Over the years I have posted about my life. There’s been my kids accomplishments, weightlifting, competitions, my army career and achievements. I’ve always had a strong desire to help and inspire others and I tried to do that through sharing the good. The problem was that I showed everyone side A (the outcome), but hid side B far away from everyone (what shaped me). Side A is palatable, but side B is something entirely different.
My struggles are mine and I do not compare them to others. My go through is mine. I do not seek sympathy. My intentions of sharing side B is to inspire hope in others that you can transform your pain into greatness. That you can begin to seek out understanding within yourself and show up to life confident and authentically you.
I’m 12 years old, it’s late at night. I am sitting on the floor of my garage, crying. A mixture of emotions flow like water being funneled into a narrow, rocky channel, out of control. I spend some time fantasizing about would anyone care if I were no longer here, if I just ended it all….but something inside of me stopped those thoughts. I picked myself up and started digging through a mountain of boxes in our garage. There was nothing I was looking for in particular, maybe I was subconsciously giving my mind something else to focus on. After a few minutes of digging I saw an object protruding from the heap of boxes, little did I know that this object would give me purpose, a function in this world, separate of the chaos that my mind wasn’t ready to face at such a young age.
After a few minutes of digging and pulling I found myself staring at an old rusted barbell. There was also an old mirror propped against some boxes. This mirror was like my mind, clouded, broken, and chipped. Removing my shirt, I wiped the mirror clean. I began doing curls in front of the mirror and my strong feelings of sadness and despair transformed into anger. Every ounce of my emotions went into those reps…..over and over I kept lifting until there was no energy left to feel.
The following day I went back in the garage. I dug through more boxes and found a weight bench and those old plastic, sand filled weights totaling 135lbs. Everyday I went in there and lifted until I was too tired to feel my emotions. They were too strong and powerful and I had yet too learn the proper ways to process them. Until that day came, I had the weights. As a child I remember seeing my chest and arms begin to develop and I looked in that old broken mirror and set a goal. I was going to become so strong that no one would be able to hurt me again.
At such a young age I thought that I didn’t want to feel at all, but in reality I wanted to feel like I was worth something, to matter. I would spend many years of my life chasing that feeling, to matter to someone, not realizing until much later in my life that I needed to matter to myself. Weightlifting was my drug of choice, it helped me cope. It got me through some tough times and helped me accomplish many of my life goals, but it was only a crutch to help me walk until I was ready to face myself. Hopefully, through sharing my story (randomly and in no particular order) I can connect with someone who might be going through similar struggles that I went through. It’s a long, difficult road to travel down, but it is worth it….until then, let’s go pick heavy shit up and put it back down….to be continued
“It not the thing that broke you that broke you, it’s you never even thought about the fact that you could be broken” – Dr. Eric Thomas