I woke up mid-hurl.
“Ghhk—hurrrk—bleeehh.”
My head dangled off the edge of the bed as acid and remnants of dinner splattered the floor. I didn’t even wake up at first. My body purged while I was still unconscious, limp, drunk, helpless. At some point, I found myself slouched in a kitchen chair, hunched over the sink, naked from the waist down, a blanket wrapped around me because I’d pissed myself.
Cold water splashed over my fingers. This was the only way to stay hydrated during these situations. My body dehydrated fast. I waited for the next round of uncontrollable vomiting, unable to stop the way my body convulsed. Part of me was numbing out, low potassium, no food, no rest. The sickness ran the show, and I was the main character.
Have you ever paced your house with a dog bowl in hand, gagging involuntarily while your body expels poison on its own schedule? I have. More times than I’d like to admit. My hangovers started in college. That morning was just another chapter in a long, messy novel. My body knew the pattern by heart.
Post-hangover days were worse. I woke up feeling like a grenade had taken aim at my insides. My sternum was sore to the touch. A cough, or even a chuckle, threw me into a fit of aching. My esophagus stung. Even water burned. My throat felt like a raw tunnel, every dreaded sip a painful reminder. Soda burned like a tattoo, etching in the memories, or lack of, from the night before.
Mind and spirit hit an all-time low. Regret. Self-hate. Sabotage. Flooding my senses. Unable to see the bigger picture, fogged by a longing for reality to disappear and euphoria to set in.
For years, the urge to drink again showed up within hours, not days. I’d be hunched over the toilet one minute, cracking a can the next. My body reached for booze like it was a friend helping me off the floor. Alcohol understood where I wanted to go. It knew my intentions. It didn’t care. It was full of assurance.
Hangovers went from lasting a few hours to consuming entire days, haunting the next three. I drank to oblivion, then tried to piece together the night from splinters and fog. Ambushing those who worried about me with slurred stories, glassy eyes, and stitched-together apologies. Alcohol was a good friend for so many years. Until it wasn’t. Until it started taking more than it gave.
The internal fight to end this toxic relationship began to swarm my vision, fogged with inequity and illusion. I wanted to quit drinking. I did. But my heart wasn’t ready to let it go. The bridge between wanting to quit and quitting was wide enough to stretch back to London.
Every time I pictured life without the Devil’s juice, it made me sick to my stomach. Quitting drinking floated in my brain for years before I took myself seriously. Hundreds of hangovers and thousands of dry heaves went by before I finally woke up and realized the consequences had been treading behind me all along. Alcohol followed me through college, into adulthood, and tried to sneak into my thirties before I put the fire out. I hit rock bottom. My whole life as I knew it rearranged, turned upside down in a world of despair, heartbreak, and self-hate.
Depression stepped in where alcohol left off. It would take multiple attempts at sobriety before I could finally claim the title one-year sober. First, eighty-seven days. Then, several failed tries at just fourteen. Finally, thirty-seven. Now, I’m pressing into two years.
And somewhere in all of that, my heart broke too.
“You have this weekend, that’s it.”
The words would echo in and out of consciousness long after September 2, 2023—the day my world shifted. I was in love. So in love that self-sabotage became my defense mechanism. I lost control of myself, my life, my home. I was drowning in self-deception, desperate for reassurance from everything but me. I didn’t realize how much of myself I had already lost.
It took months after our demise to even begin to embrace the idea of a growth mindset. The cheating had sent me into a spiral of darkness. I obsessed over blame, criticism, and what-ifs. Everything had to be my fault, right? I convinced myself that the love I had for her outweighed the love I had for myself—body, mind, and spirit. I became a victim of my own self-deprecation. Eventually, I learned that it wasn’t love that hurt me. It was how much I loved to hate myself that did.
Six months of intense Ironman training followed. I spent hours in the gym, pulling dumbbells to my chest as tears fell from my eyes and splattered on the bench that held the weight of my world. The gym became my safe haven. Training for an Ironman tested every part of me. It pushed me past the negative talk, the self-belittling, the lapses in motivation, and every excuse that gnawed at my mind. I wanted to quit so many times. It hurt so bad. But I didn’t stop.
I woke up at four in the morning on July 12, 2024. It was the beginning of a romantic date with endurance—the ultimate test of mental fortitude.
Why do an Ironman?
It’s simple. The pain your body endures is nothing compared to the healing your mind experiences through the process. The hours of training teach you to love yourself, perhaps for the first time. The reward will always outweigh the suffering.
I’ve seen it in others too: the woman recently diagnosed with breast cancer, the man training real-life Ironmen while battling terminal brain cancer, the woman racing in memory of her late husband, the middle-aged dreamers searching for meaning, the ones quietly fighting invisible battles—and the one whose mother was just diagnosed with stage four cancer.
The Ironman is more than a race. It’s a conversation between who you were and who you’re becoming. It’s a way to survive heartbreak, addiction, and despair—and to show up for yourself when no one else can.
“I feel so broken. I don’t even want to be awake all day. It scares me to see what today brings because I don’t want the reality to be that I’m losing her. “
“I hate these fucking emotions! It’s driving me crazy. I’m feeling all this shit. I don’t like being alone in this house. I just sit here in silence, heartbroken. This has crushed me. I have no power in me, dude. I’m so lost. I’m so sad.”
The Ironman didn’t erase heartbreak. It didn’t undo depression or past addiction. But it taught me endurance, not just in body but in mind. The race became a mirror: if I could survive heartbreak, hangovers, and months of self-loathing, I could endure anything. And in that endurance, I began to love myself.
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