Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: Double Saber Form

A boost to the ego

When my mother was here last during my medical crisis, I foolishly decided to show her the Sword Form. Why? Because I was drugged up and thought it would be a good idea. Why? Stop questioning me! I don’t know. I honestly don’t. It’s because I love my weapons so much and maybe I wanted to connect with my mother. Which is so stupid of me. There has never been a time in the history of ever when she cared and/or understood what I was trying to tell/show her.

Me being bi? That meant I wanted to fuck animals. Tattoos? Oh, she was not pleased by that at all. Of course, she didn’t approve of me relinquishing my religion (and had people pray at me to ‘bring me back into the fold’. Didn’t work, by the way). She said I was shirking my duty as a womn by not having children, and she encouraged me to get married so I’d have someone to take care of me in my old age. She relentlessly nagged at me for me being fat because she was concerned about my health, she said. But, when I  was anorexic and painfully thin, she was only jealous of my tiny waist.

She tried to be encouraging about my writing, but the only thing she said when I let her read a short story I had written was how it had ‘so many’ swear words in it. I can’t remmeber a time when she complimented me or appreciated me full-stop without any qualifiers. Oh, wait. Yes, I can. She was thankful when I listened to her dump her problems on me because she ‘needed’ it.

Needless to say, when she told me how grateful she was that I was still alive, I internally rolled my eyes. She only cared because I was her unpaid therapist. Not even a therapist because she  didn’t listen to anything I suggested. Or rather, very few things. She did not care about me the person, which is something that people have a hard time believing. A mother is supposed to care about her child! Rightly or wrongly, this is more embedded in our society than a father loving his child.

In this case, neither is correct. Neither of my parents love me as a person. They love the idea of their daughter as an extension of them, but me, Minna, the difficult, messy, complicated person? Nope!

Oh, I forgot to say that when I told my mother I was studying Taiji, she said that it was a way of inviting the devil to dance on my spine. How or why she came up with that, I do not know, but it’s almost poetic.

Anyway, when I showed my mother the Sword Form, it was the first three or four movements. She gave the uncomfortable laugh she does when she doesn’t like something and then said, “Oh, ah, it’s cute.”


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Sublime happiness as a Cuisinart

I’ve officially surpassed the threshold of how much Taiji weaponry I do a day–meaning I do more now than I did before going into the hospital. My biceps are bulging in a very pleasing way (I’ve always found it easy to build muscle) and I’m STRONK. I love my biceps. I told you that I’m really feeling myself lately and I’m CUTE AS FUCK. It’s the weirdest feeling, but I’m soaking it for everything it’s worth. Hey, after a lifetime of feeing fat, ugly, and worthless, I’m going to embrace the positivity for as long as it lasts. I know it’s gauche and Just Not Done, but I don’t care. As a female-presenting person, I’m supposed to take great pains to make myself look hot and available, but not slutty or as if I put in the effort  because then I’m a slut and/or trying too hard.

I don’t care. At all. Also, I’ve fallen completely in love with the guandao, which is a big glaive-like Taiji weapon. Here is a martial arts movie featuring it. It’s tremendous.


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A dangerous time

I’m full of energy today, which is a change for me. Since I got out of the hospital, I’ve gotten a solid eight hours a night, waking up only once during the night. I’ve woken  up and not been exhausted, but my body is still mending. All that sleep is going into the deficit I’ve carried with me for decades. I know that’s not how sleep works, but that’s how I think of it, anyway. I’ve had a lifetime of not getting enough sleep and then I had a very traumatic day followed by two weeks in the hospital. The first two weeks at home, my body was just mending itself and recovering from the trauma. The next two weeks, the sedation and narcotic meds were (finally) completely leaving my body, which meant I could feel all the little aches and pains that a body has.

Then, I hit a plateau of frustration because I wasn’t getting any better. Intellectually, I know that it can’t always be peaks. There are going to be plateaus, and, yes, valleys. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. Part of Taiji is accepting things as they are, which is not my strong point. I come by it honestly as my parents are both major worriers (in vastly different ways). I used to joke with K that her mother was very much, “Whatever choice you make, you’ll be fine” whereas my mother is more, “Whatever choice you make, it’ll go drastically wrong”. We both laughed at the time, albeit ruefully. In my case, it meant that no matter what I did, I always regretted it and thought about how different life would be if I had done x, y, or z. This is more my mother than my father, but he’s prone to it, too. When I had a minor car accident several years ago, I was clearly in the right. The witnesses and the cops agreed with this. So did the young woman who was driving the other car. I, too, knew there was absolutely nothing I could do. I was going straight on a local road when she suddenly turned left and slammed into my car. I saw her coming, instantly thought, “There’s nothing I can do” and instinctively relaxed. I walked away from it with a massive bruise on my stomach from the seat belt, probably, and nothing else. My car was totaled, but I was fine. Later, my father started questioning if there was anything I could have done to avoid it. I was getting pissed because there really was nothing I could do. I picked up a stuffed soccer ball my father had made in Home Ec and threw it suddenly at my father. He didn’t even flinch as it hit him. I asked why he didn’t try to catch it and he didn’t even register that I had thrown something at him. It wasn’t nice of me and I felt like shit afterwards, but it made my point–at least to me.


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What constitutes progress

I’ve been home from the hospital for four weeks, which has made me reflective. That’s twice as long as I was in the hospital, as difficult as that is to believe. It feels both longer and shorter than four weeks simultaneously. On the one hand, I have a hard time believing what happened to me happened at all. On the other, it seems so far away from me. When I read about what happened to me in my brother’s Caring Bridge journal, it’s as if I’m reading about a fictional Minna. It’s partly because I wasn’t awake for it, obviously, but it’s also because I’m back to ‘normal’ with only my stamina still low. It’s hard to believe something traumatic happened to me when all outwardly indicators are gone.

I don’t use the walker at all any longer. Not that I used it in the first place. I brought it with me on my morning constitutional just in case and used it a few times so I wouldn’t have to work as hard walking, but I never *needed* it. I never used the commode my brother put together or the puppy pads. I wore the pull-ups (like Depends) for a month, but never used them. The only thing I use is the shower chair–and that’s just so I can wash my feet. Oh, and when the nursing aide comes to wash my hair. It’s nice to have, though, in case I do want to sit down.

I’ve been frustrated as I might have mentioned before because my progress has slowed to a crawl. As I said before (and this is the humblebrag part), I came back with a vengeance and was probably around 85% of my physical capabilities when I woke up (minus the stamina, obviously. But I don’t consider that part of the physical capability, though it is, really). I may not admit it out loud, but I was pretty proud of myself when the physical therapist (PT), a day after we met, said that she didn’t have anything else to teach me. Remember, they were talking about months of rehab once I left the hospital and were pretty dire about what my abilities would be if I woke up. A big if.


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The flexibility of taiji

Ever since I left the hospital, I have adopted the sarcastic motto of HEARTSTRONG! Why? Because I think it’s funny. I had two cardiac arrests and a stroke, and yet, there is nothing wrong with my heart. I had an angiogram and there were no rips, tears, or breaks in my heart. My heart doc put me on a heart monitor for a month, but he emphasized it was just a precaution. He said it was the pneumonia that caused all the trouble, which is so weird to me. I’ve had bronchial issues all my life, which has been annoying, but I didn’t think about it being life-threatening.

When I started taiji fourteen or so years ago, it was with the mission of backing up my attitude with actual skill. I carried myself in a way that would deter 9 out of 10* would-be assailants. I walked with a purposeful stride and a hard look behind my sunglasses. I kept my head level and my shoulders set. I knew, though, that it was mostly for show and that if push came to shove, well, I would get shoved. Hard.

Once when I was out with K, I watched as a young woman teetered to her car on very high heels. Her arms were ladened with shopping bags and she had her keyring dangling from her fingers. Everything about her screamed, “Attack me!” and I shook my head silently. That was not what I wanted to present to the world and while I knew that I looked foreboding, I didn’t have much to back it up.

That’s why I decided to start learning taiji. It was a toss-up between that and aikido, and I don’t remember what finally tipped me over into taiji. Maybe because there is no offense in aikido? My taiji teacher told me that (she tried aikido first), but I’m not sure I knew that before choosing taiji.


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