Are you strong enough?

While watching an episode of Law & Order, the story seemed to raise my ears for a bit. It was about the murder of a "hush" Gay boxer at the hands of his trainer's thugs and thus I just watched a bit of it, turned off tv. This began to wander over what the future could've held if I had pursued the life of an athlete and even one that is openly a part of the LBGT community. Remember the young football player in Mass back in 2000 and how the story was covered by the future 360 journalist Anderson Copper. ;-)

Aside from that brief digression I began to ponder the lifespan of my time if I had gone into sports as a teenager. It wasn't hard to conceive for it's in my DNA. My family has a long line of track & field, football, soccer and wrestlers within the cannon but I never took advantage of the DNA link. AS a teenager I was pretty skinny, strong legs (from running and constant bike riding), broad shoulders and a determination that didn't present it's self until I was much older.

I could've easily been on the track team or wrestled with the best of them, shit even boxing (great grandfather boxed back in his day) but due to being shy, a bad student and then the fact that my peers were already aware that I was different, would've made me a target. That tv episode stayed within my mind, analyzing the "what if's," and how i could've basically showed my high school peers that, "yes i am who i am but i bet you never thought i'd could pin you down like that," for they would just label me another faggot of the pack. Society gets it in their head that if you're gay, bisexual and within the ranks that you don't like to get your hands dirty, that sweating is bad and finally that its ok if you appear weak to the rest of the world.

As someone who has spent their entire life having to prove their self worth, I will admit in my youth I was weak, letting people drag who i was into the mud, scared of conflict and then like that something inside me changed. I realized that nobody could protect me, I had to step into the role of self protector, guardian and later protector to others. My way of fighting was, "proving that a man of my stature can fight," i'm not afraid to get knocked down or bust my knuckles because you tried to attack me, if anything you try to hurt me and i'll defend myself to the fullest extent. Here's where there's a line, you see I really dislike violence and yet i've always had alot of aggression inside me.

With age comes the constructive ideas that will ultimately keep me from ending up dead somewhere. I've learned that while i cannot go back and be that athlete back in high school and send a fuck you to all the homophobes, i can use my aggression as a constructive force to keep myself strong and hopefully inspire others. My mission still is to get as strong as possible, to stop mistreating my body as I had been doing for so long and take great care of its attributes.

Viva La Vida