The Fighter

“Dear mom and dad… Thank you for giving me everything I needed to fight my way through life. I still hate you both…”

Droplets of blood are splattered across the ring like rose petals on the floor. The air smells like a mixture of liquor, leather, and sweat. Around him and through him, the echoes of a roaring crowd reverberate off the walls so loudly that he can feel it in the pits of his stomach. Sweat beads off his brow and into the corners of his eyes. His blurry vision spins as he crumbles to the floor.

It's round number three in a nine-round match, but he’s been fighting for what feels like an eternity.

He’s a father. A warrior. A fighter.

And right now, he’s losing.

“One! Two! Three!” the ref begins to count.

Grabbing at the ropes, he manages to stand back up, his knees wobbling as he struggles to catch his breath. That last hook hit him like a freight train across his jaw. Lucky for him, the pain quickly subsides as adrenaline surges through his veins. Though, the bruise it leaves behind will no doubt linger long after the fights been called.

Looking across the ring, he sees his opponent glaring at him like a wolf eyeing its prey. He fears this man – hates him even. This ring feels like a trap. A merciless place where men trade a lifetime of pain for a moment’s worth of glory. It’s a cage with no way out other than through the gauntlet; a snare he can’t escape unless he’s willing to gnaw off a piece of his own soul.

So, raising his gloves up, he does just that.

If there’s really no easy way out, then by God, he’ll go down swinging!

At least, that’s the lie he tells himself.

It’s the same lie he told himself when he was just a kid, back when he spent his nights hiding from the drunken monster that rampaged through the house. Day after wretched day, night after sleepless night, that monster prowled through their trailer like a hungry wolf ready to devour any glimmer of joy it managed to sniff out. For ten years he was forced to find somewhere to hide. For ten years he listened to screams echoing off the walls. For ten years he endured the same backhand across the face.

And at ten years old, he finally got tired of hiding.

CRACK!

The shot across his ribs hits him harder than his father ever could. Buttoning up, he quickly finds himself against the ropes. He’s spent most of the fight here already. Across the ring, he can barely make out the voice of his coach yelling at him to step to the inside and work his angles.

He’s right. That would get him off the ropes. But he also isn’t the one getting the literal shit beat out of him right now, either.

WHOP!

That damn right hook again.

Falling forward, he can’t let the ref see that he’s about to crumble. In a last-ditch effort to keep fighting, he throws out his arms and goes for a clinch. He just needs to catch his breath. Just a few seconds to get the feeling back in his legs.

He just needed a minute to get his shit together.

But that’s just another memory that haunts him.

Crawling out of that Humvee was like crawling onto another planet. Smoke filled the air. Bullets hissed by his head. Bodies, or at least what was left of them, were scattered on the ground, charred and smoldering. As a boy, he thought that the military would be his one-way ticket out of that trailer park he grew up in. In hindsight, it felt more like a one-way ticket straight to hell. Even now, nearly ten years later, he can still remember himself trying to wrap his head around it all – the explosion, the burning corpses, the firefight that ensued. He can remember thinking that he just needed a minute to compose himself. Just a second to figure out what was going on.

Unfortunately for him, time was a luxury. And he couldn’t afford it even if he wanted to.

DING! DING! DING!

Thank God for that damn bell! Another minute in the ring with that monster and he’d be lying unconscious on the mat.

Eyes half swollen, he stumbles over to a corner. 

It’s not his corner. 

Looking over his shoulder, he sees his coach shouting at him, so he stumbles over there and takes a seat.

Removing his mouthpiece, he begins swishing water around in his mouth as his coach lathers a fresh layer of Vaseline across his face. Spitting into a metal bucket, chunks of blood stream from his lips.

“Do you want this!?” his coach yells at him. “I said, do you want this, or not!?”

Suddenly, he hears his wife shouting at him from the not-so-distant past.

“Because, if you don’t, then I’m taking our son and I’m leaving!”

Truth be told, nothing in his life ever hurt him quite as much as the day she nearly walked out. They’d been arguing for months after he got home from Iraq, mainly about the drinking habit he couldn’t seem to shake. She had been faithful to him through it all; three deployments, the loss of his closest friend, and more night terrors than anyone would bother to count. She was his last glimmer of hope. His ultimate refuge from all the horrors life had to offer. And if he couldn’t find a way to save himself from becoming everything he ever hated, he’d wind up losing her too.

That was the night she stormed out of the house. The night he thought he lost her. It was also the same night he poured out the last drop of whiskey down the kitchen sink.

Wanting to sober up as fast as he could, he threw on his shoes and just started running! Sprinting after her car, he ran for what felt like eternity. Past the smoke-filled bars where he went to drown his sorrows. Past the trailer park he once called home. Past the recruit depot where he signed his name on a dotted line. 

Sprinting after everything he held dear, he ran past it all! And when he felt like he couldn’t run any further, he put his head down and kept fucking going…

He didn’t stop until he puked.

And he eventually puked in front of the old boxing gym.

DING! DING! DING!

The bell tolls again.

Standing to his feet, he looks at his opponent from across the ring. In the man’s eyes, he sees that familiar wolf staring back at him, searching him for a weakness he can exploit. Glancing across the crowd, he catches a glimpse of his wife and son. She’s nearly six months along with their second child. Hitting his gloves together, he steps back into the center of the ring, ready to face off against that wolf as if his very life depends on it.

Because, at the end of the day, it does…

Droplets of blood are splattered around the ring like rose petals on the floor. The air smells like a mixture of liquor, leather, and sweat. Around him and through him, the echoes of a roaring crowd reverberate off the walls so loudly that he can feel it in the pits of his stomach. Sweat beads off his brow and into the corners of his eyes. His vision begins to focus as he marches out to meet his opponent.

It's round number four in a nine-round match, but he’s been fighting since he was ten.

He’s a father. A warrior. A fighter.

And right now, he’s giving it everything he has left.