"August 6th. 2017. I started that day with two legs and a dream, and I ended that day with my legs and my dreams shattered. There is a sound that's unmistakable. They are the echoes of the slow, empty footsteps of a broken man. Whether his heart's been broken in two or his dreams have been shattered into a million pieces, it's impossible to miss that image of a hollow man who walks not because he wants to but only because he has nothing left. I've seen that sad little story played out a million times before, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that mine
would be exactly the same.
I had an end goal. I knew what I wanted. I knew where I wanted to be when this story reached its conclusion, and it wasn't laying face down in a gutter wasting away and letting life pass me by as if the rainwater was washing it all away into a sewer with all the rest of the grime and filth. But there came a point where I started to think. Of all the sad stories I could tell, did I want mine to be the same? When the world passes on the story of Mikey Williams, what would they say? That when he got hit, he stayed down. That... that's pathetic. That's more than pathetic. That's just damn insulting. I've been thrown down before. I've had my face in the dirt, and I've had the weight of my doubts and my struggles sit on my shoulders, trying to keep me from standing right back up; that it was over, that I couldn't fight with no legs. My wrestling career was done. But I was never going to lie down because someone told me to, whether it was someone I loved, someone I respected, or even myself. I was going to get back up, and I was going to do what I wanted, get what I wanted, life be damned. But when the world tells you you have limitless potential only to turn around and throw a big fat stop sign in your face and tell you, that's it. Game Over. This is where you get off. Heh..."
"I'm well aware of hypocrisy. Life is what you make of it, and I made it a game. Everyone decides to pass on their life lessons to you, but they never seem to be aware of just how much they contradict. My dad, for example, used to sit me down and say, 'You can be whatever you want to be,' but he never said... "as long as you align with what I want."' You have the power to change the world he told me, "as long as you change it into something that everyone else likes," he meant. You grow up, and the narrative starts to take a tonal shift from idealism to crushing cynicism, hoping that somewhere along the way, they balance out to hit that golden mean of realism in your head. Everyone only notices their own lives, but they don't notice what happens when you take all the evidence and pull the statistics out of it. You build your kids up to bring them down. They tell them you can climb up to the top of that hill, then scoff at them when they're so surprised when they fall as if wondering what the hell you expected. They expected what their parents told them, that if you resolve to do something, you can accomplish it. What those parents forgot to mention are all the failures and all the losses that slowly chip away at that resolve, but what else can they do? No loving, responsible parent will tell their child no. It's much more comforting to tell your son or daughter what they can be when they grow up, not what they WILL be when they give up. They'll let them climb that hill and cheer them on the whole way through... and the truth will knock 'em down soon enough."
"Not everyone gets up when they fall. There's the irresponsibility that the world expects, that every single time someone falls, they get right back up. They neglect the reality of weakness. Not everyone has that fight in them. Not everyone will stand back up, and when you roll down the hill and eat the dirt enough times, sooner or later, you'll give up. And once you're satisfied with your life at the bottom of the hill, once you've resigned yourself to a life laying at the feet of people who chose to stand and be better than you, the world comes right back up and hands you your consolation prize. Congratulations, you tried, and ultimately, you failed, just like every other lifeless body lying around you. And when they get up, and they haul themselves away to the gutters to drown? That's when you hear it. Those distinct, hollow footsteps. They don't walk to where they want to go; they walk to the only place left for them to go, and they walk with the weight of a person who only has the strength left in themselves to fall back down."
"I shouldn't be here; that's what they all say. "They told me I wouldn't wrestle again. They told me that I shouldn't. They told me that if I tried climbing back up that hill again, it would be catastrophic the next time I fell. And for a moment, I listened. I stared up at the sky, I gave up, and I resigned myself to my fate and stayed down. But when I look at everyone else around me, everyone else in my position who pushes their sad, pitiful "life lessons" onto their children, I get sick. My story had to end with the same cynical, bitter taste that theirs did, and now I had to do the same. I had to give up and pretend it was fine. Well... it was true. I could have accepted it. The thing is, I didn't. I chose to get back up because I made a choice. I'm not going to be like them, and you're not going to see the same from Mikey Williams that you see from them. The people who say you can't, the ones who don't just say it but honestly believe it? They're the victims. The victims of circumstance, the victims of weakness, the victims of fate, whatever you want to call them, and if I was going to lay with them, I would be the same. I am not a victim. I refuse to be one, and I refuse to let others tell the story of how I was a helpless victim, powerless to change his destiny. If I have to take a risk, so be it. Getting up is always going to be a risk because what goes up must come down. That's what they tell you, right? But what goes up can go even higher if it chooses to stand and climb. And if I have to take that risk of not getting back up, I will. If this is the last time I stand back up, then let them say I came tumbling down and died on impact instead of rotting away in the life of a philosophical corpse. I chose this life that led me here. I chose to fight, gamble, and risk the injuries and the pain, and I wanted it because I wanted the rewards it would get me. The glory, the fame, I intended to write my story as a life of triumph. I'm not going to give up on it again. I'm not going to succumb to that weakness, and I will not let someone tell me to stop because I am not a projection of their fears and weaknesses. If anyone wants to tell me no? If anyone wants to drag me down and keep me away from what is going to be mine? Then I am going to step up, I am going to meet each victim face-to-face, and I am going to make them see because what they tried to do to me... I will make sure I do to them."
