Behind the Eyes of An Athlete: The Inner Me, The Enemy

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“For what it’s worth: It’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you find the strength to start over.”

—F Scott Fitzgerald

Before we begin, here’s the Cliff Notes:I compete in the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge (as seen on ESPN). I am currently ranked 7th Individual Female in the world. On May 20th and 21st, I competed in Virginia Beach, VA and won Best Female Individual, Best Female Tandem with my partner Caroline Martin, and second in Co-ed Tandem with Captain Sean Sullivan. I also competed in Louisville, Kentucky August 26-27 where I won Best Female Individual, Best Female Tandem with my partner Cam Williams, Best Female Relay, and then took second in Co-ed Tandem with Captain Sean Sullivan. But behind the wins, there is always a backstory, and you should probably keep reading…because a lot goes on behind the eyes of an athlete. What happens when your “inner me” becomes your enemy?

Brace Yourselves — It’s About to Get Real

Let’s get this out of the way early: I make no apologies for my competitive drive or masochistic bloodlust. I perceive effort as effort only when it hurts; thus, with winning inevitably comes pain. I don’t compete for fun, I don't go “just to play," and I don't empathize with people who do. The driving force behind my training is to give everything in me and to have that effort rank among the best. Maybe there are athletes out there who can compete without emotion, but I can't.. I want you as the reader to see what I see and feel what I feel, which is why my writing is always heavy with graphic depiction and vivid imagery. This isn't a simple write-up, and it isn't a factually objective assessment. This is raw pain and unfiltered oversharing: thoughts, aspirations, fears.





Delving into the Depths

“Someone I loved once gave me a box of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

—Mary Oliver

I am currently undergoing separation/divorce, and for those of you who have gone through it, “difficult” doesn’t exactly sum up the experience. Even the most vehemently spoken adjectives don’t really do it justice (at least not the ones I can list here). I spent the majority of 2015 in purgatory as my marriage failed; I became increasingly despondent and floundered not only in my training, but life in general. As I detailed in part one of this series, competing in the October 2015 Firefighter Combat Challenge World Championships felt something similar to the flight of a phoenix. I bought my own home in January of this year, moved in on Valentine's Day, and was temporarily paralyzed by a multitude of foreign feelings. My momentum completely stalled; I was starting over at 33, and very much alone.


For ten years I had prided myself on making a happy home; a partner on a team of two. I went from being very busy all of the time to wandering aimlessly in a fog of despair. I spent my nights listening to sad country songs and bitterly empathizing with First Wives Club (“There she is! It’s Princess Pelvis!”). It was bad, man. Just torturous. If you’ve ever ugly cried as you shoved ice cream in your face and asked Siri rhetorical questions like, “How could I lose a competition I didn’t even know I was in?” you know my suffering. Bitterman, Table of One...now being seated.


I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had alcohol; it’s never been my thing. But I now understand how one could become an alcoholic as a coping mechanism. My God, anything to deaden the hurt. I knew I needed a goal to focus on, so I impulsively committed to the Virginia Beach Combat Challenge, even though I previously had no plans to compete there. My physical activity had been reduced to scrolling Facebook and barreling through ice cream like Breyers needed their cartons back, and it was time to snap out of it. Either that, or I was gonna wind up looking like I was "what ate Gilbert Grape." I’d eventually like to date again, so it was in everyone’s best interest to put down the ice cream and dust off my race gear.

Driven By Desire or Chased By Demons?

“I understood myself only after I destroyed myself. And only in the process of fixing myself, did I know who I really was.”

—Sade Andria Zabala

If only actualization were so easy, eh? The months preceding the competitions were wildly tumultuous. Fluctuations in feelings of self-worth profoundly affected the intensity of my training. Anyone trudging the muddy trenches of life, feeling trapped by negative circumstances they didn’t initiate, will relate. You’ll alternately pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and then hang yourself with them.



I am SO worth it, dude. I am. I’m actually, like, kind of a catch. I’m relatively smart, and funny, and with makeup on I’m around a six, but my personality makes me, um, an eleven? No. No, I’m not. I’m awful. Probably kind of boring, I guess? Maybe if I didn’t live 85% of my life covered in hydraulic oil and dog hair, I’d be more attractive. Maybe I’m too much of an aesthetic oddity. Too competitive, too tough, too… ME? Ugh. I wonder if ice cream’s on sale?

Power Is Nothing Without Control

Training has always been my release. I’ve never before allowed it to feel like punishment. I enjoy the feeling of giving all of myself, of being utterly spent, but there is a time and a place for everything. Not to be Master of the Obvious or anything, but I am intensely emotion-driven, and there were many sessions during this training cycle that I just couldn’t “get there” in my head enough to train effectively. I fell into days, weeks, of running on autopilot as I fought to find my new state of normal.


And perhaps the most disheartening realization was that I didn’t want a new normal. I wanted the old one. But my old life was gone, shattered like a broken mirror that even if pieced back together would never again show the same reflection. Things change. People change. And while forgiveness doesn’t have to mean reconciliation, sometimes it’s even more difficult to admit your own failures and mistakes. Recognizing that I had played a part in the problem was quite a bitter pill. Realizing that my self-awareness had come too late…well, that was like chasing the pill with a shot of bleach.

“In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”

—Buddha

Sometimes a Smile Is Just the Gnashing of Teeth

If you know me personally, you already know I hate to lose. I mean, despise it. And everyone knows Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. But while I was supposed to be training for the Combat Challenge season, I was instead dodging the bricks of my carefully built life thudding to the ground around me, back and forth with no rhyme or reason. There were times I’d get to the gym, start crying over something completely unimportant, and just go home. And you know what? I’m okay with that. Although intensely humbling, walking through hell has taught me a lot. I knew going into this competition season that I wasn’t as mentally or physically ready as I wanted to be. But I’ve been there before. I can’t count the number of powerlifting meets over the years that I’ve flown into by the seat of my pants, gutted it out, and still hit personal bests. At any given competition, the athlete is at war with preparation versus execution.

“It’s not the will to win that matters — everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.”

—Paul “Bear” Bryant

Uh…I mean, kind of, Paul. But not always. And no, everyone doesn’t have the will to win. I know a whole lot of people who couldn’t care less about winning at something, and that’s fine, because they aren’t competitors. But for a competitor, there isn’t much worse than readying yourself, only to fall short of your known capability.



Shortcomings Take a Long Time to Forget

Back in 2012, I trained to pull a 500-pound deadlift and man, did I train. I did everything right, I followed the plan, and I easily pulled 485 pounds three weeks before the meet. But on meet day, I didn’t have it in me. Even now, it is one of my greatest powerlifting disappointments: 500 pounds was mine to take, and I failed. Athletic performance is so funny like that; there will be times you are in the utmost state of readiness, and it all goes wrong. Then there are the competitions where you overtrain, under-sleep, stress out, and tweak your back no less than three times during the week before the meet while doing menial tasks like carrying out the garbage (all you lifters know those feels), and still destroy everything in your path and have the best day ever. My results from these competitions were similar to that, all things considered, and it was exactly what I needed to remind myself of that which I am capable.

The Red

It pains me to admit this, and maybe I wouldn’t if not for writing this series, but this season I’ve run almost entirely on negative emotion. And while that certainly fuels a very hot fire, it doesn’t replenish what is within. Negativity is a drain — a black hole that simultaneously consumes and empties. It’s been almost surreal to watch myself become this person consumed by inner havoc; it is so unlike anything I’ve ever felt, and has subtly, like a slow growing cancer, changed my very core into something I barely recognize.

“You can’t wake up, this is not a dream

You are part of a machine; you are not a human being

With your face all made up, living on a screen

Low on self-esteem, so you run on gasoline”

—Halsey, “Gasoline ”

I’ve come to relish my mental agony — the anger and the bitterness. When it’s time to race, it gives me such great pleasure to flip that switch and become devoid of all good thoughts; to summon all the rage and indignation within and show those around me that I’m good at this, worth something, capable of so much. I’ve been viciously fighting for validation from everyone except myself, pouring nectar into a sieve as I give breath and blood and life to the tormented woman’s soul within me, and she silently screams in her antipathy.

I’ve actually said to myself at times, “When you run out of good reasons to train to win, do it just for spite. And the ones who want you to fail, let them hide and watch." While that mentality has pushed me to great heights, with every climb must come a descent. I’m exhausted, broken, and still unfulfilled. I’m weeks away from the World Championships, where I desperately need to be at my best, and yet the majority of my energy is spent fighting the Inner Me. It is a near-constant struggle.


The Grey

“Anger is like sex. It feels good…but it’s exhausting-“

—Greg Gutfield, The Joy of Hate

Something’s gotta give. After Worlds, I’ll be taking no less than three weeks off to regain some sense of control. Away from the gym, social media, and sugar. I’ll be keeping a handwritten journal during this time, and forcing myself to answer the hard questions surrounding what have become extremely uncharacteristic destructive habits. Thus far I’ve done a bang-up job of freezing my brain with ice cream in an effort to quell my emotional turmoil, while simultaneously punishing my body and asking more of it than I’m putting back. I have come to the realization that I cannot train away my pain, and I cannot eat my feelings. I would if I could...but I've tried, and I can't.

The Black

“I think that we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better…and maybe not that much better, after all.”

—Stephen King

We become our thoughts; we are the product of our own choices and decisions. I cannot continue to allow circumstances to control me. Every day, I fight through a suffocating landslide of insecurities that run far deeper than the surface. And I cling fervently to the hope that one morning I will wake up to realize this Thing—this awful, catastrophic life event that has consumed me, dictated my actions and reactions, stolen my peace— has become instead, just something that happened. Not what defines me. I am so, so much more. Far more than the physical; more than expectations, more than what is perceived. More than enough, if only I am willing to accept it. I’ll use the claws of my demons to hold myself together. At least for now, until the season is over and I begin in earnest my search for peace. But the chaos rages on inside my head, even when I am still. A lot goes on behind the eyes of an athlete.
Hannah Johnson-Hill

[guns01]

Tweetread this earlier this am. good stuff

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