idea what I was doing here this week.

It’s only Wednesday. The games aren’t over, and I haven’t even begun to process the final outcome of what it means to be out here, doing this, for me, but especially for them. I’m not sure I can process how hard it was for me to look into the eyes of a 20 year old whose face was completely covered in bandages, as the skin had all been burned off, and how disappointed I was in myself for not being able to take it in stride. Or how I looked at a blind double amputee and thought, “He swims faster than me. Holy god.” Or how I see an athlete who appears to be able bodied, and know that the injuries I can’t see might be the worst of all.

I worked yesterday at the preliminary round of the seated volleyball competition. The Marines were killing it (of course they were), but all the athletes were amazing. The athletes with legs were complaining that their legs were getting in the way of their moving around the court, and they were right. There was one call I had to make, a serve that went juuuuuuust a bit outside, and I swear I thought the entire Army team, in addition to their 50 spectators, were going to rush the field and kick my everloving ass. It was the most intense sporting event I’ve ever been to, and I prayed for the game to be won definitively, not by a line judge call, so I could leave there without armed escort, and that’s pretty much the moment I stopped seeing the missing legs and fingers and started cheering for these athletes.