I look at my bike and the voice says, “Nah. That’s not what you need. What’s the point?” I hear the voice, its pre-defeated tone, and shake my head. I know from experience that when the darkness descends, the bike has proven one of the most reliable tools in my collection, effective even when I think it won’t be.
I tell myself I just need to get dressed, step outside and the rest will take care of itself. But then I think about the difficulty of that opening climb, of the effort required, the focus necessary for the descents, all the standing, sitting, the levers, the many levers and it feels like too much. I might as well be coding an AI.
My eyes turn to the pair of road shoes sitting next to the pair with the lugged soles and I visualize myself seated, spinning an easy gear, permitting myself to go a pace that would embarrass a younger, fitter me. I nod. That I can do. I can scan the California poppies unfurling and the wild mustard swaying in the spring breeze and remind myself that beauty is ever-present. I sit, pull on the shoes, snug them, grab my GPS and hit the power button as I walk downstairs.
The temperature, stubbornly hovering in mid-50s, doesn’t feel quite as cold as I imagined. I touch the zipper on my jersey, briefly worrying that I’ve overdressed; then I remind myself my pace, and that at 4:00 in the afternoon, the temperature isn’t going to rise a single degree. Then I realize that wasn’t my worry; it was the voice, broadcasting doubt like so many seeds in a field.
I pump the tires, grateful for their width to give a cushier ride. A mile down the road the spring bluster hits me, pushing through the vents in my helmet, down the front of my incompletely zippered jersey. I clench my jaw, irritated at the wind, the same way I’m irritated at the traffic, the coming rain, the cost of food, the stain in my shirt, everyone in my inner circle. The voice hits the pitch, the tone just right, mirroring my own, making me think those irritations are reality, waves washing over me, that I’m powerless, that its voice is mine.
I know the voice lies. I know the voice is wrong, but when I’m unable to distinguish my voice from its, I can be convinced that mere hope is fantasy, that the future is a place of pure fear, that up is down.
I roll past an encampment of the unhoused and consider how little separates me from their plight. The voice tells me I could be as few as 90 days from homelessness. It leaves out every good thing in my life that stands between me and such a fate. I shiver and move my hands from the top of the bar to the hoods and goose the pedals, feeling my quads fire.
My tires slice through a puddle and my first thought is that I’m glad for the fender that will keep my ass dry. I fail to register the beauty of the way the water cuts in symmetrical waves like a sonic boom, radiating to shores a couple feet away.
It is said that depression and anxiety are two sides to the same coin, that depression is rumination on the past, continuing to hold us to account for previous mistakes, a brand we place on ourselves, while anxiety is rumination on the future, a failure of imagination so epic that we can’t conceive of a world where we enjoy agency, find success at our own hand. The voice spins both with equal ease, the Eddy Merckx of lies.
A car cuts me off in a driveway, making a left turn in front of me that causes me to hit the brakes so hard my tires slide. I respond with a single finger and a narrow assortment of terms that I mostly won’t say in the presence of my mother. This, I think, this is why I don’t like people. But the truth isn’t so dark. The degree to which I do or don’t like people is really a measure of the power of the voice. When I’m in a good place, people are a delight and when I’m in the grip of the voice, there simply isn’t enough napalm in the world.
Then, ahead, I see the willowy green stalks topped with curls of orange, the young petals in a cat stretch, already beautiful, but promising greater enchantment in the weeks to come. The weeks to come. The future. More beauty in the future. The voice argues. It takes me back to an insult from an old boss, the dismissive wave of the hand from an ex, the shout of, “You never listen,” from my son. But I can hear that this voice isn’t mine. I remind myself of the way a literary agent complimented the quality of writing and thoroughness in a book proposal I submitted. The voice reminds me that she turned me down. I argue with the voice, reminding myself that she said it was destined for a market she didn’t know.
Then, another stretch of poppies. The pull me back into the present, the only place where I’m guaranteed freedom from the darkness, the voice. I register my ongoing delight at something so simple, my appreciation for the range of orange they can display, from a yellow-orange that is barely this side of orange, to one so deep I wonder how it isn’t brown.
Then I feel my cheeks pull upward in a smile and something in my shoulders softens. I count the colors I see—green grass and rising redwoods, yellow mustard, the gunmetal gray of the bike path, the electric poppies—then, the sounds I hear—bird song, the turning chain, the air moving in and out of my lungs—what I can smell—spring itself, sweet manure, and if I drop my head, my armpits. My focus stays in the moment and the voice goes silent; I can’t hear it over my inventory of hues, the birdsong that emerges between the whoosh of cars on the nearby highway.
I turn off on a small road that passes a couple of wineries. The rows of vines zip past, the teeth of a comb. Something inside me takes in the order and unspools the tension in my back and then the asphalt dives into a turn, I drop my head, reach for the drops and register the way my hips shift on the saddle. You love this, I remind myself. And with that, I tell myself I’ll go for a hilly ride on the weekend, that I’ll rip down descents that anchor me to the moment at hand.
A new voice comes to me. This one says that if I can imagine a great ride in the coming days then I can imagine a future where I’m surrounded by people I love, connected to friends, serving others who hear the voice.