Palestra

Gosh, I have been in a relationship for soooo long, a relationship in which I was doing ALL the heavy lifting. Everything depended on me. All the energy, all the love, was coming from me, and while I was being drained of my energy I was still coming up with more. I sacrificed everything, and asked for nothing.

“That’s called being a parent,” my mom says.

And that’s how I finally tapped into this inexhaustible source. I was like those musclemen pulling tractors behind them. I was pulling for four, for five people, giving and giving and then going back to give more. I would get knocked down and just pop right back up again.

It makes me grateful, right now, to think that I kept it up for so long in this palestra (gym); it used to be hard for me to pull even for myself, but these days I’m as strong as an ox. I know now how my parents got so strong, too. Somehow, we counted on this energy to always be there, and it was.

And that’s what saved me. Saved me from thinking it was only my energy or my love that I had to give.