Tread

Level up

When I was younger, I took swimming lessons at Columbus Parks & Recreation center pools. Starting at Hunter Pool, I got my first ‘patch’ for completing the Guppy Class. After that, I received a Minnow patch, and eventually the Whale patch; the final patch for completing the most advanced class.

Each class required that I go through a series of tests at the end of the class. If I passed, I made it to the next level. If I didn’t, I had to take the class again. Unlike the ‘everybody gets a trophy’ mentality that most kids are raised with, this one was intended to teach me skills that could save my life somday.

The final test to pass ‘whale certification’ required that I tread in the diving pool with a 10lb brick held over my head – for five minutes. For the uneducated, treading water requires that you use your legs like egg-beaters, while also moving your arms in a back-and-forth motion to keep yourself afloat.

Normal treading is difficult. Treading for five minutes with a 10lb. brick held in the air felt like absolute torture – and it was. As a young child, it felt like the equivalent of one of the exercises a Navy Seal does during the infamous Hell Week.

The last few years have reminded me of this final test, in a lot of ways. For most of them, I’ve felt like I’ve been treading in ocean waters with a 50lb brick carried over my head; struggling to stay afloat and not drown in a sea of difficulties. The times have been hard – backbreaking, even.

One of my favorite reads as a child (and adult) was the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. In the series, one of the infamous lines that Calvin’s Dad gives him whenever he’s tasked with doing chores – or something unpleasant – is this:

“It builds character.”

While the past few years have been a circle of Hell Dante didn’t write about, I can inequivocally state that they’ve developed character that I can recognize and carry with me.

A friend of mine recently called me after going through a ridiculously hard breakup, where the woman he thought was going to be his wife walked out on him and hightailed it to California; leaving him in El Paso with the house he built (mostly with his own hands) for the two of them.

I offered him some level of consolation, as well as advice that has carried me through my own tribulations, which reflect his in a lot of ways. I shared with him that the difficulties we endure leave us with one thing that we carry with us; character, resiliance, strength and the bittersweet reward of making it through another round without dropping to our knees.

Character is rarely accompanied by company. Rather, it’s something that develops you as an individual and helps you stand stronger with each step you take forward.

Around this time last year, I set an intention that the year ahead would be a better one. I knew that certain things in my life would have to change in order to make that happen, and I was finally willing to pay the price and go through the process of shedding things that no longer served me.

On September 11th, I decided it was time to sober up. After over a decade of getting high on a daily basis – which turned into an hourly basis – I went to a 4-day men’s retreat and threw my last THC vape into the woods as far as I could. I rememeber walking to my car to grab it, and I bumped into another man at the retreat who had kicked the habit of meth earlier that year. It wasn’t an accident that I ran into him.

“Hey, I’ve got to get rid of something. Can you help me?” I asked him.

“Absolutely, brother.”

As I heard the vape crash somewhere in the woods, he turned to give me a huge bear hug.

“In the name of Jesus, be FREE my brother!” he said.

That was 195 days ago. Since then, I haven’t looked back and truly haven’t wanted to. On the other side of my addiction and pain was a man that was waiting to claw his way back into the ring of life; me.

While there are still things I deeply wrestle with in life, such as the pain of having a broken family, I’m now at a place where I’m not numbing out the pain. Rather, I feel every bit of it as it bores down on me like that 10lb brick in the water. Instead of letting myself drown as I used to, now I kick back and fight for a better tomorrow, week, year and life.