Pushing fire through a straw

This thought popped into my mind as I was meditating yesterday. Its a pretty apt statement of my mindset. I have a tremendous fire inside me to compete and go full throttle through life. It consumes me like a fever. Yet because of those very impulses I am a battered shell today.

Its used to be that I could push my fire through...well there was no governor. The fire came out of me, burned through me, through everything. It engulfed my soul and gave me the extra percentage of effort I needed when I needed it most. I can go to a deep dark place in my mind that shuts out pain and thought and purifies action. "MOVE. DO ONE MORE. DO ONE MORE. DON'T STOP. COMPLETE THE MISSION. NEVER QUIT. I WILL. MOVE. ATTACK. ATTACK. ATTACK. FASTER. FASTER. FASTER. C'MON. C'MON. C'MON." This is what dominates my thought in a competition, specifically races. And racing has dominated my thoughts for the last week because I can't do it. Its something I want to be able to train for let alone do just one more time. All out.

The fire is still there inside me. Uncontrolled. Wild. Burning. Like all fires, it wants to be unleashed. It wants to CONSUME. I want to give in. I want the fire to wash over me as it has so many times before and blaze with the white hot intensity of a man focused on the single thought of crossing the finish line.

To my detriment I have never cared how I finished, only to get there. First place, last, place, pulled muscles, broken leg, road rash, dehydration, vomiting, even multiple organ failures. I am ashamed now to say I will literally kill myself to cross a finish line. I am the embodiment of the cliche bantered about by the fearful and boastful who almost always are the first to give up when the pain creeps over them. The only thing that matters is looking back at the challenge of the race course as I crossed the finish line and yelling, "I kicked your ass." I want to leave nothing on the course but blood, tears and puke. People who have raced and trained with me have seen this far to often.

It takes considerable effort to control the fire inside me. I know that I have abused the fire. I let it burn too hot and consume too much of me. I get lost in the euphoria. I am trying so hard to find a way to tap the fire so it will work for me and not for itself. Right now if I let it, the fire will take me outside and extract revenge on my body for holding it back for so long. Letting loose, running fast and hard and pushing my heart rate to the extreme; destroying muscle tissue and flooding my bloodstream with impurity's my kidneys cannot clear and in the end burn me up. Maybe kill me. Most likely put me on dialysis. My whole life has been about giving into the fire because it has allowed me to do so much I am proud of. It has forged a man of iron will.

When you look at me now, you see me walk a bit slower and check my pulse several times a day. A body that used to be surrounded by fire is now tempered by a constantly checked mental barrier that calms and cools my body, holding the fire back as I get the rest I desperately need. The only physical manifestation of the great internal fire is a straw sticking out of my mouth that ecks out heat for workouts that not long ago wouldn't even reach the level of Active Rest.

But look into my eyes and you see the fire is not gone. The fire waits. The fire will come.