Losing is Tough…

Losing is tough for anyone. But it wasn’t the ‘comeback’ that he was expecting. Back-to-back losses will make anyone second-guess themselves. He came into this with worries from the beginning. He certainly didn’t plan for such an uphill battle from the start, physically. The mental preparation has and always would be a concern. The ability to perform each time he’s called upon was slowly inching away from him.

“Eating in or taking it to go?” asked the older woman with grey hair, who also had a peculiar moustache that would put most men to shame. “To go, please.”

Just a quick stop he thought. Smaller mom and pop diners are usually the best for a quick bite to eat on the road. If you want to eat healthy and clean, probably not the ideal stop for you.

Logan chowed down a greasy cheeseburger and fries in his Chevy Equinox, the diesel-variant with insane mileage per gallon, while parked in the lot of the same shady diner. Couldn’t have just eaten inside? Not a chance. A loner a heart who keeps to himself. This is no way unusual for him.

Back-to-back losses in professional wrestling is unusual for him. When he decided to hang up the boots a decade ago, he was at the very top and performing the best he ever had. That was how he wanted to go out when he started wrestling, so it was the picture-perfect ending he had always dreamed of. That’s the problem with “picture-perfect”; it isn’t always so perfect.

When you live on the road, you get accustomed to a certain lifestyle. It’s hard to adapt from that to a life at home with a family. Some people absolutely make the transition for the best and live a better life in the end. Others struggle to provide for their families the way they did while traveling. The pros and cons of traveling work has always come down to this: money or family.

I have seen far too many men lose their families to thankless jobs that provided a wonderful financial foundation for them. And that is all it is. A financial foundation that eventually cracks and caves in. Ultimately, if the people involved are not strong enough to adapt and overcome.

“Which way do I even go from here?” he said to himself while looking at his paper map, folded out on his steering wheel and dashboard. His mind was a constant blur, racing from one thing to the next. It’s been like this since he can even remember. A life of uncertainty and indecisiveness.

He had to make it to St. Louis for Revival 36 and he knew it would be a two-day trip in the car with the one stop in between. He was at his one stop. His plan to get into town a full week before the show was already lost. He’d get into town on Monday and have the remainder of the week to prepare for his matchup with Jared Sykes.

Being the newcomer to a wrestling promotion always has its disadvantages. The biggest one is having no idea who the people you are wrestling are. It takes a lot of preparation to be ready to face someone one-on-one in the ring. But the biggest disadvantage for a newcomer is ultimately their biggest advantage for the same exact reason.

It would take everything in his body to walk through those doors again. It took him multiple weeks to fully heal from the prior two beatings he suffered. Nobody wants to walk in and be known as the guy who loses. At the end of the match, someone must lose.

“I need to get back onto I-70, I should’ve stopped at the damn Denny’s right off the highway…” he said to himself out loud. The number of miles he has driven throughout the years would scare most people. Insurance companies would absolutely raise the rates if they knew the true mileage driven each year.

Planning out his second leg of the drive before passing out in the truck stop parking lot seemed like such a depressing way of living. How far had he truly fallen? Was he just too scared to go home? Far too embarrassed to see his wife and children? The so-called friends who’d tell him it was alright to quit, that coming home was the right choice…

It made more sense to go home in between shows. But he just wouldn’t do it. He’d say he was doing it to spare his wife and children from the pain of him leaving each time. But it’s his inability to take responsibility and come to terms with his actions. He knows deep down that he made a mistake. He shouldn’t have left his old job or his family to run off to wrestle!

It was a pipe dream to believe he’d compete. Being physically active does not translate to years of constant rhythm work, that makes up a good chunk of professional wrestling. Ring rust is as real as it gets with LJ and he knows it. It just seems far too easy to place the blame on that. It also continues to deflect his problems, as per usual.

It felt like he had to get a win this time around or he’d lose his opportunity with PRIME. The only wrestling company on the planet that seemed great enough to give up his whole life for. They gave him a chance to showcase his ability on a grand stage, again, for the world to see. He felt like he owed it to them to give it his all, win or lose. Only time would tell if he could find the strength to overcome the mental struggle.