God’s Tanya Harding

Even as I realized that Rick was out of my league, I wondered, “Why not me?” With the popular people like Rick, I never seemed to measure up. Then, one night I was watching the news with my parents on our little TV with no cable, each blurred image doubling as lines passed over Dan Rather’s face. And there was Nancy Kerrigan with tears running down her aquiline nose as she clutched the leg that had just been brutalized by a masked stranger. Then images of Tanya Harding, chin jutting defiantly as lights flashed in her too blond hair. Reporters peppering her with questions about hiring a thug to knock Nancy out of the 1994 Olympics. Clips of promising young Nancy moving over the ice as if she were born with skates strapped to her ankles. Effortless. And Tanya, powerful, but square and squat as she muscled over the ice, moving with a determination that made me think she had fought tooth and nail to earn the right to be there.

And in the hard, determined set of Tanya’s jaw, I recognized myself, or myself as I thought others might see me. I saw a girl who didn’t come from a “good” family or have money, a girl who didn’t belong. I saw a girl who wasn’t born knowing the social rules others seemed to sense innately. I recognized the toughness born from scrapping and working just as hard as everyone else only to be passed over for the same girls again and again.

That sense of not being good enough followed me into college and my early twenties. I worked harder and longer than those around me, trying to prove myself. On the surface, I succeeded at life, but underneath I was exhausted. I lived under a sense that I had tried my best and still come up short. Eventually I came to the point where I had two choices: either get out the crowbar and start taking other people down a notch or question everything I ever believed about myself, about life, about what I wanted and who I was and who God is.