The Comeback Kid

I was nineteen years old when I won my first MMA fight, but by the time I was 22, I was all but washed up.

Like a meteor, I burned too hot and too fast. I was young then, and the young are nothing if not impatient. I did not know how to stop and smell the roses. I did not know how to put my foot on the brakes. All I knew was one speed, one mode: full steam ahead, and to hell with the consequences.

Ah, the arrogance of youth. That was what caused me to lose my last fight. I went into the match overtrained and underprepared. I got knocked out for my folly.

If misery loves company, then disability seeks camaraderie. Following that loss, I suffered from a series of injuries.

A dislocated shoulder.

Multiple torn ligaments in my knee.

Recurrent corneal abrasions that made me tear up as if I was permanently crying.

With this particular injury, something as simple as blinking was agony. Every time I opened my eyes it felt like there were tiny glass shards lodged between my eyelid and my eyeball, and every time I closed them these sharp shards would slash nefariously about. There were days when I could do nothing but shut my eyes and wait for it all to be over. During those days, I often prayed for the sweet release of sleep...

I'm not proud to admit this, but somewhere between my third and fourth eye abrasion, I gave up.

I put to bed to bed the 'athlete' part of my personality. I have spent a good portion of my youth sweating and bleeding and crying in the gym, and what was my reward? To be bedridden and blind when I was barely in my twenties. "To hell with this," I thought. "To hell with this fighting thing! Far better for you to explore the things that you've been sacrificing. Far better for you to date girls and drink beers and make money. Better to be a regular person than an athlete. An athlete knows the sweet taste of victory, yes, but also the bitter tang that comes with debilitating injuries and defeat..."

My logic made sense to me then, so that was what I did.

I stopped training. I started partying. I dated one woman after another. None of them were good for me, but after years of repression as an athlete, this other side of life was like a drug to me. I felt, for all the world, like a monk descending for the first time into the temptations of the city.

Alcohol, a vice I barely indulged in, soon became a fixture for me. Other substances soon followed. Nicotine was a quick fix. Stimulants like coffee; yes to be sure, coffee, to help me kickstart the day. Depressants like benzodiazepine to help me end it. And interspersed throughout it all were the casual flings and the "friends" I had surrounded myself with, distracted myself with, they who were there for me as long as there were drinks and the good times kept on rolling.

Years passed in this manner.

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't a bum, oh no. My formative years had rubbed off too strongly on me. Now that I wasn't training, I had to do something, or else my pent-up energy would make me feel antsy.

I used this spare energy to start a business. It did alright. It made me some money. But it didn't satisfy my creative needs. Then I tried my hand at writing. That was better. I could open up my laptop, take a stiff drink, and make words dance across the blank page. I published my ramblings and thought little of it. But to my surprise, people started reading me. Over time, I even began to grow a small following.

I became well-known enough that a friend of mine approached me. She was an author, you see, and she needed help with a book she was publishing. "You could be my co-writer," she told me. "It'll be a book about the martial arts scene, it'll be right up your alley.."

She bought a beer for me. "This is bound to fail," I told her after the first drink. "Nobody gives a fig about fighting here, least of all me..." She didn't say anything. She merely smiled a small smile and bought me a second drink. "Say, this idea of yours is rather interesting," I said after I'd downed it. "If nothing else, it's unique..." She smiled a bigger smile, then bought me another.

By the end of our meeting, I had agreed to become her co-writer. The premise was simple: we would each interview a dozen athletes and compile their stories into a book. The execution of it, however, was horrendous. We had to track each athlete down individually, meet them, jot down what they said, then edit relentlessly until we had what we needed. It took us many torturous months. Finally, we had the compiled stories. There was just one problem, however. My friend rang to tell it to me.

"Calvin," she was saying, "One of your stories is missing. It must've gotten deleted in the process of editing..." "Screw me," I said. I hung up. Then I called the athlete whose story was missing.

Her name was Emile. She was a boxer a few years older than me. I explained to her what had happened. She was very understanding. We began our interview. It was supposed to take thirty minutes. We ended up speaking for nearly three hours. Emile had an interesting story, full of victories and defeats, interspersed here and there with injuries. Her story reminded me of my own, except she had pursued her sport doggedly while I had given up on it. After the interview, Emile and I decided to meet up for coffee.

One coffee date became two, two coffee dates became three, and three dates became a night at a rooftop bar I was not soon to forget.

Unlike most of the other women I had been with, Emile was good for me. She had an old-world charm about her yet at the same time she was fun to be with. For the first time in a long time, I found myself falling in love. Her career as a boxer was important to her, so I decided to help her with it. I wanted to impart to her what advice I could so that she might avoid the pitfalls I stumbled into when I was competing.

The problem was Emile didn't trust me. "Calvin," she said, interrupting me while I was pontificating about nutrition and weight cutting, "How would you know? You're a writer, for Chrissake!"

"Yes, but I was a fighter before this," I growled. Emile merely laughed. "Yes, but that was nine years ago, Calvin. You've been retired longer than I've been fighting!"

I was stunned. Had it been nine years already? That night, I went home, cracked open a drink, and trawled through my social media feed. I had to scroll very far down to unearth my last fight. And so it was. Nine years! Nine whole years had passed in the blink of an eye, in a haze of waste and tomfoolery.

I blinked. My eyes didn't hurt anymore. The abrasions that had so afflicted them had been long gone. Like a man who was waking after a deep but not particularly restful sleep, I stretched out first my arms then my legs. My limbs creaked and complained. I was no longer in my twenties. But those creaks came from disuse and not overuse. I did not feel the weakness I once did in my shoulder, nor the pain in my formerly torn knees. My body, I realized, had been long ago healed. It had been my mind that had been playing tricks on me.

This knowledge sent me reeling. I had to put out a hand to steady myself. But instead of finding something solid, my fingers came into contact with my drink, spilling it. A puddle of yellow liquid spread before me. It stained everything that came into contact with it. I stared at it in disgust. Then I grabbed the empty can, and with all my might, flung it away from me.

I found a rag and mopped up the mess. When I was done, I got on the phone, found the contact of a prominent promoter, rang him. He picked up quickly. Yes, he was pleasantly surprised I had called, and yes, there was a spot on an upcoming card he would love for me to fight in. "It won't be easy, though," came his warning. "You've been away from the sport for a long time, and there are many young guns out to make a killing..."

I thought of the way I had been, young and impatient and foolhardy. Then I thought about my knockout loss and all the ways this foolhardiness could be exploited by an older fighter like me. I grinned. "Let them try," I told him. I hung up and headed to bed. The night was still young, but so was I, relatively speaking, and I had to get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow was my first day back to training.

As I drifted off, I thought of the years I had spent wandering. I decided that those years weren't wasted, after all. I was never lost. I merely needed some time to become a more well-rounded person, to circle back to my calling.

I was never meant to be a meteor. I was meant to be a slow-burning flame, a bank of warm coals giving light long after the sun has set and the cold has snuck in. Tomorrow the sun would rise again, and with it a new set of challenges, but this time, I would be patient. I would stop to smell the roses. I would pause to put on the brakes.

This time, I would choose to savor the journey, warts and all, every step of the way.