So it’s Wednesday, 5 days after Friday Night Fights. I am really not too bad considering the battering I took. I had a bad few hours after the bout but woke on Saturday in decent shape. My left leg has been swollen but doesn’t hurt. I don’t know what the hell makes me different but I rebound rather quickly? My wife calls me Wolverine 🙂
I needed to decompress a minute before I came back to the keyboard to write about all of this. I said from the outset that this was for me. I never wanted to lose but I didn’t care what the outcome was as long as I left it all in the ring and I did. I am not physically damaged but I am totally exhausted. All I have wanted to do since is sleep! I really had to push for 5 rds just to get thru. That was a monumentally hard fight for me.
All I wanted to do was put my personal demons to rest. For years I have been watching all these other people step up and throw down. I had this itch to fight in the back of my brain for too long. I needed to scratch it, so I did. Now that I have I am done and I am at peace with my competitive career.
Life as a civilian took its toll on me. I still have my knowledge and experience but my body can’t perform at a level needed to compete with the young guns anymore. I know everything I didn’t do and everything I could have done to win but I just couldn’t. I really pushed to get my body to work but it wasn’t having it. After the 1st round my neck and shoulders cramped up and I was having a hard time lifting my elbows off my body. All the punches I was prepared to throw I just couldn’t fire off.
It was funny because my internal dialog was this “Throw punches! Why can’t I throw punches?! Shit! This is going to suck!” Once I realized my body wasn’t there anymore, all I had was my spirit which was prepared to endure. I really did want to quit. The elbow I got caught with in the 1st ruptured my eardrum. My muscles started cramping in the 2nd. My leg was toast after round 3. But at no point was I not having fun, prepared to endure, and willing to give in. I was prepared to die before giving in, giving up, or quitting. Once I kind of figured out I didn’t have the win, the victory became survival to the last bell.
If you are going to decide on doing something, do it. Forget the critics, the outsiders looking in, the negative thinkers…… forget everyone who is not part of your positive world view. If you see value in something, then it has value. You are the only one who can define your worth or the worth of something you value. It is not about proving others wrong as much as proving to yourself that you were right.
I took on a challenge. I am satisfied with my efforts if not the result. I sleep easy knowing I did my best and that I truly know who I am at this moment. Fighting always gave me clarity. I needed to remind myself who I am. It is easy to get lost in the daily tasks of a more normal life. We all need to shake things up and remind ourselves who we are. We can leave ourselves in our youth and conform to the world’s definition of life or we can stay connected to personal truth.
My message to anyone looking in on what I just did is simple – don’t worry about the critics, do the things you know you need to, be yourself, and live the life of your choosing.