I’m dripping sweat. My upper arms involuntarily shaking while the muscles inside plead and scream for release during this, my last set. My brain listens in on their honeyed lies as my mind wanders to that next sip of water, and whether or not I can last the sixty seconds or so until it touches my lips.
Sixty seconds until the I am done for the day, at least, in terms of strength training.
Fifty-nine, fifty-eight….
I don’t know if I can do this. I can’t do this. To quote the great Leslie Knope, “Everything hurts and I’m dying.”
I can. I can’t. No, really, I can’t.
And without prompt, without a trigger or a lead (other than my seemingly blubbery muscles), I am tuning into a passing thought…
“Yes. You. Can. You have already done the hardest thing you will ever have to do in your life, and this is nothing in comparison.”
Fuck, you’re right. I have survived way worse things than this and I am still here, and actually kicking my own ass.
Twenty-seven, twenty-six…
I totally got this. I am strong AF. Literally like ten more reps and I can drop the weights. Focus. Focus.
Three, two, one…
…done.
Working out, strength training particularly, has been a different kind of horizon expansion for me. Unlike travel, it’s rooted in the day-to-day and has become a routine part of my life. But muscles can only do what they can do. You break them down, build them back-up (hello, protein!), and voila! Gains. It’s visible, tangible growth.
We celebrate those tangible, physical gains all the time. As we should. But is acquiring emotional strength really all that different? I’m not so sure it is.
As humans, we are continuously broken down. Our limits are pushed, stretched, bent, and shattered, and our mental threshold constantly tested. Sometimes we give in to those tests (“Everything hurts…”), and that’s ok.
However, if we want to live – and I mean truly live, and not just survive – we must put in the work required to put those malleable pieces back together. While the “work” is subjective to the individual, it most certainly will not happen overnight. And you sure won’t look the same as you did before the trauma warped your pieces.
Most days utilizing my body and pushing the limits of my own physical strength just feels good. It really doesn’t get any deeper than that.
But other days…other days I find myself channeling that emotional center that I’ve spent time and energy cultivating, healing, mending. I don’t recognize it always, but I am growing to love it.
Sometimes there’s underlying excitement, other times anger, while still others there’s a whole spattering of things I can’t identify. It first builds in my core and radiates down my arms and into that physical lift. It’s less a transference and more a melding; emotional and physical strength combining into one force that makes me feel like an indestructible entity. Or like an Avenger. Or Godzilla.
Those are silly analogies – it simply makes me feel strong af.