The war is raging on, and it seems selfish to focus on my personal health. Alas, I am still me, even in these times of unrest, so I can’t completely divorce myself from, well, me. Also, all the words I have to say about the ongoing situations are bottled up in my throat, making me strangely muted. I’ve been grieving–crying at the drop of a hat, and I’ve been praying to a god I don’t believe in for something, anything, and I’m not even sure what.
But, because of my autoimmune bullshit and the Covid-19, I am not going to the protests. I have to ask myself honestly, though, would I go if it weren’t for the Covid-19? My answer is, I don’t know. If my bestie were here, we’d go together. We’ve done it before. Would I go on my own? Not so sure. It doesn’t say anything good about me, but it’s the truth.
It’s weird. When my parents called the other night, concerned about my brother and me (more him because he lives in South Minneapolis), my father counseled me to stay in. “You’re Asian,” he said. “So you’re the other to both blacks and white.” He didn’t say it exactly like that, but it’s what he meant. He’s right, and it puts me in this weird other-land that makes it hard for me to figure where my place is in all this.
Let me make myself clear. I am 100% on the side of the protesters. What happened to George Floyd was horrific, and it’s a symptom of a very sick system. But I’m not black. I cannot speak to that experience. I’m also not white, and I’ve experienced racism myself. Especially in the time of the Covid-19 with the president stoking flames of hatred towards Chinese people, I am concerned about how I might be perceived if I go out into public. I’m not Chinese, but that’s a point without distinction right now. Add to that the fact that I’ve experienced mild racism at the hands of cops, and it leaves me in a weird place.
All that aside, I’m still dealing with sinus crap and migraine crap. It seems prosaic and mundane, but it’s still life. My life. I also had to stress about whether or not my food delivery would make it yesterday (my Friday night one was canceled) and if I would have to go to the store or not. Again, mundane, but given that the pandemic is still going on, not insignificant. The delivery did go through, much to my relief, but now the knowledge that an order can be canceled at the last minute is now in the back of my mind. I know why it was canceled and I don’t disagree with the reason, but I still have to eat. Mundane, but not insignificant.
I want to talk about two things that are not related to anything going on in the outside world. One, my hair. As I’ve noted in the past, it had been waist-length for decades, and then suddenly started growing again. I *think* it’s because I cut out dairy, gluten, and caffeine, but I don’t know for sure. Either way, it’s still growing. It’s one small bright spot in an otherwise gloomy canvas. Two, my feet look a million times better than they ever have. I’ve been ashamed of them for years because I don’t groom them (product of my depression). My solution was to wear socks all the time and pretend they didn’t exist. Any time I saw them, I would cringe at how gross they were. I don’t cut my toenails until I feel guilty about it (two or three months), and I have calluses, bunions, and tons of dead, crusted skin. It’s gross. Then, I read a thread on Ask A Manager about foot issues, and one person recommended “Dr. Dre” on YouTube. It turned out to be Dr. Dray, a dermatologist, and she recommended two products. I ordered both from Amazon along with some ‘footie’ cotton socks, and I started using the creams. That was roughly a month ago, and my feet are 90% cleared up of the problems. The right foot is 98% and the left around 88%, so I’m very pleased with it.
The reason I mention my feet is because it’s similar to my mental health issues as well. I tend to hide them and sometimes pretend they don’t exist. I only deal with them when they reach the totally disgusting state, and then it makes it harder to clean them up. I will say, though, that taiji is like the foot cream even though it takes longer than a month to work. Back when I first started taiji, I did it mostly so I would have something to back up my attitude. The way I carried myself was good enough to keep 90% of people at bay, but I wanted something for the other 10%. I knew it would take time, but it was the martial art that appealed to me the most.
I didn’t give a shit about the mental health aspects (or the health aspects)–I just wanted the martial applications. My teacher was wise enough not to argue with me about it because she figured out fairly quickly that pushing me was not the way to get me to do anything. I was a recalcitrant practitioner when I first started, and I only went to one class a week. Because I refused to practice at home, I added another class and then a third. It was several years after that I added a home practice of five minutes of warm-up/weights a day. Yes, there is a taiji weight set. I should get back to it because it really felt good. I have always liked lifting weights. I hated every second of it, and I couldn’t wait to be done. Then, I started adding other things to my daily regime, and it’s now a half hour if not more.
Several years into my practice, I fell off a ladder while painting my house. I landed with a thud, but I was not injured except for a bruised big toe. It’s because the second I realized I was going to fall, I instinctively relaxed. It was the same when I was in a minor car accident in which big-ass car (technical term) plowed into me. I saw the car coming at me, thought, “I’m going to get hit” and immediately relaxed. I walked away with a massive bruise on my stomach and nothing else. Even with everyone warning me that I would have a stiff neck later, it didn’t happen.
Taiji has been helpful for me in so many ways. I’m less uncomfortable in crowds because of it. I still don’t like it, but I don’t freak out like I used to. I have a better relationship with my parents because of it. It helps me try to take my parents as they are and not as I wished they’d be. In these trying times, taiji is one of the few things that allows me to feel grounded at all. It’s not the be-all, end-all, but it is helpful. Right now, I’ll take anything I can get.