Monday night of this week was a dark night of the soul for me. Okay, it was more like a dusky evening of my mind if I’m being honest. I just needed to grab your attention. Basically I laid in bed having a pity party for myself. “Pity, party of 1? Your table is ready!” The cause of my pity party was embarrassingly trivial. I had a bad workout. Seriously. That was it. I had a bad workout and all of the sudden I’m pouting in the corner of my apartment like a child who got his crayons* taken away.

A little backstory. I do the Crossfit. I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid and I’m basically treasurer of the cult that is Crossfit. It’s challenging, fun, community-oriented, and it’s the only form of fitness that’s ever worked for me. If you want to talk Crossfit, I’m your dude.

The workouts we do are constantly changing and varied. Everyday is different. However, from time to time we will re-test workouts to see how our fitness has improved. The question is always did you get faster or lift heavier or do more work? Your answers as you progress are hopefully ‘yes.’

That’s what we did on Monday night. We retested a workout from a year ago. It was a workout that burned itself onto my DNA at the time because it obliterated my soul and left me on the ground praying for a swift death. This time around I felt much more confident. I have lots of reasons to believe that I’m fitter than I was last year. The metrics we use to measure fitness have improved. Basically I’m faster, stronger, and can do more work than a year ago.

I’m standing there with my equipment. I’ve sufficiently warmed up. I’ve got my game face on. You’re gonna crush this, Donohue. The clock starts to count down. Deep breath. Here we go. 3…2…1. The buzzer goes and it’s time to start moving. Okay, we’re doing this. I feel okay. Efficient movements, keep breathing. You got this. On to the next round. That was fast. Good job. Okay this is starting to feel a little spicy. We have 3 more rounds to go. It’s fine just keep moving. You’re a beast Patrick. An animal. Just stay in the game. Crap. A little critter pops up in my mind. Why am I thinking about how bad this felt last year? Don’t think about that, just keep moving. Round 3 starts. Wow this is really starting to hurt. Oh no. Mayday! Help. No you’ve got this. Try to breathe with each rep. The brain critters are multiplying. Wow I’m running on fumes and I still have two more rounds. Why are you such a piece of shit? Why do you think you’re good at this? Nope don’t think that. Just move. Breathe. Everything is on fire. Fuck. Sirens are going off. How many more minutes left? Demons are starting to close in on me. Oh god, I’m doing worse than last year. Pick it up, Patrick. 4^th round. Everything is failing. You dumbass why aren’t you better? Pick. It. Up. Move, you fat fuck! Oh god I’m not gonna finish. How did this happen. No, keep fighting. You are slow as molasses. Why aren’t you better? You idiot. The demons are winning. More fire. More sirens. Round 5. The clock. Don’t look at it. You looked. It’s not gonna happen. You were supposed to be better. Fuck. You failed. You fail at everything. You’re a failure. The timer goes. Silence. Pain.

***

So, who’s ready to sign up for Crossfit? Anybody? Bueller?

By no means was that the first time that’s happened in a workout. At this point in my fitness journey I’m able to beat those brain critters down pretty quickly. I pop them in the face by moving faster and being stronger. Sometimes though they start reproducing like rabbits and morph into giant fire-breathing, metal-eating, soul-crushing, made-of-freaking-steel, multi-headed, swords-for-teeth, impenetrable hell demons sent here to demolish everything in their path. They just snatch the reigns out of my hands and run that thing right off the track. It’s an interesting phenomenon that happens when your body is pushed to its physical limit like that. Everything is put into hyper-drive. The brain demons get fierce lightning fast. You don’t have the luxury of slowly rationalizing with yourself and easing into sensible dialogue. Things escalate quickly; it’s life-or-death within seconds.^

The real problem came about after the workout was done. The immediate crisis was over. I physically survived. I would live to tell the tale. The demons returned to run-of-the-mill brain critters but I’ll be damned if they wouldn’t leave me alone. They glommed my psyche and kept a firm grip. As my heart rate came down, my muscles stopped burning, and my lungs came back under control, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was a failure. I went into this workout with confidence. I had a plan. I was going to do better than last year. I was certainly fitter than last year. There was no reason I shouldn’t shave some time off of my last score.

Alas, that was not the case. Not only did I not match last year’s numbers, I did worse. A good bit worse, at that. It was a slippery slope after that from pity to outright self-directed rage. I schlepped my butt back home while the brain critters kept calling me a failure. Over and over and over again they taunted me. They were pretty persistent. What’s worse is that they started bringing up other things in my life beyond fitness. They pulled out their favorite play toys: my career and my dating life. The critters brought up every single acting gig I didn’t book. They also giddily took me through a montage of all the gigs other people did book. That one is a double whammy because it makes me feel like a failure AND a jealous lunatic. After that they held up notecards with boys’ faces on them, all the boys who have ghosted me or wouldn’t talk to me in the first place or somehow humiliated me. One by one they pulled up those flashcards like I was prepping for a chemistry test the next day:

 

Remember this one? How about this guy? Oh he was a good one! He flat out told you that you weren’t hot enough. That was hilarious! We loved that! Oh what about this guy, remember him? He stopped texting you after a 3-hour coffee date. He got to know you and STILL didn’t want you. Oh, hey, here’s this guy. You talked to him for weeks before telling you that you’re really good ‘friend material.’ You want us to keep going? We love this game!! Let’s get cake!!!

 

 As a matter of fact, I would not like for you to keep going, please and thank you.

Here’s the really treacherous part about brain critters and the demons they evolve into: they use your voice. That’s right. They’ve had years of practice mimicking your own voice. They sound so much like you that you start to think it is you. It’s a fairly brilliant strategy I have to admit. If they used their own gnarled, scratchy, high-pitched, annoying ass voices, you’d freak out and tell them to bounce. No one would entertain intruders like that.

Sometimes I’m really good at catching the critters early on. They’ll be red-handed, elbow-deep into my mind’s cookie jar when I find them. I scold them real quick, put the cookie jar back into the cabinet, and move on. Business as usual. Other times I’m not so quick. I’ll be distracted or somehow vulnerable. Maybe I’m upstairs looking for an old Alanis Morissette CD and all of the sudden I hear a ruckus coming from the kitchen. I rush downstairs to find the critters have procreated. They’re all over the place! Not only have they eaten all the cookies but they ate the damn jar. They tipped over the fridge and are eating everything in there too. They pulled out all my kitchen gadgets and one by one are chewing through their cords. There’s chaos everywhere and not one of them will listen to me. At any moment they could morph into a demon or two and the whole house is at risk of being razed.

I always thought that at some point I would have figured out how to keep my pest problem under control. I’ve been dealing with these vermin since middle school. In the back of my mind I assumed I’d grow out of it. After all, these insecurities are so frivolous and immature. At least, they feel frivolous and immature. However, the more I learn about what it means to be human the more I come to realize that, nope, these don’t go away. The critters may calm down some as you age. They may lose the zeal they once had. You may learn how to cope with them better or what tricks will keep them at bay. But I don’t think they ever completely disappear.

That realization hit me smack dab in the middle of my pity party Monday night. These were never going to go away. The second I realized that, something amazing happened. Out of the din of turmoil in my head I suddenly heard a voice (don’t tell my doctor) that asked, “Isn’t this exhausting?” The voice was even and calm and soothing. It was different than the demons and critters who were yelling at me, a different frequency. It stood out. It was butter and cream. It was me. It was the real me. The actual me. It wasn’t a demon who talked a lot like me. It was me when I’m talking to a friend in pain. It was the same tone I use when someone needs a compassionate way out of a despair tunnel. I was equal parts gentle and rational. “Isn’t this exhausting?”

Just like that, everyone in my head shut up. The demons froze with arrows drawn. Some were actually mid-strike with a machete when they stopped. The critters froze. They stopped chewing on the baseboards, perched up on their hind legs, and listened. Everyone sat silent, waiting on bated breath for my response. After a moment, I told myself, “Yeah, it kinda is.” The demons put down their arrows. They sheathed their swords and waddled their fat asses back home. The critters lost interest and scurried off to their various hiding places. A blissful quiet settled over me and, just like that, battle was done.

What a fascinating experience! Will this tactic work every time? Possibly not but I don’t think that’s the point. Sometimes it’s important to pick yourself up by the bootstraps, grab every weapon in your arsenal, and march off to war. Everyone should feel the sensation of raising a bloody, severed demon head to the sky while screaming, “I AM FUCKING INCREDIBLE!!!” as entrails and intestines soak the earth beneath your feet. That kind of victory builds you up as a person. It’s also important to march off to war, get your ass annihilated and handed back to you within 6 seconds, and whimper in the corner for a few hours licking your wounds. That pain serves a purpose. It softens you, humbles you. Hopefully it makes you a more empathetic and feeling human.

But maybe, just maybe, there’s another way. Maybe war can be avoided altogether. Instead of putting pieces of your soul out on a platter for the critters to nibble on, you simply stand up with whatever courage you have remaining, and let them know as calmly as you can that dinner won’t be served this evening. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what attracts them in the first place: a bad workout, a bad restaurant shift, a bad date, a bad text, a bad audition, or a bad choice. They just want to eat and make chaos and grow. You are their food source. So remove the food source. Next time I see a critter scurry by scouting for sustenance, I will simply turn and preemptively ask myself, “Isn’t this exhausting?” and see what happens.

 

*I’m fascinated by the two ways that people say this word. Go ahead and say it out loud: crayon. Did you say KRAY-on or KRAN? How many syllables did you use? Everyone in my family says KRAN and I think it might be a Midwestern thing. Just ponder on it for a few hours.

 

^I’ve officially decided to use a semi-colon at least once in every post. You’re welcome.