These are words I never thought I’d truly say and mean. I am an athlete. You could say that these four words have been something I’ve been resisting all my life until recently. Yet it wasn’t just the “athlete” part of the phrase that I resisted, but rather the “I am a(n) ______”; fill in the blank with whatever you want. I was always opposed to what I thought were labels. I guess you could say I took my high school days of “rebellion” a little deep into my psych and refused to allow anyone, including myself, to tell me who or what I was. I was beyond all labels, I was beyond all descriptions, and I was simply who I was and I did not associate with whatever anyone was trying to link me to.
Yet, here I am proclaiming to be something. Well, I can tell you much has changed since I thought in this non-labelling, unique proclaiming way. I will skip most of the details (you can find them scattered throughout the other articles, or even the About Me page) and I’ll get right to it. I can’t claim to have changed my way of thinking by choice, but rather it was almost forced upon me. One thing with disease, and I don’t know if this happens with everyone, is that you can start to define yourself by that disease. I began to think of myself as the “diseased guy”. I was broken and there was nothing anyone could do to fix me. “Ulcerative Colitis” became my label and once that was in place, I lived it to a tee. I began scouting out bathrooms, refusing to go anywhere I wasn’t comfortable with, and eventually having this escalate to the point where I wouldn’t leave my house. To me, it was okay because that’s who I was. If anyone asked why I did anything, it was because of colitis. I am diseased, didn’t you know?
It really wasn’t until a counsellor I saw told me I was letting my disease define me that I began realizing I had started to make a mold for myself. Even when he first told me, I refused to believe it. But I remember vividly after a session with the counsellor I was talking with my wife (fiancé at the time) and I remember her agreeing with the counsellor. I was defining myself by my disease. I was already making decisions about how things would turn out based on what I knew of my disease. I couldn’t go anywhere new because my disease would cause me to be embarrassed. I already had this happening in my mind so no one could tell me otherwise. Yet, like with most things, I was stubborn here too. I refused to let my disease define me, that is, once I realized I was defining myself by it.
It’s been roughly a year since that conversation happened and I wish I could say it was an easy fix, but I’m still battling, which brings me back to the title. I am an athlete. These four words are my battle plans. I had no choice when it came to defining myself by my disease. It just kind of happened out of nowhere. That doesn’t mean I have to roll over and let it. I decided to fight fire with fire and redefine myself by something I associated with. Like I said, this is not easy and it took some serious searching. I went through many different pathways. What did I want to be? Where did I want to be? What direction did I want to go so that I would be comfortable with the results?
It didn’t come over night. In fact, it didn’t come over a series of months and it’s only been recently that I’ve been comfortable saying “I am an athlete”. I can’t determine what makes me associate myself as an athlete other than the love I have for playing sport and the determination to always play and participate. I may not ever be an elite athlete. I may be destined to stay a weekend warrior. At the end of the day, I’ve come to terms with that. Yet, it’s these four words that have enough power to battle back against a fight I thought I was losing. Why?
These four words have given me strength. For me, they weight; they carry meaning. To me an athlete is someone who works hard for results. They train to win. They make sacrifices outside of game time to ensure they win when that final buzzer sounds. I know, it sounds whimsical and grandiose but it works. I’ve learned that when you treat something with seriousness, it becomes a reality. It brings back a memory of reading an article where a CEO of a company (might’ve been Instagram, or Twitter; I can’t remember) treated his company as though it was a Fortune 500 company from the beginning. His idea was that even if people laughed at him for it now, they wouldn’t be when it made it big. He was confident and he made it happen. It is the same here. I treat my mindset with conviction. It may be Sunday league, but I will train to be the best. I’ve taken this mindset (after all, I am an athlete and these are the qualities I want to embody) and applied it to my disease. I don’t let my disease limit me. I’ve transcended what it can do to me and taken it as a challenge.
Whereas before I would’ve just accepted the adversity of disease as “this is who I am”, I now think of it as a part of me, but not what defines me. An athlete does not give in to adversity, but rises above it. All success comes from rising above adversity, that is the beauty of it. So no matter what it is that you chose to define yourself as, to be successful you have to put aside the disease definition. It can’t be the disease that has control, that decides what your daily life will be; it has to be your own definition. It took me a year, if not more, to figure this out. It took many nights of banging my head against the wall, nights of tears, times of wanting to just give up and go for that (unnecessary) surgery. In the end, I have realized that I get to decide what I do. I’m stronger for it. I may have ulcerative colitis, but at the end of the day, I am an athlete, and I will find a way to win.