Freak...

" Yo Adrian, you know how I said all that stuff they said about me on TV didn't hurt....It did." - Rocky.

Well after tagging one of my friends on facebook, one of her friends made the comment of " Why did that freak tag you in an album." I guess that's what I am I'm a freak. I'm used to being hated and detested...part of the reason I do triathlon. The long hours in the saddle, on the road of in the pool take away from my loneliness...my not belonging, that inner ache and pain I feel when I see people happy together, knowing that it is most likely not in my future. I train through the pain, through the heartache, through the fact that I don't fit in and realistically never will. I don't have to deal with "the" People or "normal" people...I deal with freaks like me. The type of freaks who talk about carbon fiber over aluminum, kettle bells and squats, New Balance over Asics, Speedo vs. TYR. I guess somewhere in our freakhood we find camaraderie. We are freaks so what. Some of us are lucky and we met other freaks who we hit it off we, we get married and have freak children and then they laugh at the normal people as they hate life. For others like me we remain single freaks, knowing not even our fellow freaks quite understand us. We find some friends some solace but at the end of the day feel we're too freaky for the rest of the freaks. It hurts, it is a cold sting of reality everytime that word is thrown around but I guess it reminds me why I train and why I train like a rabid animal...no amount of physical pain can hurt me like some of the mental and emotional abuse I have taken. Buddha states "All life is suffering, all suffering is caused by desire, suffering can be over come by non-attachment." The more I reflect on my life the more I agree, my suffering comes from my desire to be normal to be accepted, my training helps me let go of attachment to that desire. Not necessarily Zen or what he had in mind but it works for me. So why part of me feels the pain that I will probably never be able to have a decent realtionship, or have the approval of my peers, the other realizes that this just serves as more fuel, to train harder, to train longer to become faster...so go ahead call me a freak...It hurts, but it gives me focus.
R.D.