Sometimes It's Just Easier to Lie

The sun is shining, the air is crisp and the wind is calm. It's starting to take over.  I can feel it at the base of my neck, my skin's prickling a little. I shudder, this is the overwhelming emotion that typically leads to boarding the first flight that'll take me anywhere but here.  But today, this ache is only pulling me closer to home, less than a mile, really a stone's throw from my current location and it's quickly becoming more than I can resist.   I close my eyes.  I know with the first leg shoved into a pair of pants that aren't made of denim that my body has already made the decision. I'm already buckling a belt that I never wear, and pulling a collared shirt over my head. I glance in the mirror, I'm staring now, desperately attempting to muster up disdain, but pretention (not a word, is now) has maintained itself as one of my most enjoyable aspects of this sport, this comfort. In a fit of rebellion I pull a pair of Chucks onto my feet.  I need to maintain some semblance of control, of myself, of my image, of who I've become... am, because once I'm standing there, looking, gazing lovingly, adoring every moment hopefully I'll still be strong enough to shine through the swing.

Too quickly I arrive.  It's crowded.  I'm the only female which isn't new. I'm just now painfully aware that I'm now a woman, a lady, no longer the girl that used to show up each day at 3:30 in the afternoon, brow furrowed with an annoyance that I never once made an effort to hide.  I'm attracting attention, and blaming the fact that I'm carrying a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other and defiantly, purposefully, strolling my tapered pant covered legs and stark white Converse to the only open patch of grass that lies on the far end of a long line of inquisitive eyes.

"Lady indeed," I smirk.

Deep breath, I spy the number 6 in the bag, I pull it from it's carrier. I sigh a little, that is the easiest decision I've made since... I can't even recall.

An overhead stretch and a few practice swings, which I'm sure appear more like baseball swings, helps me to lose a few spectators. I'm standing above a ball, we stare at each other for a moment. Though my back is to the line, I can still feel eyes on me. Muscle memory is slowly taking over, my knees bend, my left arm straightens, and before I can overthink I'm bringing the club back and following through. The club head smacks the ball and it sails upward, breaks only slightly to the left and back right, as it always has. The one trademark that I could never shake even after hours of corrective measures and attempts made by an instructor who eventually deemed the odd break "an advantage, actually".

Another ball, another swing, another breath and a widening smile. They're not perfect, I'm not perfect, I never expected to be. This sport allows the opportunity to release my grip on expectation. Maybe because the ability of proficience here is so illusive. One day a pro, the next a novice. Maddening though it is, you'll never stop coming back, one more hit, a couple more putts, a few more adjustments...

After several experimental hits I'm receiving good natured advice and compliments from fellow members. I'm smiling, I'm thanking, I'm using "sir". I can feel my hands becoming raw in the meat that was once covered in callused blisters that I would never allow to heal.

I love this.

Maybe I'm finding that I loved it a little bit more than I let on.  And maybe that love made me a bit too vulnerable to failure, a tad too close to becoming someone who couldn't hack it and had to face the fact that they were only almost good enough.  Because once you realize that you'll never be good enough for something you love, how do you mend yourself back together?

And perhaps I'm realizing that I need it more than I ever considered.  This feeling, these tiny pleasures, the reinvention of a swing that I haven't replicated since I was too young to understand how powerful this hold could be. Entirely too young to know how to mold a future around something as complicated as it is simplistic.

I shake my head, maybe I'm ruining it by thinking too much, afterall, isn't that what I came here to escape?