What do you do when life is being hard on you? When the feelings burn your heart, your soul! When the feelings leave you drained! Staying there wanting to move,scream or just do something but feeling empty? Like all your strength is gone…
Standing there…being seen by others as a whole person, but inside feeling broken? Dying with the desire to put yourself together, but feeling helpless in front of your feelings? Wanting to grab that terrible sense, rip it out of your chest, throw it on the ground and then jump on it? Make it feel, the way it makes YOU feel!
Burning inside….hoping that feeling will have some mercy and will just leave you…let you have your life... but then realizing it is stuck inside…and no matter how much you want…there is no escape! It is you and your feelings! You are there feeling restless, and feelings are taking over you!
Where do you go? What do you do? Reach out to open the fridge and comfort yourself with food? Feeling sorry for yourself? Digging yourself deeper by getting more depressed, fatter, sicker and getting closer to existing, rather than living?
Stop it! That’s pathetic! I have a better idea! How about directing the feelings that are eating you inside to the gym? How about getting your ass from your couch to the weightlifting room? How about going there, confronting the bar and get done with the negativity that is draining your strength?
How mad, sad, or empty do you feel? Way too much? Then load the bar and get busy! Start lifting! Get rid of the crap, that is sucking the life out of your body! The iron is the best cure. “There is no better way to fight weakness, than with strength!’
When you are in the gym, it is just you and the bar! The bar ain’t going to lie to you! It won’t pretend being your friend, pretend “loving you” or caring for you! “People may come and go, but two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds!”.The bar is just a piece of iron, resting on the ground, waiting for you to pick it up. Waiting to test, your mind, your body and you spirit!
It is the best friend you could ask for! It can’t be fake, it can’t discriminate or judge! It gives you back as much as you put in. It will always kick you the real deal! Be a jerk, and act strong, and the bar will crush you!
The barbell won’t answer back, won’t argue, won’t tell you to calm down, be positive or look forward. It just rests on the ground and let’s you feel your pain! It lets you be weak, mad,sad,depressed, and then a couple seconds later when you walk under it, ready to pull it, push it, throw it, it will give you comfort!
When everything else in life is screwed up, when you feel insecure and robbed, the barbell is gonna give you confidence…it will make you feel right, when the world seems wrong!
Today the barbell gave me strength when I felt weak!
Today the barbell gave me confidence, when I felt nothing!
Today the barbell gave me a sense of belonging, when I felt one with the world!
Today the barbell made me feel right, when everything felt wrong!
Today the barbell ripped the anger out of my chest…
Today the barbell let me be myself…
Today the barbell let me cry, be mad, be sad…
Today the barbell didn’t say a fucking word…
Today the barbell just rested on the ground and let me suffer…
…then helped me beat the weakness, and find the strength I needed!
Today the bar was my best friend!
Every day – the good pain is the easy kind – shut it out shut it down and go on till your body can’t then rest up and do in again.
The pain of recovering from injuries is harder – pushing hard enough to heal and not hard enough to harm is something that takes a lifetime to learn.