Thunder in My Heart (and Other Lies)

Strapped into a go-kart, heart pounding, helmet damp with someone else’s sweat, all I can think is: please, not again.

I'm in Group 2, tail end of the lineup, listening to a teenage attendant deliver the safety speech with the enthusiasm of a bro-skibidi-rizz TED talk. He's droning about bumping, disqualification, and how one pedal makes you go and the other makes you stop, but all I can think about is the anxiety burning through my stomach and how I'd rather be anywhere else.

I just didn't want it to happen again.

It's the fourth day of a week-long summit my department is holding in Austin, Texas. And after three days of Docker, 3DES, and GitHub, we are en route to K1 Speed on Burnet for some much-needed recreation. I've been dreading this activity all week, but as a straight shooter with middle management written all over me, I need to put on a happy this will work out fine face. As the first one there, I watch everyone else walk in with the kind of smiles and wide eyes toddlers usually reserve for backyard bounce houses.

How very naive.

I think of their faces again as Group 2 finally gets onto the track. We do one lap before setting up in our positions for the flag drop. Until that moment, I'd been desperately trying to go to my happy place, the mental refuge my therapist helped me construct last year as a way to escape my anxiety, anger, and more often than not, my discomfort from being noticed by others. I'm lying in a sun-drenched field, blades of tall grass waving overhead, clouds drifting lazily through a perfect light blue sky.

But the helmet mildew yanks me back to the present. And then, all the way back to 2012.

I'm 32 years young, and it's my first time at K1. Different company, different team, and I was like my coworkers now: grinning, relaxed, and completely unaware that soon, a developer would be pushing me into a pole, causing a crash that would bring the entire race to a halt. More than the pain of the sudden deceleration, the attention I received while being rescued made me want to dig my own grave and crawl into it.

After I was reoriented on the track, I was allowed to drive back to my position while everyone else's car sat inert and disabled.

It was humiliating.

As a child, I recall always wanting to be the center of attention. I was loud. I talked incessantly. I lied a lot, like all the time. But as I grew older, evidence started piling up that maybe being the center of attention wasn't okay, or more pointedly, wanting to be the center of attention was not okay. Even as an adult, I'm told I try too hard to make jokes, to be edgy, to take things to a dark place just for the fun of it. It all comes down to a core truth etched on my soul: wanting attention is bad, and getting attention when you don't deserve it is worse.

When I was finally sitting in that go-kart waiting for the first practice round to begin, alone in that ratty helmet with my breath fogging up my glasses, I couldn't help but remember my first outing in 2012. So I told myself: just go out there and take it easy. You don't need to win. You don't even need to be fast. Just fade into the background until you can get out and away from these swirling spotlights.

That seemed to work out okay. The practice laps started, and I drove progressively faster, trying to ease my way into some kind of fun. Of the ten drivers in the group, I placed second to last in lap times. No big deal. No one noticed me. And now I was free to do something else (read: enjoy a Pepsi alone in an appropriately named "Blue Room"). Maybe it was the sugary soda that made me feel good, made me think, okay, this isn't so bad, maybe I'm not scared after all. Maybe this will be fun.

It was the siren song of false hope, and I was all ears.

Optimism has never been my thing. As a born-and-bred Even Steven, the number of amazing things that have happened to me can be counted on two hands. I win some, I lose some, but for the most part, my fortune occupies a little gray box bisected by a line of neutrality. And yet, when the qualifying race came around, I felt that needle drifting towards the positive. I didn't even mind putting a helmet full of someone else's skin flakes over my head. The practice round had shown me exactly where I stood with my peers, so I was safe to go out there and just blend in.

I remember thinking (hoping?) that my performance in the qualifying round would eliminate me from the finals. That would be nice, to just sit around eating cookies while everyone else took their dignity into their own hands. When the race results hit my inbox, I expected to see my name at the bottom, with the lap times reflecting the nonchalance of a man who was just there to participate like a good employee.

Instead, my heart dropped. I had placed second.

Things went from maybe it will be okay to maybe I could win it all faster than I could say traumatic spinal injury. I fled to the bathroom to berate myself in the mirror. Don't you even think about it, I scolded. You are not here to try to win. Trying is the first step towards failure. I called on every argument I could think of: managers shouldn't win, be kind to your guests, and don't be that over-competitive guy at the corporate mandatory fun event.

Then I was sitting in the go-kart again.

I'm losing my mind trying to beat back the anxiety growing in my chest and stomach. I wish I could have some music (another therapist-recommended coping mechanism) to drown out the sounds of Group 1 tearing around the track. But what would I listen to? Some soothing classical? Tori Amos? Insane Clown Posse? My mind goes to RAD, an '80s movie released during the height of the BMX craze. I hear John Farnham's Thunder in Your Heart start to play. I feel, for a moment, that maybe there is thunder in my heart, but it's not the kind of thunder that is going to land me in first place.

A moment of clarity. A recall of why I'm here–ostensibly at work.

I remember my true goals: help foster a sense of community, be a team player, and get out of here without making an ass of myself. All I really had to do was not crash, not hurt anyone, and not stand out. Just exist quietly in 10th place and call it a win. That was easy enough, and more importantly, I could now think of it as my job. And what is a job if not conjuring excitement for the parts you may not necessarily want to do?

The green flag drops.

I'm at the back of the pack, and I stay there, keeping a respectful distance from the people in front of me as we tear through the curves. My mind races (zing!), jumping between what I need to do and what John Farnham wants me to do. I go a little faster. I slow down. I turn tighter. I drift wider. Back and forth, fighting a battle inside myself that no one else can see. Then it happens. There are two people in front of me, and one gets spun out by the other. Now they're in my way, and there is no way I can stop in time.

Smash.

I t-bone someone (I'm still not sure who), and my harness digs into my body as I come to a complete stop. Synapses forged in 2012 begin to fire, and I stand meekly in the face of a tsunami of PTSD. But what's this? My kart still moves, and as I pull through another turn, I think maybe that was brief enough that no one noticed. Maybe I can finish this out, apologize to whoever I hit, and everyone else will be none the wiser.

Maybe.

The go-karts are electric, so they can't sputter to a stop. What they can do is slowly die in the middle of the race track. No, I command, as I slam the accelerator over and over again, my muscles fueled by pure high-octane panic. It doesn't work. The cart is dead, and I slowly realize that everything in the warehouse has stopped. All the other cars have been neutralized. My only hope now is that none of them know why, that no one saw it happen. Maybe I could still escape this with–

Sigh.

My kart is dead. I know it. The disinterested teenagers know it. Everyone on the track, everyone on the sidelines, watches as one of the attendants hops into a spare kart and drives it out to me. To me. Like a child being offered a lollipop after breaking their tricycle. I feel the eyes of the other racers, of the spectators, of the universe, on me. Daniel broke his kart. Let's all wait for someone to clean up his mess so we can get back to the fun. I have to get up from my kart and move to the new one. The buckles won't buckle. The straps are too tight. The tires are about to fall right the fuck off.

The eyes. The attention. The panic. I want to crawl under the track and live with the rats until my bones fuse into the limestone. The thunder in my heart has been replaced by the faint rustle of despair.

My therapist says such thoughts are only projections, but that doesn't make them any less real to me. When the race resumes, I try to shove my entire body into that rented helmet. I finish dead last, as anticipated and as expected. As we file out of the pit area, I try to laugh it off with my coworkers. Did you see how I crashed out there? That was funny, huh? But it's all autopilot, all a function of the Happy Manager mask I wear when I'm on the clock. Inside, I'm wishing I were a loose wheel coming off the kart, bouncing over the barriers and disappearing down Burnet and eventually, the depths of Town Lake.

I stayed for another drink, the awards ceremony, and a cookie I couldn't even bring myself to finish. That's how upset I was. I waved goodbye, driving fast in my normal-sized SUV, trying to leave the memory of the afternoon behind me.

There is a fine line between taking up space in the world and being an attention-seeking child, and I've made that line my home because it's safer, less work, and what my childhood taught me was the correct thing to want. And while I yearn to connect with people, I want to do it on my own terms.

Not in the spotlight. Not in failure.

Not in a backup go-kart delivered to me by a bored teenager in the middle of a race.

I still can't get over the smiles of my coworkers as they walked in. They were so happy to be there. Little did they know I'd be wearing that same smile on my way home, happy to have left it all (my pride, dignity, whatever was left of my self-esteem) out on the track.

Or maybe it's just all in my head.