Oh Snap: Episode 3 - The Champ is Here

In my lifetime, I’ve watched and observed the act of becoming a winner. We’ve seen Jordan return with the 45 on his back - not in his prime, but as this salty dog, still embarassing 2-guards while building his empire in ownership and sneaker sales. We revel at the utter dominance of Tyson, and shed a single heavy tear when he lost to Holyfield and to the mishappenings with women - we hoped he’d find his way back to Mike from Bed-Stuy. The stories of redemption strike something in us that we desire. They show us that we can indeed take lemons and garnish our Dark and Stormies with them.

Recap from Rehab
On the afternoon of March 8th of 2020, yours truly was awakened after surgeons worked diligently to twist my wrist, ulna, and radius into stability, bound with sturdy metals and grit. To hear more about what the prelude to the surgery was like, check out the previous episodes. There, I speak on what happened to my whole damn life when I went from contending powerlifter to hoping I’d feel my feet and fingers again in a single moment. So. Rehab. My surgeon told me that it would take a year or more to get my arm and mechanics back to what I’d consider normal. Without having a crystal ball, we’d have no way of knowing what my arm would do while it tried healing. Some days, it was okay. Others, it was as exactly as difficult as being condemned to house arrest in another country, speaking a language I don’t understand, required to work. Meanwhile, everything beyond my arrested state was on fire. COVID-19 had not been the hindrance to me like it was to most of the world. However, it helped reveal inequities that contributed to the fears that kept me up at night. And by “kept me up at night”, I mean, pacing the floors of this house like a ghoul after consistently imagining myself in a box at my funeral. Dread was all I thought of in the earlier stages of recovery. Then, I quit my day job. I quit any form of painkillers. I quit music. I quit every form of social media.

The Old Job
I’m not sure how many of you listening know about my work. I’m a digital accessibility consultant, which means I work with companies to engineer solutions for making their websites, apps, and documents usable for blind, low vision, elderly, and others with limited use of their hands. It’s work I love beyond music as it has an impact that’s bigger than anything I can create artistically. It creates the opportunity for changes in how a culture can sway how information gets to us all - especially in health care. Unfortunately, one of the main clients I dealt with willfully allowed for inaccessible experiences to be pushed out to the public. Mind you, this was during the height of COVID-19, and the health care facility management found accessibility to be some afterthought item to incorporate, rather than make it a priority. There was a single manager in that group, who was responsible for tearing down the efforts my team put in place, to the detriment of many both within and outside the organization. It’s important to note Accessibility here because it’s a major concern in Black Indigenous People of Color and other communities that are disproportionately affected by bullshit information about disease prevention. Imagine seeing Black men on street corners with bull horns, professing that the most important vaccine against the virus that was taking out Black men by the thousands was actually poison?! What? Imagine the disgust in seeing hospitals release info about how to prevent the spread or reach treatment for COVID-19, with that info being inaccessible or unavailable to folks because the hospital just ‘hadn’t gotten around to it’. It’s absolutely maddening, and I carried that everywhere.

I quit painkillers.
Prior to the incident, I’d never needed anything stronger than whatever was available over-the-counter. As every lifter knows, there will be days when your arms might not raise fully, or the back might be super tight, or joints might swell - it’s just part of the life. I already had an antipathy towards anything masking hurt parts, but seeing as how I needed to get more than 2 hours of sleep at night, I tried it. Big effin mistake. Here's why: every human metabolizes whatever is taken in through the digestive system differently. Some break down and absorb the compound rather simply, while others have slightly adverse reactions after absorption. An example of those differences might be my drinking coffee or a Red Bull in order to rest, while others would ingest those same things and find themselves climbing the walls. Oxy or Percs, valuable pain blockers and swelling reducers for many had me wanting to end my actual life. I couldn't stop thinking about it. When I finally slept, I had recurring scenes of capture and arrest due to bogus calls to the police from petty racists. Quick sidenote, it was a prevailing cause of civil disruption in my suburb at the time. Somehow, it became common for white folks to unnecessarily call the police for nothingness, and end up getting cited for false claims. It was always funny, but fukn terrifying at the same time. Just by the law of averages, there was bound to be that one cop would arrive ready to instigate - and my drug-exacerbated fear of one of those cops arriving stayed with me. On the outside, I was hanging out, enjoying my kids, playing like nothing was wrong. But on the inside, I had an inescapable dread that made my fight response key up for hours on end.

I quit music.
Well, that's kind of nothing important. As a musician, I find my way in front of the keyboard on a daily basis. However, performing 2-handed chord progressions was just not possible. Enter depression. Enter anger. Enter fight response. Enter solution. Enter the decision to kill off Rebel One as the character and figure out something else to become. Creative outlets are beyond important. Without them, who are we, really? Just bots in an office, taking orders, following operands, executing commands regardless of their futility to achieve success. A solid month passed, my stitches stopped weeping, and I might have also. It's hard to say. But I did have a lot to say, and so I did on a probably life-saving track called "Tried By Fire". In it, I aired out the death of Rebel. A sort of practice run on my real life funeral, and found myself exercising the demon I was tussling with.

I quit Social Media.
Instagram changed it's algorithm,.updated it's UI to better incorporate Facebook functionality, and I hated it. Twitter is and will forever be the hairy nipple on Satan's teat. It's useless, detached thought (and I use the word thought, kindly) that's posted at the spur of the moment, yet generates banter, spite, vitriol, fake adoration, and hate faster than any in-person experience ever has. At places I used to frequent, I decided that my actual friends knew to text or call me directly, and that social media platforms connected me to people and things I couldn't find a way to care about. I would've needed to contact a realtor to find me some land to till, fertilize, seed, grow, and harvest damns for me to give one for about 99% of what I saw posted. All that's just noise.

Goals for Goals
Now that you're caught up, let's talk about The Big Payback. As I mentioned in previous episodes of Oh Snap, there’s a giant mental aspect of recovery that has to happen before anything physical recuperates. You ever heard of the mind-muscle connection? Well what happens with the bridge for that synaptic function is clouded with hate, rage, and anxiety, and fear? Does the muscle respond as if it’s being worked or exercised? Or does it respond like it’s part of that fight complex? Lifting angry got me only so far. I found myself yurking things loose that were previously okay. I picked up relatively large things with what I’m sure was crap form, developing bad habits.I lifted with my heart, not with my head. And once I got out of my head, lyrics returned. Beat making returned. Joy started creeping back in. That was the turning point. The three main aspects of my life - beats, rhymes, lifting - came in and the trend upward pointed me at the calendar. In February of this year, I celebrated the day of “the incident” with pushups. Granted, I’d already been back in the area of about 80% of my previous max, but those were grinders. Where I’m from, if you ain’t pushing that weight for 10, that’s not a weight you own. 315 came and went. I was looking at 335 for 5 by the end of the month. That came just a few days later. Valentines Day came, I tossed 325 for 3 to 5 sets of 5 easily. March 8th was circled on that board. 365 for just 2 was all I thought I could do that day. I felt like I was rushing it. But the day came, after 3 days rest. First set of 365 went up and down so easily, I was halfway mad about not going for more. I couldn’t, though. The emotion of the moment was too much. All the excess, the remnants of so much negative poured out in salty liquid from my eye sockets. I didn’t know what to do after that, except for going in for more. So I did, and found myself to be stronger than I was from the year prior...in more ways than one.

Conclusion
Don’t you ever. Never ever allow the darkness of man enter your circle, your light, your space, your mind. I dont care if it hides behind a badge, a cross, a party, or a last name. You cut it out and you salt the earth it grew from. Once you free yourself from that anchor...you’ll be free to assume that crown you’ve fought hard to contend for.

This concludes “Oh Snap”, episode 3 - The Champ is Here.