Fear

As I mentioned earlier, I did manage to sprain my knee in class two weeks ago.  It was stupid- an ax kick gone horribly wrong.  I know (or, at least, I’m pretty sure) what went wrong- I locked my supporting leg instead of flexing it.  And it is weak; more or less the same thing happened in November (only it was a hopping roundhouse that time).

Anyway, the upshot it that my ACL is weak and already has a small tear and it’s living on borrowed time.  It will go at some point.

Unless I quit.

Which I’m not going to do.  Because I do love it, and it keeps me sane in a life that has a lot of insanity in it.  

Knowing that, of course, means that I know  that even some stupid easy kick (like, say, an ax kick) could be the thing that is my undoing.  And there is a limit to how much I can do to try and put it off as long as possible.  I’m working on strengthening my hamstrings, and stretching them out, my quads are pretty good as it is, and I’m getting a new knee brace that will hopefully provide some better suport (this latest injury happened with the current knee brace ON, which was doubly frusterating). 

But still, there’s the waiting, and trying not to let the fear of injury get the better of me.  I already have a very uneasy relationship with sparring (as in, I don’t like it, and I suck at it, which is aprt of the reason I don’t like it, but the get better I should do it more, but I don’t like it, soooo….).  And worrying, constantly, about is this kick (or this blow I’m taking) going to be the one that kills me?   That’s tiring.  And not fun. 

I guess what I’m trying to do here is to be able to say “YES I AM SCARED OF GETTING HURT AGAIN.”  So I can at least begin to figure out how to deal with it.  It’s the dealing by doing more than trying to cowgirl through it that I’m getting stuck on.  I mean, I’m still worried about hopping roundhouse from last winter’s injury,  but I have worked hard on making sure I get the foot placement right and everything aligned just so to make sure I don’t fall out again.  On that kick.  But it’s like it doesn’t matter, because a stupid-easy ax kick (with no jumping, or fancy anything) can do it.  Much less a jumping front kick, or 360 roundhouse (oh there’s a post there- muscle memory and how it FUCKS YOU UP sometimes).  

As for right now, I have to head off to class, because it’s forms tonight, and while I’m not allowed to do any kicks for another week, I can do 90% of my new form (which, by the way, I LOVE) and I don’t want to get too behind again.

Me and my little world

I’m not sure how to explain what I want with this space.  I have a livejournal, wherein my daily exploits are chronicled- you know, “woke up,” “found pants,”  “went to work,” “the MBTA sucks,”  ”does anyone have a copy of this book I could borrow,” but I wanted to make a more blog-like blog for more formal essays and writings.  

So here we are. 

I’m a 30 year old woman in Boston, who does historical re-enactment, and am waiting -anxiously- to see if I get into law school for fall 2009.  I also am a (brand!  shiney! new!) green-stripe in tae kwon do , and have done some writing on how tae kwon do is affecting my life.  Other things that are likely to crop up- I am a feminist.  I am also, oh what’s the popular term these days- “curvy” and Not Small.  There’s a lot to be said there, too.  I am a liberal.  I am also a total and unrepentant geek who also watches American Idol and at the same time mourns the end of Battlestar Galactica. 

 So… here we are.  And here we go.

This was originally posted in my livejournal- and “Last Friday” was me, at forms class, reijuring my knee on an ax kick gone awry.  And it was really really frusterating because a) it hurt, and b) the promotion test was on Sunday.  Master Kim, who was right there when it happened, told me not to worry about it- he knew that I knew my stuff, and he would pass me right there.  And then he told me to go find out what was wrong with my knee, because I was getting really good.  Which I’m still in shock over. 

It was a lot of mood swings in a very short time. 

(Um, that said, I was perfectly happy to not have to spar.) 

Last Friday, in all of it’s heartbreak and amazement, really did happen. I got my new belt on Wednesday.

And the thing that keeps me going “No, really, did that all just happen?” is the part where Master Kim said that I was good.

Because, really. I’m not. I’m not naturally good at anything physical- I have to really work at it, and my body, being what it is, has it’s limits, and objects strongly when those limits are tested much. So I have to find ways to work within and around those limits. And here is where it’s become really obvious that in spite of, oh, everything, I have grown up a little.

I said last week sometime that one of the things that’s great about tae kwon do class is that it’s 2 hours or so each time I go in that I, very literally, cannot worry about anything else. The world, for me, for that time, is shrunk down to the do jang, and what the instructor wants us to do and me and my feet on the mat. There is nothing else.

 And that’s the key- no screwing around. You pay attention. You ask for clarification when you need it. There are other students who go to more classes than I do, but don’t have the same focus during class. They just do their thing, where I have to make sure that I know what I need to ask my body to do (and here’s the kicker) (…sorry), and how to ask my body to do it. That’s not to say we don’t have setbacks.

Barry and I think we were able to piece together what happened on Friday (Instead of flexing my knee and sitting a bit in the kick, I probably locked or hyperextended my knee and the ligaments don’t support as well as the muscles do). I know what I should do, and 90% of the time, I do it right, and most of the time when I do it worng, there isn’t any real damage done. But shit happens.

Anyway. That’s the key. Focus. Work with what you have. Be who you are. And you go from there.

On Getting Hit

When I got home on from sparring class a few weeks ago, I was talking with my roommate about the sparring thing, and she said, a little dubiously, that she wasn’t sure how’d she handle being hit, even in a controlled environment like the do-jang. She’s taught a lot of self-defense classes, and was down with the actual hitting of people, but had never actually had to take a hit.

I pointed out that I was really glad I’d learned how to do both when I was invincible- there isn’t much for me to think about, except “Oh… it’s a good thing I don’t bruise easily.”

There are many things that women have to confront when learning self-defense or a martial art. First and formost, we’re not supposed to hurt people. We’re just not. When starting out, it’s very common for women to not put all thier power into a strike, and apologize after. Most instructors recognize this, and are able to work with it. (Even if sometimes that is by looking at the female student and say “You’re being too nice!” True fax!)

However, there’s something else- I think you need to know how to take a hit. Not in terms of adjusting your body to minimize damage (that can come later), but in terms of not getting frozen by the fact that the hit happened at all.

The first time (assuming of course that you’re doing this voluntarily and there’s no injury), your brain goes on overload. Simultanious “OMG HE HIT ME” and “OMG I DIDN’T DIE” and maybe a little “OMG THAT’S IT?” and “OMG WHAT DO I DO NOW?” And I think that having that overload in a controlled space is good, and if you can get through that, if you’re attacked, you can at least deal with the “OMG HE HIT ME” part with the “I KNOW WHAT TO DO NEXT COME HERE FUCKER” part.

Maybe I’m not making a lot of sense. But I think there’s value in teaching people how to take a hit and be able to not really shrug it off but be able to set it aside to deal with later.