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| Image by Keisuke Kuribara |
An excerpt from a forthcoming memoir
The basement lights were off. Only a strip of afternoon
sunlight cut across the floor. I was in the home gym. Steel racks. Plates
stacked against the wall. Mirrors splintering the light. A sermon about
discipline and healing was paused on the screen. The house was too quiet. Just
the dull drone of the treadmill and my own breathing.
I was crying so hard I had to
grip the rails to steady myself. I finally stepped off and planted my feet on
the sides. The belt kept moving beneath me, humming. Still running.
What if it’s worse than they
think?
What if I don’t make it through
surgery?
What if my body is never the
same?
What if I’m ruined?
For years my body had been
proof of my discipline. I knew how to train it. Push it. Shape it. Now they
were going to remove parts of it. Half my pancreas. Portions of my liver. Maybe
more. It wasn’t just the surgery itself that scared me. It was what came after.
I was afraid I wouldn’t be the same. Less capable. Less strong. Less me.
Then my phone rang. It was
Paul.
He had been my trainer and my
friend for more than twenty years. I met him in my twenties when I was still
trying to figure out who I was and what I was capable of. Back then, we were
training for fitness competitions. We trained through pain. I complained. He
ignored me. Early mornings. Late nights. Workouts that left my legs shaking in
the parking lot.
He had seen me at my strongest.
He had seen me at my worst. And he’d talked me off the ledge before. But this
was different. This wasn’t about walking onto a stage. This was about walking
into an operating room.
I answered the phone and the
words spilled out.
What if they find more?
What if it’s worse?
What if I don’t wake up?
What if my body is never the
same?
How big will the scar be?
What if I don’t recognize
myself?
Paul let me talk. When I finally stopped, he exhaled. “Okay,” he said. “Listen to me. Treat this like a show prep.”
“I can’t do this.”
“You can.”
“This isn’t a show. This is
surgery.”
A pause. “But treat it like a
show.”
I almost laughed. “You’re not
serious.”
“I am. You know how to lock in.
You know how to build a plan. You know how to do hard things. This is no
different.”
“This is different,” I said.
“Yes. Because it matters more.”
My panic didn’t disappear. But
it stopped running the conversation.
“You get something locked in
your mind,” Paul said, “and you’re unstoppable.”
I swallowed. He wasn’t wrong.
When a date was set, something in me flipped. Blinders on. No negotiation. One
step at a time until the job was done. Somewhere between diagnosis and fear, I
had forgotten that. He was there to remind me. Not to rescue me. But to hold up
a mirror.
“You’re bamboo,” he said.
I let out a short laugh.
“Bamboo?”
“Yeah, with bamboo, you see
nothing for five years. You plant the seed. You water it. You tend the soil.
And nothing breaks the surface. No stalk. No leaves. No proof. But underground,
the roots are spreading. Wide. Deep. Strong enough to hold what’s coming. Then,
in six weeks, it rises eighty feet. Not because it grew overnight, but because
it was growing the whole time. Underground. Unseen.”
“That can’t be true,” I said.
“Look it up, it’s real.”
I didn’t know if the numbers
were exact. It didn’t matter. It felt true. The weeks leading up to surgery
weren’t wasted. They were preparation. Now I knew what I had to do.
The surgery date became my show
day. The treadmill became my prep. Morning salads on the couch, the house still
and quiet. My husband at work. My daughter at school. Just me and the dog at my
feet. More water than I wanted. Lifting even when my body felt weak.
I fed my mind as carefully as I
fed my body. I drew on my faith. Sermons in my ears and scripture on repeat. Shutting
down negative thoughts fast. My survival depended on it. It wasn’t about
aesthetics anymore. It was about living.
When fear tried to creep in, I
replaced the image. Instead of imagining myself broken after surgery, I
visualized myself strong.
Standing. Walking. Coming home
from the hospital.
I did cardio and visualized
healing. I trained and visualized strength returning.
I treated it like a
competition. Except the trophy was time.
Before that call, fear was
running me. After it, I said no more.
The ugly crying didn’t
disappear. I let it come. But I didn’t stay there. It stopped running the show.
I had a plan.
Strength didn’t look like
confidence. It looked like hysteria followed by discipline. Repeating the same
steps even when nothing seemed to change. When the surgery doors closed weeks
later, I was still afraid. But I was prepared. I had done all I could do.
All that training. All those
years. All those reps in the gym. They weren’t just about winning. They were
rehearsal.
Discipline. Focus. A refusal to
negotiate with doubt. Those were the roots. They had been forming me long
before I knew I would need them. This wasn’t the beginning of strength. It was
proof it had been growing long before I saw it.
And now it was time to use it.
Kyla
McGrath is a writer originally from
Newfoundland, now living in Ontario with her husband and daughter. A
speechwriter by profession, her personal writing explores identity, resilience,
and the strength formed in life’s hardest seasons. She writes from lived experience
and a deep belief in growth through difficulty. She is currently completing her
first memoir.
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