i just finished watching the movie “the girl next door”. Elisha Cuthbert is hot as hell in this movie, but despite the obvious draw to her, this movie had a really good message. in the movie the main charater sees his whole life fall apart and there is nothing he can do about it. in the end, he makes things happen that give him 10 times back anything that he could of gotten had everything gone to plan (both in a moral sense and a financial sense).
have you ever been in the same situation (I don’t mean banging Elisha Cuthbert). what are some of the greatest comebacks in your life. were you ever in a situation where everything you had hoped, dreamed, sweat, and bled for had just blown up in your face? how did you respond, and did that response end up giving you more then you could of ever hoped for in the first place?
I suppose my only real comeback would be from an injury sustained in martial arts.
At my Shodan (first degree black belt) test, I was kicked just shy of the solar plexus. This toe kick managed to do the following: Break the first rib south of the sternum in two places, crack it in a third; break the surrounding cartilage; tear most of the intercostal muscles; tear a good bit of my abdominal wall. I didn’t realize the full extent of the injury until several weeks later upon attempting to fight again.
It took 15 months and 8 days to be able to bend over again. During the down time, I was depressed, angry, piss-poor diet (no junk food, just not watching that carefully), was unable to exercise at all, and the only thing keeping me sane was the support of my family and my girlfriend.
Anyway, during this time I quit my job (the axe was at my throat, you could say. Wasn’t too glorious an employment, anyway. So, no worries now), I lost the entirety of my scholarship for school, and I had to break up with my girl friend (semi-psychotic or not, I’m relatively certain I was in love). Needless to say, I was an unhappy prick.
Oh, did I mention weight gain? I shot up from a staggering 145lbs of lean muscle (I swear to God, there was muscle on that frame!) to 190lbs of chub. I wasn’t fat, but I wasn’t scrawny no more.
Anyway, two months ago, I got hypnotized, got fixed, got back in shape. I’m currently 202lbs at 15% bodyfat. I weight train twice weekly, do martial arts 5 times weekly, and have acquired my fitness training certification through the ISSA. Oh, I’m also still in school, wading neck deep in debt (all in the future! God bless loans!)
No worries. I survived. It’s all good.
Just ain’t never gonna happen again.
Oh HELL YEAH! Dude, when I was getting divorced about seven - eight years ago, I thought the friggin’ world was coming to an end. I am the first and so far only person in my family tree that has had a marriage fail. I was so afraid of all my family being ashamed of me, like it was all my fault. I know it sounds crazy to many folks, but I was ashamed of myself, because now my two kids would have to grow up in a broken home, and I was afraid of all the stigma attached to this. I felt like I had let everybody down: my friends, my family, and especially my kids. My former wife didn’t feel any of this, I am sure, because everything was always my fault anyway, and she grew up with her parents divorced, so she didn’t have all these things instilled in her like I did.
Then, it was finally over. And I started seeing just how full of shit I had been about all of this. I started to see just how manipulative and nasty my ex-wife had become, and I started dating again.
Imagine my surprise to discover that there are actually women who like sex as much as I do! Man, I went friggin’ hog-wild. The ladies came out of the woodwork when I just opened my damn eyes and looked for them. And, I was really getting into my karate, and I was looking good, while my ex-wife developed a pot-belly from her shitty eating habits and laziness with her ugly and fat fiance she met at a local concert (he’s a DJ for the radio station… definitely not made for TV, but at least he’s not an asshole to my munchkins). Last year, I went back to the old hometown for a surprise birthday party for one of my old high school chums. His wife (who had arranged the whole thing) took one look at me when I walked in the door, and freaked out. “OhmyGod Dave, you look like a movie star! Have you seen your ex-wife lately?” I said of course. Then she said “how the Hell could someone fuck that?” and honestly, I didn’t know if she meant my ex-wife or her chubby boyfriend. I think that it was then that it dawned on me.
I was better off in about a million ways than if I had tried to stay married. I have so many close friends who care about me, my kids are fine, my Dad even told me “son, your mom and I are proud of you. We think that you’re a fucking hero for sticking it out so long with that bitch…” and I was worried that he might be ashamed of me! I may not have as much money in my pocket as I used to, but that’s not important. I have more of everything in my life that really matters than I could have ever hoped for.
That which does not kill you really does make you stronger. I’m living proof.
great thread.
lothario~
That is a fanf*cken tastic post! How inspirational!! All the best to you, friend!!
The comebacks you guys just mentioned are outstanding and amazing. Makes me proud of us t-men.
Here’s my story: The last few years of high school went fine. Except in my senior year of H.S. I ended up having this bad pain shooting down my right leg and into my toes. The pain would hurt so much that I couldn’t walk for 5 minutes. I’d have to stop and sit down and wait for the pain to go away. I couldn’t even kick my right foot out in front of me without it hurting like hell. Standing was uncomfortable too! In the mornings I’d wake up and my right foot would be asleep and so would be the lateral side of my right quad. I was like ‘what the hell is happening to me!?’ I thought that if I was involved in sports and weight lifting and getting stronger, that this pain would go away… So I went to see an orthopedic surgeon and he told me that the spinous process on my L-5 was fractured and it was allowing for my spine to slide forward and over my sacrum. The L-5 moved 22millimeters foward and was pinching my sciatic nerve which was causing the pain to shoot down my leg and into my toes. This is what was causing the pain and it also made my hips turn slightly clockwise. So now my left foot stands further out than my right foot when I’m standing in a relaxed position. He then told me that I had two options. Either intense physical therapy for the rest of my life or back surgery. It didn’t take me one second to give him his answer, I wanted the back surgery. I was already fed up with the pain that I had to go through every day and I knew that I could suffer for a year to make the pain go away for the rest of my life, even if 70-95% of the pain went away I’d be happy. So I went to the hospital at the age of 19 to get a Laminectomy on my L-5. I was in the hospital for 7 days, and 3 days of it I had a catheter in(very uncomfortable). I lost 15 lbs in those 7 days because I didn’t eat for the first three days. My weight dropped to about 175 and I was still chubby. Man, I was in so much pain that I had no control of my tears and cry. It was the most pain I had ever been in my life. I had to go through physical therapy for three months and wear a vest for those three months too. I had to re-learn how to walk and get my balance back. Even driving was kind of scary because I lost all of my sensations of driving. But now I’ve came back from barely able to walk and lift weights or even hold a 5lb dumbell over my head to running, benching 315, squating 315 for reps, DLing 315 for reps, 18%BF and happy as can be. The pain comes and goes every now and then but now I can actually run, kick my right leg in front of me, and I can walk continuously without my back or leg hurting. So from the pain and tears that I dealt with in the hospital was all well worth it. I’m happier now then ever, and I’m able to do things I could never do. That’s my come back.
I was unusually, unexplainably ill for years, but it hit a peak for two years when I could barely get out of bed and walk to the bathroom, nearly fainting on the way. Strange given I had always lived a very healthy lifestyle. Saw seven doctors over a few years who said nothing was wrong. Grew progressively weaker, more exhausted, faint all the time, poor activity tolerance. Slept all the time, never felt rested. Unexplained weight loss.
I knew there was a mass in my throat. It would cut off my airway when I laid down a certain way. The docs all said there was nothing there, all the while refusing to run any tests. I kept getting sicker, the larger the mass grew, the worse I got. None of the docs would listen to the symptoms.
Finally, a doctor/close friend of mine palpated and said yes, it is a mass and refered me to a colleague. After a radioactive technicium scan, yep, a huge mass in my thyroid. Then surgery to remove the thyroid. I thought the worse would be over of feeling like being on death’s door for years. Over a few months, I finally felt like a living human being again. YOOHOO, I thought, I’m alive! I had a new lease on life. Then, over a few months, started to feel sick again. Enter intense bodybuilding. I had been training for years, but finally began the most intense program of my life and the strictest diet of my life. I started to feel better. Even STRONG- not just physically, but mentally as well…to be able to do regular stuff again without feeling like hell really boosted my morale by a gazillion.
Then, just when everything was looking like smooth sailing, BANG, the phone call, my brother died- dropped dead of a brain aneurysm. We were thisclose. My beloved big brother, almost like a dad, took care of me from infancy. Loved me both like a little sister and a child. At times overprotective, but a gentle giant. I freaked out at first, and then around day #3 numbness, complete denial. Became like an alcoholic for a year, trained like once a week instead of living the strict lifestyle that kept me well for many years. Smiled all the time, social. The club/party scene all the time. Secretly wanted to drink myself to death, tried extremely hard to do so, imagine a petite asian girl pounding 13 or so double tequila shots in less than an hour, plus an assorment of mixed drinks in between. Became the shot queen. Many many days ate nothing, only drank alcohol.
The day my brother died, I was training at the gym he and I attended. I was being paged, so finished my training and went to my car and called my brother in law’s cell. He broke the news to me in the gym parking lot. I freaked out in the gym parking lot. After that, for around a year, I could barely stand being in that parking lot or going into the gym because of the memories. So my training suffered, the training that kept me healthy.
One terribly hung over morning, after a night of crazy partying, a couple of my friends had finally figured me out and read me the riot act. Yelled at me, told me where to go and that I was hurting myself and that I was a pathetic mess and to pick my sorry ass up off the floor already. Said some things that made me really think about everything I loved and love and instead of seeing it as I had lost all that meant to me, look at everything that means everything to me now. They were tired of pulling my drunk ass out of bars and depositing my passed out body onto their couch and weren’t going to do it anymore. Also, it was the worst hangover ever. I was sick for two weeks afterward and couldn’t drink anything at all, most especially alcohol. Probably Pancreatitis. This forced me to be sober and to think for two weeks about the destructiveness of my actions and how I was not only hurting myself, but my friends and family and most especially my parents, who didn’t want to lose another child. My friends and family had to watch me, a person who really has her sh*t together, transform into a heap of self pity. They always looked worried when they looked at me.
What I mean about having good friends is based on experience. I would not be here today had it not been for my wonderful friends, and especially God, who must have been watching over me. To have friends and family like this who are there with you through your very worst times is truly a blessing. Also, God has a reason for me being here. God has a plan for every one of us and every one of us are important and valuable beings.
Went back to training. Not the 100% intensity diet and exercise. Started out at the level of the recreational gym goer and working my way up. Balancing the training and career out with spirituality, rest, fun, family, friends. Love the gym again. Just about 100% healthy in terms of the thyroid disease. Got my sh*t back together 100%, just like that, as I decided to do so, made a conscious decision one day to “just do it”, as the Nike commercials say.
Great post chinadoll!!
Oh, BTW, my family really doesn’t really cuss that much, but what my father said to me was word for word. It struck home even more that way, I guess. I’ll never forget it.
LCB: That’s some shit, man. Glad you made it through, bro!
Chinadoll:
Good for you…Good…for…You.
There are so many inspiration stories here. Makes me think twice about my life…it ain’t that bad. It’s what I make it to be…
Lothario, Carlos~
Thank you!!! After these “comebacks”, I’ve learned that each of our lives is truly a miracle and each day we’re here is truly a gift to enjoy the beautiful things on this earth. It really is a gift to be able to again do the activity that I passionately love, which is weight training and the bb lifetstyle. Also, love yourself…God created us in his image…happiness is a decision…the minor stuff is just the minor stuff…look deeper at people than just the outside…don’t let anyone’s negativity hold you back, just go for it…and in life, in my bro’s words, like the Nike commercial, “Just Do It”…
Love and Aloha,
chinadoll:)
Carlos~
That’s inspirational, the physical challenges you experienced and then your comback to bb…
chinadoll:)
About 4 years ago, I was going through a bad break up, suffering from alcoholism, alienating my friends and becoming estranged from my family in the process. I was a heavy smoker, spending every night in the bar, eating like crap, and weighing in at about 240 at 5’8 ( ALL of it fat). I was about to loose a very good job due to a merger, and suffering from massive depression. My ‘friends’ had a pool going because they did not think I would be alive for another year. My daughter was born right before my lay off, and I was sued for a ridiculous amount of child support. When I saw my daughter in the hospital, I knew something had to be done. After the lay off, I took my severance package and moved to a different city for a while, and started walking the day I moved. I also stopped drinking and smoking cold turkey. As the weight started coming off, I started running, then I started lifting. I got a good job, went back to school and finished my bachelors degree, and am currently working on a masters. I am back up to about 190 11% and feeling great. The depression is gone, and I have a wonderful relationship with my daughter, and have reconciled with her mother whom I truly love. The future now looks bright and wide open. Nothing else could have happened if I did not start lifting and running, they keep me looking good, feeling good, keep the depression away, and keep my mind sharp for work and school.
That’s my story. I tried to keep it short!
Give me a couple years and hopefully I’ll have a comeback story too…