Armor Couldn't Tell Me

I remember a constant hum coming from behind the swinging doors.

A faint glow slipped through the gaps.

Stepping through meant entering a dimly lit warehouse, a sea of machines laid out on a grid. Rows upon rows, as far as you could see, humming and vibrating underfoot.

Once inside, the sound hit you at full volume. A small lamp on each machine cast an incandescent yellow glow, barely enough to see the work.

I'd just finished supper and was heading in for my shift.

I worked single-needle, overlock, buttonhole, plus pattern making and fabric cutting. It was always hot and poorly ventilated. A fog of fabric particulates hung in the air, thick enough to taste. By the end of a shift, almost everyone was hacking up a lung.

I was six. It was unsafe, illegal, and just the seventies.

It's where I learned to do things, not through instruction, but by necessity. Rhythm, pattern, endurance, and adaptation.

Figuring out how to solve whatever was in front of me.

I made my way into the trades not long after high school. I got the course syllabus and took advantage of my library card. I didn't have the time, money, or bandwidth for a classroom.

I was just coming off nine months of being homeless at seventeen. Making ends meet on mid-80s minimum wage. It was like an odd little circus act: short order cook, ranch hand, gas station attendant, and occasional ditch digger. I read on every break and fell asleep every night inside textbooks.

Then I poked around welding, machining, and fabrication shops, mostly doing grunt work. I kept cooking on evening shifts because I liked it, plus eating at work kept food costs low.

Eventually I was let loose on the production floor. Hotrod shops before I could drive gave me a head start, and I got good at metal work fast. That led to professional motorsports and a life built on what I once envisioned…

As a kid I was obsessed with the space program. Other kids wanted to go to space. I wanted to know how things worked. I wanted to make things on land and water go fast, really fast.

By twenty-four I was living it. I still spun wrenches and made parts by hand, but now I was race engineer too. Think mechanical engineer crossed with a professional cat wrangler.

Equal parts design, execution, chaos management, damage control, and making sure nobody got killed.

Sometimes I was the faithful sidekick in an epic story, occasionally the main character. Mostly, I was the mad scientist in the background inventing ways to go faster…

Barely orchestrating chaos to the timing of rpms and the sound of exhaust pulses.

Chronic illness began taking things away in 2016. It was sudden and halting. Like waking up in a strange place, in a body and life I didn't recognize as mine.

It took some time to orient, but then I approached it the same as everything else: research, observation, experimentation, and adjustment. Understanding the variables and seeing what I could influence.

Over time, things changed more than I expected.

I went from barely functioning to doing what seemed impossible a few years earlier. Eventually, in 2024, I was spending a lot of time back on trail, hiking rugged terrain, full load-out, and 10K almost daily. I'd throw in a 20K day now and then on weekends, partly just to see if I could do it.

The trail wasn't a destination. It was a way of exploring what was possible.

I hike, yes, but that doesn't quite cover it. A good portion of time on trail has been spent managing breath, precision footfall, and strategic handholds. Slowing the mind enough to notice. Present enough to respond, without thinking, without mishap.

When I have the capacity, I grind and go hard. I do things that, from the outside looking in, might seem reckless given my health.

Things like sketchy single-track on a long ridge barely wide enough to plant two shoes side by side. Drops so hard and steep that if you mess up, it's probably gonna be a wrap. The only things that will find you out there are buzzards and coyotes.

I might be a little nutty, but I'm not stupid. I've been hiking since the 80s. If I'm not feeling it, I don't go.

To make things interesting, I have RA, lupus, POTS, intracranial hypertension, and c-spine issues. All stacked over a ridiculous circus of chaos that's chasing me down.

Maybe I'm just a little off.

Like I was dropped down a flight of stairs on my dome when it was still kind of soft. 

Oh yeah, that actually happened. Shout-out, big sis!

I spent a lot of years becoming whoever I needed to be in the moment, shaping myself around whatever the situation required.

I'm 57 now and I've been living in fight-or-flight since I was four. Anticipating, responding, preparing for whatever came next. From the outside, it looks like determination, competence, resilience. Sometimes it's all those things.

In my world, not needing, not asking, not being seen were the only ways to avoid exposure, escalation and consequences I didn't choose.

Competence was my armor.

People talk about listening, perspective, and choices. You hear them, but nothing gets through because the system is too busy keeping you alive.

I'm just beginning to understand what it feels like to truly relax without anticipating danger at every moment in perpetuity.

Not just knowing intellectually that I'm safe. But experiencing what it feels like to drop the armor an inch or two, to lower the brace.

Getting back on trail gave me room to make choices. Not better, smarter, or moral choices, just more than one way to move through a moment instead of the same narrow corridor.

I wasn't out there chasing distance to prove myself. I was moving through the world under my own power, on my own terms.

And that gave me a kind of clarity on what aliveness looks like to me.

Maybe some of that old drive is still there in the background. I suspect some of it always will be.

But I don't think everything I love has to be explained by what hurt me before.

I genuinely love the trail.

Right now, the world outside is getting harder to reach.

For almost eleven months now, it's been a steady decline. From 5-6 days a week to barely getting out once a week, if that. The post-exertional crash hits harder now. Recovery takes weeks sometimes, even from just managing ordinary life.

I still want to use what capacity I have left. It feels almost ungrateful not to make the most of it when I can. Especially knowing there are people who are worse off and have far fewer options.

I know what works for a while doesn't always keep working. I'm navigating circumstances that don't yield to the skills I've spent a lifetime developing.

I know pushing has consequences. I'm living it.

Don't want to turn adversity into an asset for life.

Don't believe the things that happened were necessary to make me who I am. The skills were real and helped me approach illness with curiosity and persistence. Don't give the hurt credit for them.

My body is changing in ways I can't entirely control. The trail may look different from here on out, and I don't know how that story unfolds.

I can be proud of what I've done without pretending the suffering was worth it. I can grieve what's changing without deciding that nothing remains.

I didn't get cured or restored. I got options. I don't know exactly what to do with that yet.

That doesn't mean there's nothing left to find.

What might be waiting for you, if you ever got the room to look?

→ Share this with someone who’s good at getting through things and curious what else is out there.

Connective Tissue:

→ Here Comes The Rain Again
→ What Regulation Made Possible
→ And It Stoned Me

Overlooks & Vantages:

→ Blue & Gold: 10-05-26 @ Point Isabel
→ 2026 Wildflower Gallery: February
→ Oh, the Water

Trail Crossings & Waypoints:

→ Layer One: Start Where You Are
→ Hiking with Lupus, RA, POTS & IH
→ The Urban Pivot

More on the way → Subscribe free for new posts delivered by email.

← Back to Field Notes

* peer reflections: not medical or therapy advice. *