There Is Adrenaline Where My Blood Should Be

There is adrenaline where my blood should be.

I think that’s why I fall so easily.

No seriously.

I am the most uncoordinated, directionally challenged person

in nearly every room

or trail, or road.

I run into walls.

Trip over my own feet.

My hips bruise purple against counters.

When I was a kid, I mixed up my lefts and rights so badly

I had to rename them:

Right was happy.

Left was sad.

That’s another thing.

There are emotions where my sense of reason should be.

There is adrenaline where my blood should be. 

I used to hang upside down from the top rail of my bunk bed,

blood rushing to my head.

I climbed the tall trees in my front yard,

swung from branches hovering over a busy road.

In fourth grade, my brother and I tied the laces of

our sweatshirts and sneakers together

 then belayed ourselves out of his bedroom window

while my mother napped on the couch.

There is adrenaline where my blood should be.

I was a junior in high school when a girl started throwing

erasers, pens, a pocket-sized stapler

at the “weird” girl across the room.

Before I knew it, I was standing on my desk shouting,

Knock it off, Alexandra L****!!

full government name

and daring her to try me next.

The teacher kicked her out

And then shook my hand without a word.

There are emotions where my sense of reason should be.

I’ve stuck my head out of nearly every car I’ve ever been a passenger in

for as long as I can remember.

I listen to the the same thirty to sixty seconds

of five specific songs,

over and over,

just to feel something.

There is adrenaline where my blood should be.

I ran four to ten miles every day for six months.

Hiked the same mountain nearly every morning.

Just to feel something.

There is adrenaline where my blood should be.

At twenty-two, I packed three changes of clothes

and boarded a plane across the world.

I crave the way those planes take off.

I crave the way they land.

I crave to jump out of them. 

No really— I leapt from a eleven thousand feet in the sky,

strapped to a stranger with a parachute.

I felt no fear. Just desire

from the moment my feet left the plane

until they met the ground again.

We fell for minutes.

I dared him to tell me his life story before we landed.

He dared me to do the same.

I told him to just know it

was enough to get me here.

Three days later, I swung from the largest canyon swing in the world.

I will never do that shit again.

That time, I felt only fear.

There is adrenaline where my blood should be.

I sat on a sidewalk in New Zealand

with an Australian guy I’d just met at a bar.

My friend was snogging his friend on a couch somewhere.

I told him that I was not going to sleep with him. That this trip is for me and me alone.

He told me he doesn’t sleep with Americans anyway.

So instead, he took me through the city’s underground tunnels. As we walked, we told each other why we were traveling.

I learned about his friend back home, one he loved, who was dying of cancer. He said he wanted to live without regrets. To see everything. To do everything.

I told him that almost exactly a year ago, I had nearly died. That I wanted the same thing. No regrets. To see it all. To do it all.

“You are brave,” he said to me.

“You are brave,” I said to him.

We still talk to this day.

There is adrenaline where my blood should be.

I ran full speed toward the Pacific Ocean

with twenty Europeans who dragged me from my bunk bed.

“Miss America,” they shouted,

“we’re not letting you sleep

until you chase the moon with us.”

And we did just that

beneath the Māori constellations,

Te Whānau Mārama,

family of light,

What a beautiful thing for the stars to bear witness to.

There is adrenaline where my blood should be.

I was on a beach with two girls from my hostel when night started to fall. We were an hour walk from town.

So naturally I knocked on the window of a white van and asked for a ride. 

We loaded up in the trunk and twenty minutes later,

we were standing in the hostel lobby,

safe and sound.

There is adrenaline where my blood should be.

On a Sunday at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, it begins to downpour.

I strip to my underwear and my thrifted T-shirt, grab my best friend’s hand,

and we run like kids till we are drenched in rain.

My stomach aches from laughing.

This is my most treasured memory.

There is adrenaline where my blood should be—

and maybe some stupidity.

I am twenty-four in Idaho

with a guy I just met on a date.

I’ve already decided he’s not my future husband,

so I tell him he's not my future husband. 

He asks me to go cowboy camping with him

tonight anyways.

Obviously, I say yes.

We drive somewhere with no cell service,

an open field littered with the charred skeletons of trees.

And set up two separate beds

in the bed of his truck.

Then, as if straight out of an episode of criminal minds

He asks if I want to see his knife collection.

I think:

At least the constellations will bear witness

to my last breath.

He shows me his knives

like a kid at show-and-tell.

And still 

I sleep peacefully 

trusting that I will outrun him if he tries to murder me. 

But he doesn't,

He sleeps in the corner of the truck curled up like a baby,

thumb in his mouth.

There is adrenaline where my blood should be—

And probably some stupidity.But there’s no way

I’d rather be.