Best Kind of Broken

60 Levi

I stare at my computer screen as the sky outside darkens with the encroaching storm.

Pixie left twenty minutes ago. I know this only because I heard the wheels of her suitcase squeaking past my door. I didn’t say good-bye.

A friend would have said good-bye.

She’s off to New York, where she’ll have a new life and new opportunities, and I’m sitting here in front of a blank computer screen with nothing to say.

This isn’t how I thought things would go. This isn’t how I wanted things to go. Even though I haven’t technically lost anything, I feel incredibly defeated.

But the game isn’t over yet.

I straighten my shoulders and crack my knuckles. One essay on winning. I can do this. I start to type.

As a football player, I know all about the principles of winning and the strategies—

I delete and start over.

The great football coach, Vince Lombardi, once said, “We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.” I’ve always appreciated this attitude because—

Delete.

I bite the inside of my cheek for a moment, staring at the wall as I think through what I want to write.

The new drywall over the hole I patched up hasn’t been painted yet, so it remains a dark gray splotch against the otherwise beige wall. The hole seems like forever ago.

I look back at the screen and start to type. Slowly at first, then gaining momentum as I carry on. Forty minutes later, I stop typing, scan the document, and start rereading what I’ve put down so far.

HOW TO WIN

Winning is an effect of trying. You have to want it badly enough to go through pain, discipline, and failure to find it. To confront it. To claim it. But most of all, you have to fight for it. Everything else—anything else—is absolute surrender.

My eyes snap to the dark patch on my wall again as my heart grows loud and heavy in my ears. Without another thought, I click Send on my half-assed essay, grab my keys, and race out the door.