Tomorrow will be about 29 degrees at 6am, and feel like 26. I will be standing with many other soldiers to demonstrate my physical fitness. I have been here before. But never with the baggage I carry now. I remember a scene in the first Rocky movie that kinda captures the way I am feeling:
Rocky: I can’t do it.
Adrian: What?
Rocky: I can’t beat him.
Adrian: Apollo?
Rocky: Yeah. I been out there walkin’ around, thinkin’. I mean, who am I kiddin’? I ain’t even in the guy’s league.
Adrian: What are we gonna do?
Rocky: I don’t know.
Adrian: You worked so hard.
Rocky: Yeah, that don’t matter. ‘Cause I was nobody before.
Adrian: Don’t say that.
Rocky: Ah come on, Adrian, it’s true. I was nobody. But that don’t matter either, you know? ‘Cause I was thinkin’, it really don’t matter if I lose this fight. It really don’t matter if this guy opens my head, either. ‘Cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody’s ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I’m still standin’, I’m gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren’t just another bum from the neighborhood.
I just want to be able to go the distance. I know I’m being a little melodramatic. But that is the way I am. It is the way I feel. The catholic church down the street is celebrating “Our Lady of Guadalupe,” maybe I will follow Rocky’s example and see if I can get some sort of blessing.
Daily Reprieve 