In the ring
I went on a jaunt for a month. A month I didn’t stop moving. A month that jostled every part of me, like a slow earthquake, to let me assimilate all these flashes of clarity, as to say “watch out, it’s going to shake” but with good intentions.
Shaken in slow motion, what an odd experience. The decelerated slap isn’t less painful, maybe even more. I had the time to feel every little bone in my face shaking, my cheekbones cracking, my tongue getting stuck between the teeth of my crisped jaw, my nose twisting from the shock. I had all the time to feel the wave running through me, my eyes rolling in their orbits while my cheeks turned red as it burned me. Of rage, of shame, of exasperation and above all, incomprehension.
I was hit in slow motion to better enjoy either the fail or the revelation, depending on the angle I would accept to look from.
I first took it as a failure. Another crisis. Another fear. And other tears. This one, all the time she cries. This one, all the time she whines. Snot on the nose, and a plushy in her arms, sunk in her bed and hidden between the sheets, she cries the hell out because “life is hard”.
Yes, life is hard. So what?
Life is hard, it hurts, it bangs you, beats you up, dislocates your jaw, puts you down without a warning. But if boxers get back in the ring, there must be a reason. A stimulation, a desire, an energy, something that urges them to do it infinitely, as if they were challenging life to put them down. Like if they were saying “try again, bitch”. Like we pee against the wind, like we open our arms in front of a tornado, like we put our chest against a gun. Go ahead, try again. Take me down. The last eighty-six times were not enough. Like boxers, people get that incredible courage to get back in the ring every goddamn day. Every morning, they put on the gloves, raise their fists, and get ready. Pushed by the energy of the blessed ignorant, the desperate who still believes, they get up and go to their own, personal war.
And I am just like them. Every day I tell myself, life is hard. It’s a bitch, a dog from the streets that barks and bites and pees on you. Yet, every morning I extend my hand to it, and once in a while, by dint of trying, the dog licks the tip of your fingers, scratches its head against your legs and even drops its toy at your feet. So you tell yourself that it was worth being bitten eighty six times, that it is not that bad, and that you’ll stay around just one more day, just to see.
I saw myself in that ring. Gloves on the fists, fists raised, guard up. I took the punch, I cried under the helmet, but I kept punching back. I spent my summer moving, I took trains, I took airplanes, sometimes both on the same day. I ventured so far out of my comfort zone I could never go back. By the end of the summer, I left behind the gates my very last safety net to begin a whole new, unknown, and frightening life. Once again, I took my anxiety with me and got back in the ring.
Every morning I wake up and look my fears right in their eyes. This fear of living, of feeling, of trying and failing. Sometimes it gets me a deafening defeat, leaving me empty and ashamed. But sometimes, I give the first punch and knock it down, to leave on an adventure without a glance for my demons.
The most important thing, at the end, whatever is the outcome of the fight, is to keep showing up.
