Wrestling the Reaper

"Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death." -Ayn Rand

A simple quote I’ve had associated with my screen name on many forums over the years.  But I stopped today to really examine it because yesterday Chris and I spoke of life, death, and adrenaline rushes.

It started as a discussion about finding a gym. I used to work as a self-defense/fighting/fitness instructor and I miss it. I spent my days with gloves on my hands, calling my students cupcakes, and seeing how far I could push them without making them drop – though sometimes admittedly a few did. My students knew me well from my double yes yes after I’d given an instruction to my favorite statement ‘it ain’t over till someone pukes or cries.’ Out of the six men I worked beside on the self-defense side of the house, I was considered by many the meanest instructor in the place and it was well earned. I was physically the smallest so in training I had to try to be the biggest dog in the pound. But I got hurt because of my inability to tap out when I’d been beat. Losing was something I couldn’t avoid sometimes but admitting it and giving up was something entirely unacceptable.

So when I told Chris I wanted to find a gym and maybe give working out in a class a try again, he got this panicked look across his face. He knows me, he knows my injuries. He knows how I choose to test limits until my shoulders are out of joint and I’m hurting from head to toe. He knows the doctors said not one more concussion.

But I know him as well. We were both adrenaline junkies at one point or another, only his involved Iraq and things I’d rather never experience personally. So we started to talk about adrenaline and that high we both remember so well and still crave.

He talked about getting through a patrol when things got hot. His only way to describe the feeling afterward was with an almost insane laughter. He misses it, like I miss what I used to do. It does seem strange to outsiders. No one in my family understood why I wanted to fight and I get the feeling no one in Chris’ family understood why he volunteered to stay after his tour in Iraq was up. But I do.

Avoiding death is not the same as achieving life, but cheating death is even more thrilling. Do it too much and I’m guessing it haunts you in way most don’t understand. I think that inner conflict between the anxiety and fear and the secret need for the excitement those days brought will always be a silent struggle. He gets a certain gleam in his eyes when he talks about Iraq but there are always memories tucked in to the stories that steal the fondness away just as fast. It’s that desire to go back and the fear of going back that seem to work on him the most. Like a drug you know will kill you eventually but you want it so desperately.

That want causes him to buy games he eventually cannot play after one or two sessions. The gunfire, the too real graphics all end up seeping into the back of his mind bringing to light the other memories, the ones he’s buried and tried to forget.

I’m not sure what the point of all this is other than I’ve been doing a bit of soul searching lately. Some things I see catch my eye and make me wonder. The depth of this thing, and I call it a thing because some days it seems solid like a gorilla in the room tossing things about, is immense. The more people I speak to, the more I realize there isn’t a one size fits all cure.