Being inside the cage at CNY MMA is an incredible feeling.  From the outside you see an assorted and eclectic group of warriors, achieving impossible goals.  Men and women.  Old and young.  Thin and overweight.  Muscular and flabby.  Tattooed and beautiful.  Fighters and moms.  School kids, college kids and people you’d cross the street to avoid.  Once you step inside, all of that disappears.  All you see are your teammates. You see a beginner, hesitant and self-conscious, worried whether she has made a mistake in coming.  You see a competitor, sculpted body bouncing lightly around the mat, automatically throwing rhythmic punches, lost in the zone.  You see a familiar face, someone who has been a few times, no longer new, no longer lost, already beginning to feel a part of the family.  You see someone you’ve never seen before, but who was obviously once a regular; relaxed, confident, warming up and getting focused.  You see the guy who is here for every class, day in and day out.  You see a young girl who loves to kick and the no-longer-pudgy woman who is slimming down before our very eyes.  You see the guy who helped you with your switch kick and the one who taught you to wrap your wrists.  You see a kid, decades younger than yourself in years, but wearing a rank shirt well above your own.  You see your coaches, tough and demanding on the experienced fighters, yet patient and encouraging with newcomers.  You no longer see these people for what they look like; you see them now for what they can do, who they are, and who they are striving to become.  You wonder how you look to them.  Do they see my excitement, my eagerness, the fact that, when I’m here, I finally feel that I belong?  Or do they see the doubts that I try so hard to leave behind, the ones that cling to me, that I drag with me wherever I go?  Whatever they think of me, whatever they see, whatever I’m afraid of, I am grateful to be one of the lucky ones, on the inside.