"An Ode to Social Media and Weightlifting"

By Caitlin Buckvold

Sometimes I think,

While posting another lifting video,

Why would anyone care about my lifts?

I am just taking an object from the floor and putting it over my head

No different than

A bird moving a piece of debris up a tree

A child placing a wooden block on top of a toy tower

Can’t explain it but 

Taking things higher

Is just something we are programmed to do

And while I’m simply moving an object on a miniature screen

No one but me knows what’s going on in the inside of my shoes,

what part of my foot I’m driving hard off of

How I had to defeat the fear of falling in order to go up

Or learn the dizzying distinction between moving my hips into the bar

Instead of letting the bar crash, crash into my hips

Pushing and pulling and going up, down, up

A nauseating, beautiful conglomeration of physics laws and muscle contractions

Happening only - solely - miraculously - because I commanded it to

Defying what I think should happen and obeying what must happen

Always,

In order to make the lift.

And so I think about all these thing as I post another video,

Worrying that everyone will figure me out,

That I’m just hiding behind these graphic lessons in gravity and grit

Because no one needs to know how heavy 

everything else feels in my hands

That don’t involve knurling and iron

Like the task of meeting your eyes

(I left my spine at the gym)

Or the way I sometimes feel like I’m dragging my heart around

Willing it to weigh less

(Not broken, just heavy)

But when I bend and will and command the barbell to feel weightless in my hands,

Suddenly - simultaneously - impossibly - so does everything else.

I am a bird.

A miracle.

A conductor of a million moving parts.

And I am the strongest motherfucker I know.

So maybe when I’m posting another lifting video, maybe I’m not hiding behind a trick

And maybe it’s not just a part of me I am revealing,

But the fullest expression of me: all that I am capable of and all the work there is still to do.

Making lifts over fault lines

Falling and reaching and pushing and revealing everything

Taking things higher.

Yes, that is what is happening here

In this little video of mine.