I’m not going to tell you the whole story from the beginning, that would take to long.
What I will say is that because of the way things happened, I could no longer bear staying in my hometown.
I needed to escape, and I had run out of places to hide at home. I should stand up to my problems right? I guess that would have been the mature thing to do, and I was ridiculously the opposite. Flying around the curves and bends at sketchy speeds, I kept looking down at the flyer in the passenger seat next to me. “Unleashed Fitness Center” was printed in bold red letters across the piece of paper. “Open 24/7” right below it. With no place else to go, and not thinking straight, I figured that maybe if I beat on the doors hard enough, they’d let me in.
I arrived and composed myself. The gym was a well sized, white building right off of Valley Pkwy. I pulled in and parked next to the only other car there. I walked around the corner and to the door, the lights were on and I could see the heavy bags, weights, boxing ring and all of the other various equipment. I pulled on the door handle to find that it was locked. Hanging my head I began walking back to my Jeep, when the man in the other car approached me. He was eating raw peas out of a can with spoon, wearing a cut off hoodie, gym shorts, and had a wiry boxers build. There was no threat from this man, just curiosity as to what a teenager was doing in the parking lot at 1:30am. He introduced himself as Eddie, asked me what my name was, what I was doing there. I told him I was looking for a place to train, and didn’t want to go home.
I found that when all of your friends seem like enemies, a stranger can save your life.
Eddie showed me into the gym, using his key to open the doors. He asked me not to tell anyone about it, being against the rules. He lead me around the building, explaining how everything worked. He even showed me some basic boxing moves. After an hour or two, we left the gym. I slept in the parking lot that night. Later that morning, with money I had saved, and some help from my parents, I signed onto the members list.
To most people a gym simply a place of exercise. Somewhere we go to better our health, a recreation
center, or a way to rid ourselves of stress.
But to a few of us, it’s a sanctuary. A place we go when nothing else makes sense. It becomes an outlet that can save lives. We can plug into the pain we have inside, and unleash it into our training.
All of our emotional problems are made into physical pain when our fists hit the bags.
We could transfer the hurt, the anger, the sadness into our movements, into our combinations, into our repetitions, and for a little while after, we would be okay.
I look around, and I see faces that have been through some of the hardest walks of life, and I feel safe knowing no one will judge me here.
These salty men, with tattoos reading “WANTED” on their shins, spider webs on their elbows, and the name of someone they have lost to violence on their necks. There is something that brings them together. It is unspoken, but it is felt. One of them vents to me after our Muay Thai class.
He lets go to me about how the people he grew up closest with, his three cousins, all like brothers looking out for one another, have been murdered. The last cousin being the most recent death, just weeks before today. That he is the last one of the four, and how he feels like he has failed somehow. I listen to his story. Married at 19, two kids and a wife by 21. We became good friends after that night.
There was a time when things had become so bad, I could hardly find comfort in training anymore.
I beat on the heavy bags for an hour straight. Not stopping to breath. Even the older men, the trainers, the fighters thought I was out of my mind. When it was over, when I had finally had enough, I collapsed.
Now, I’m not bragging, I’m just trying to get across just how horrible this day was. I was trying to hurt myself through training.
Laying there, in self-pity, I noticed a man standing above me. His name was Matt. With a skull tattoo on his rib cage, another on his shin, and a Mohawk for a haircut. He wasn’t a sentimental kind of guy. But that day he told me something that I still think about now. He sat me up and said “Don’t let it eat you up your whole life, kid. Or you’ll end up like me, ugly”.
He wasn’t very handsome.
He told me his story. Maybe he thought it would help me relate. Matt is 32 and is an armature Muay Thai fighter. Explaining how he is an orphan, abandoned by his parents as an infant. He tells me that less than a week ago, he found out who his biological father was. I say was because his father was found in an alley dead, an overdose of heroin caused the death. I was still angry at the things in my life.
Looking back, I am humbled by the stories I have heard. Our problems are relative to the pain we feel. But it taught me that there will always be someone who has a story filled with far more pain than our own, and the best thing we can do is listen. Even if we don’t have the words to make the hurt go away. At that point in my life, I have no idea how I would have gotten by without Unleashed Fitness and the people there.. It became my new home before it unfortunately closed down.
This fitness center, this gym, was my place of healing.
