Monday, August 6, 2012

Playing with pain


This blog posting will be divided into two sections. The first one will be about playing through the physical pain and the second will be about emotional pain.

This weekend was closing weekend of Joseph and on Saturday night I re-aggravated my knee injury. I skipped the Megamix both Saturday and Sunday because the pain was just killing me, but I refused to change any of the other choreography. I am known for being stubborn (just ask my girlfriend), but I am also tired of letting this knee get the best of me. I am never going to get anywhere if I let the pain take hold of me and choke me out. Keeping that in mind, I did something awesome and stupid this morning. I desperately wanted to get back to walking now that the show is over. I have not been out for a walk in too long and I was determined to go out there this morning. With my walking shoes on, my two knee braces and my iPod, I headed out into the world for a familiar walk. However, I got sidetracked. I got sidetracked by all of the frustrations with which I have been dealing. The lack of job prospects, the pain in my knee, the weight loss stand still, and some other emotional frustrations were weighing heavy on my mind and I needed to walk them out and walk them out I did. I nearly outwalked my playlist. Instead of turning around at my usual spot, I turned left onto a walking path through a park. My mind was so lost in this space of "I can cardio-out my issues that I kept walking. Next thing I knew, I was so far away from home that the round trip was going to be roughly an hour! I went from not walking in weeks to walking for an hour. Except, that it was not a 60 minute walk, no, I pushed myself even harder today and jogged for 10 minutes. I jogged for 10 minutes. I cannot remember the last time I did anything close to that. It was ugly, but it was so needed. I needed to prove to myself that this journey is in fact real and that I am working towards something real. It let me know that I need to set some serious long term goals. This needs to be more real.

A little over a month ago, I received a few text messages from numbers I did not know. They were pretty mean text messages aimed at this journey. I ignored them, deleted them and did not think about them after that night. I knew there was a chance I would get some of that when I decided to make this journey public. it is part of our modern culture. It is not the first time I have dealt with people calling me fat, and it was not even the most creative version of a fat joke I have ever heard. Seriously, if you are going to make fun of people, remember we have been made fun of our entire life and have heard every joke. If you want to come at me, be original because, otherwise I will just insult your intelligence and at that point, it is just not fair to you (getting off track). Last night when I got to rehearsal I got 3 emails letting me know I had comments on the blog, which is always weird when I have not posted in a little while, but exciting still. These comments were anonymous and they were incredibly mean. They were the kind of vile that I would think could only come from someone who had a true, honest hatred of me. I am not sure if I have hurt anyone to the point where they would want to just rip me apart, but I doubt it.

The anonymity of the internet is a scary, awful thing. Some say it is the most pure form of free speech, but it is a place of cowardice, sadness and cruelty. These comments could have been made by people for whom I care deeply or they could be random assholes who stumbled onto my blog. I have no way of knowing, but last night they devastated me. Last night they took me to a very scary place, a place I had not seen much since middle school. There is so much anger and hatred in the world already, do we really need to go attacking people anonymously online in order to make it worse? I felt so insanely defeated last night. The whole point of this blog was to inspire others, and more importantly, inspire myself. It was not meant as a place where mean people come question my knee injury, or tell me how much of a loser I am. If I wanted that, I would have never left middle school.

There was a moment where I considered just shutting down this blog and continuing my journey without the scrutiny of the public. However, I like writing about the journey. I like sharing my trials and my victories. I like that people feel apart of this. I like that when people see me, they feel compelled to come tell me they are rooting for me, I like being able to tell them that I am rooting for myself. So, I find myself in a quandary. I think mostly though, I want to continue this because I believe deep down that I will be successful. And what better way to shut down negativity than with actions? So many successful people have a chip on their shoulder because they were rejected, or faced negativity and they used that fuel their fire. I have never been that kind of guy, but maybe I can be. Maybe I take this negativity and spin into into inspiration. If you know me, you know I love to be right and I love to make other people wrong. This might be the perfect example. If I succeed, I am right and all of these nasty people are wrong. I can build myself up instead of tearing them down. I know I have a tremendous amount of support in this journey, so if I can use the positive energy and the negative energy, maybe, just maybe I can get where I want to go.

I have decided I will continue blogging and I will continue to let comments be posted and I will let them be anonymous if they so choose. From now on, I will not be deleting mean comments either. I will not engage them, but I will use them to help me reach my goal. I choose to use all of the energy I can muster to do good. There is enough nastiness in the world, I want to be a part of the solution, not add to the problem. I am vowing to be nicer to everyone, and to help everyone I can, because we have no idea what kind of day someone else is having and perhaps one gesture can change a mood. Mostly, I just never want to be the kind of guy who hides behind the anonymity of the internet to spew pointless venom.

7 comments:

  1. Kyle, I read this, and for the first time in a long time, I have been completely motivated. As of this evening, I will start walking or riding my bike every night, without fail. Thank you for this inspiration, and let's meet at the finish line and have a beer.

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  2. Kyle, I too am inspired by your words. You brought such high energy to Joseph--I admire your work ethic immensely.

    Don't pay attention to the haters--I have found that there are way too many people out there waiting to tear down those who are successful. But for every hater, know that there are at least three times as many silent people who are rooting you on, but they are too afraid to come forward and be known.

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  3. Haters gonna hate. Screw them, and if you find out who they are I can kick some shins and slash some tires for you.

    Also, don't over-do it with your knee. Perhaps you should begin using an elliptical machine which will take the pressure off of your knee but still give you self-paced cardio. I'm assuming your new place has a gym of sorts.

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  4. Haters gonna hate. Screw them. you rock, Kyle Hadley.

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  5. Kyle, I am going to send you a private message on Facebook. Keep up the great work! :)

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  6. Kyle,
    I think what you're doing is fantastic. I know you have such great energy and to think you're applying that energy to making yourself healthier, I know you can't fail.

    When you see the plateau on the scale, just remember this is a long term endeavor and you have a lot of people on your side rooting for you.

    I second christina's elliptical machine recommendation, and also suggest bicycling and swimming (if your knee will behave for both). All 3 exercises are low-impact. Brit and I know lots of exercises if you crave more variety.

    I think your blogging is incredibly brave and inspiring and I love reading your blog posts.

    -G

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  7. It took me a long time to realize this, but most of the people who give us a hard time in life do so because they are jealous. I know right now it doesn't feel like that's what's going on, but honestly, I'll bet it is.

    I've always liked you and wished we could have gotten to be better friends, but as long as we're being 100% real, I was jealous of you. I always saw you as a guy everyone else acknowledged as both smart and funny. People would take you seriously and respect your insights when that's what you needed from them, but then, when you wanted to make people laugh, you could do that, too. I know that on a bad day you might be inclined to think that they were laughing at you and not with you, but that was never my perception. I think there are lots of people who like you and lots more who envy you for being so well-liked. Then they let their own insecurities get the best of them and start trying to draw attention to your flaws just to make them feel better about themselves. If you get skinny, they can't do that anymore, and that scares them.

    Does that justify the nasty comments? Of course not. Does knowing that the nasty comments are a result of jealousy make them hurt less? Probably not. But if people are jealous of you, then clearly you have good qualities and things going for you.

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