Fire

(I wrote this roughly a year ago shortly after my wife and I separated but didn’t want to post it due to my self-consciousness.)

I know it’s been some time since I posted but I have no apologies for that. Sometimes my mind is open like a sieve and sometimes it feels like a blocked aquifer. This is penance for feeling rage. Something like a fire that fills you up to the brim and spills out in dangerous cacophonies. This rage was the impetus for excellent growth as an athlete when I was younger, to the point I thought I had real potential.

My teammates rallied around me, my friends followed me, my family believed in me but it was all behind a facade for masochism disguised as self-growth due to my overwhelming self-hatred. That motor of rage allowed me to push myself to the point where I might be able to be a national-level athlete and then olympic.

Scoff if you must, this was my goal. And I failed in absolute disgrace.

I competed at the state level but failed when I needed to succeed. In one of my greatest moments, I lost in the worst way and I’ve carried that shame since. Even then that great rage only subverted my abilities. It became a crutch for greatness, without allowing me to realize those goals without it. As I grew older that Fire dissipated and the motivation evaporated with it.

Never in my life have I felt a motivation so powerful as that brought by that rage, but no fire is safe. I knew it needed some balance. Something to temper the flames but allow them to live. I could never tame that heat though. Never utilize them in a less destructive form.

I never found how to do it intentionally but either in age or wisdom the flames died down, until they were all but gone.

Right now I’m unemployed and as I look at myself those old fires are starting to ignite. For the first time in years some Great Fire has taken hold and is burning within me. I believe it to be a reincarnation of my youthful rage, an old ember whose heat has elevated to inferno. It’s all born from dissatisfaction with myself. An overwhelming disappointment.

Why didn’t I do this then, why didn’t I do that before. The introspections are poisonous. It’s all looking inward with no regards to grace or compassion. That’s a problem…but we people are just inherently complicated.

…It feels so wonderful, this fire filling you up and pushing in a way you haven’t felt for years but with it comes the cold anger of dispassion and disappointment. Perhaps these cold things are the wood that burns. I felt it back then and I feel it now. Clawing, scraping , burning me. I want something but I don’t know what. Until then it’s all just fuel for this new fire.

I’m disappointed with myself and it feels all-consuming but all fires follow the principles of needing oxygen, heat, and fuel. Only by allowing all three can a fire grow. Give that anger your breath and your negativity and it will live forever.