Reflection: The Boxer

Gonna try something a little different for this post.

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that layed him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains

from the song "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel, written by Paul Simon

I love this song.  Always have.  I feel like it speaks to me, most particularly the verse I quoted above.

Have you ever felt like that boxer?  I have.  All the time, really.  Or I used to.  The song is more nostalgic to me now; a reminder of how I felt for a few years of my life, and how I finally walked away from the things that made me feel that way.

When I was in my early twenties, I partied a lot.  I met a lot of men.  And I allowed many of those men to get far closer to me than most of them had any right to be, physically and emotionally.  This is not about having someone force their affections on me.  This is about my allowing them access to myself that they did not deserve.  I am not proud of this part of my past, but neither am I ashamed anymore.  It happened, and all the shame and recrimination cannot remove these experiences from my own past.  They have helped shape who I am now, and I am reconciled with those feelings.  But the worst, the absolute worst part of these years, these men, these experiences was the fact that I lied to myself the entire time.  Each time I was with someone new, I told myself that this would be different, that this would be the last time.  And it never was.  Until I finally allowed myself to give when I chose to, not expecting anything in return, and to withhold when I chose to, walking away when the relationship was no longer beneficial to me.

To me, the song is about lying to yourself. Being in a situation that you find intolerable and telling yourself that you're going to just walk away and leave it all behind. But you don't. You stay, and you survive. And it kills something inside you as long as you stay. But in the same way, when you finally find the strength to go, the experience makes you stronger.

I see myself standing in that clearing, with all my scars out there for all the world to see.  The scars of my self-deceit and the emotional abuse that I inflicted upon myself.  The scars are there long after the pain has faded.  And in retrospect, I am proud of those scars.  They are concrete proof that I felt, and I hurt and that I lived.  And I am still here.  And I am stronger for having survived those things.

And that is why I love "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel.  Give it a listen sometime.

Love,
    -Nan