Ignition

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Now I'm ready. Now.

I thought that I was ready before, but I wasn't. I was still afraid. I was still that other who didn’t fully believe because she’d been weakened by six weeks of slacking. She’d forgotten that she finished two marathons, three sprint triathlons, a 15K through the bowels of swampy, hilly, Hell, and that epic half-Ironman her first season out. She’d forgotten that she was afraid, almost always, but that jumped off the pier anyway.

She’d let it lapse from reality that once she wasn’t, but with sacrifice and work, she had become, and that she'd arrived only by risking going to extremes. She’d dismissed the guts and the insistence and the absolute insubordination against nature, culture and social conditioning - the rebellious refusal that made it all possible.

Lately she's been crowding my head, leaving her clothes strewn all about, spread out and comfortable on my couch, propping her feet up on my coffee table like she’s lived here all along. And she has, which is entirely too long.

I wasn’t ready to kick her out until this morning, until after the workout, until after the daily routine of jostling insecurity with confidence about this Ironman project - her routine. I wasn’t ready until I got a glimpse of myself, of me, in the mirror, just now, and saw who I would become.

Fierce. Unrelenting. Iron.

It was only there for a spark of a second before she plopped over top of it again, but it was long enough to show me that it was actually in there - in me - enough to show me that it was real, and that it just needed some air, a fan to become a flame. No, I wasn’t ready until seeing that just then, so just now, I kindly invited her to gather all of her things, and get the hell out.

Bit by bit, I’m discovering that the Ironman monster is trying to chew me up, and if I’m soft, if I let myself stay soft, I will piece by piece be swallowed down. But now that the other is gone I can concentrate on making myself indigestible. I will become tough and sharp and so, this gluttonous intimidation will, in fact, choke on me.

Ironman, Base 1, officially begins.

Now.

Now I’m ready.

(Thanks for the ignition, Chris…)