Realization

Realizing something can be a gradual process or it could be something that hits you right in the face. For me, it is both. Climbing is a lifestyle for me. I realized that the first day I touched a rock. However, realizing why I chose it as a lifestyle was a gradual process that wound up hitting me all at once today.

I started climbing because I didn't fit in anywhere. All of my close friends had left my shitty public school and everyone else was too busy living the social life of a 7th grader. I hated everything that was happening with school, friends, and myself. Climbing was an outlook that kept me alive and helped me push through and it ulimately changed my life.

Through high school I climbed. I got better. I stayed dis-attached from everyone else in school, but I liked it that way. But now that high school is coming to a close, I began to ask why I still climb. I wondered what it would be like to be a "normal" senior. This threw off my training schedule and I began to ask what I was training for. Yes, I am competing in Nationals, but why?

It took me about a month to realize that "normal" is pathetic. It took me a month to realize that without climbing, I was not happy. It took me a month to realize that I train because it makes me feel free and confident. So even though my lifestyle of climbing had been a gradual thing, I was slapped in the face with the realization of my love for climbing. I can never stop, it is an obsession. But, it is more than an obsession. Climbing is a love that will never go away and that has saved my life. I feel sorry for those who have not found a love like this. Life must be miserable. I hope those poor souls have a realization as I did.