Getting through today is enough

Somewhere in the middle of my transformation, Mino said to me one day: "Want to try boxing?"

My first reaction was the same as it was to everything else: impossible. Me and boxing? But I let it turn over in my lazy head. Somehow it settled there.

When I finally decided to give it a go, I had no illusions. I knew it would hurt. Fifty minutes of hard movement without a break — that is not something my body was going to handle easily.

The first session was exactly what I had pictured. Fifty minutes that felt like five hours. The whole time I was hunting for excuses — why I had come here at all, that I didn't belong here, that I should have stayed with the weights, where nobody was looking at me and where I wasn't standing in the middle of the floor.

But what got to me most was that clock on the wall. Every time I looked at it, I knew exactly how much pain I still had to take. Thirty minutes to go. Twenty. Fifteen. The number kept dropping and it made nothing easier. If anything it was worse — I knew I couldn't talk my way out of it, that the time was real and that I had to go through it.

When it was over, I was proud of myself. Not because I had changed and would be better tomorrow. Not because this was the beginning of something big. I was proud only because I had got through today. Today, when I didn't want to. Today, when I knew I could walk out and nobody would judge me for it.

I went home certain that getting through today is all I need.