Back again to talk more about gender and martial arts. I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I had to slow down the rate at which I was teaching myself because I was messing some things up. For example, I recently re-taught myself the Fan Form because I realized I had forgotten whole chunks of it. Now, I have found out there are a few places that I’m fudging things. In other words, I need to go watch the videos again.
There are two problems when it comes to me learning martial arts forms. One, my memory is shit since my medical crisis.so I forget that which I have already learn. Not all of it, obviously, but enough to make it disconcerting. Weirdly, though, I am not being hard on myself about it. In the old days, I would call myself names and silently (or not so silently) scold myself for being stupid. This is the pressure of being raised in a hypercritical family.
I feel free, light, and airy when I’m doing my weapon forms. Sometimes, though, I feel fierce, strong, and ready to beat the shit out of someone. Not in real life, but in my mind. I don’t want to get into a fight for real, but I want to be in fighting form.
Working on my weapon forms helps with my depression and anxiety. Both have spiked lately, in a large part because of the landscape of America right now. When I can focus my anixiety and anger on a specific target, even if it’s imaginary, it really helps.
I really groove with combining the karambit and the fan. They could not be more different as weapons.. The karambit is a fast, small dagger that is meant to be used in quick movements. It’s fast, and indeed, furious. It’s dangerous. It’s meant to kill quickly. Maximum damage in a minimal amount of time.
The fan, on the other hand, is languid, slow-moving, and stealthy. You’re not going to see it coming in part beacuse you’re not going to think to worry about a fan. That’s just something you use to cool yourself down when it’s too hot, isn’t it? It’s a weapon that will lower someone’s guard and then I can poke them in the throat with it while their attention is on the karambit.
It really is the yin and the yang of weapons. I picked them to go together because they were roughly the same size (very roughly), but that’s it. They just work well together. I can’t tell you why other than what I’ve already said and good vibes.
Side note: I can’t belive that I’ve become a vibes person. If you had told me ten years ago that I would seriously be talking about vibes, I would have laughed in your face. Before I started Taiji (which was more like fifteen years ago), I acted hard. I had a shell that was nearly impossible to crack. Why? Because I was all gooey inside and felt that if I let that show, people would take advantage of me.
Side note to the side note: One thing that is common with neurodivergent people is that it’s easy to take advantage of them. I am not going to get into the plethora of reasons why, but I wish I had knwon that decades. I just felt I was an idiot who took too many things at face value. On the other hand, I also was quite astute at reading people and could see things about them that they colud not see themselves. Before I learned to keep that shit to myself, I got in a lot of trouble for going on about it.
Side note iii: I really wish I were better at small talk. I mean, I’m good at at the cursory level, but if it goes any deeper than that, then I am at a loss. Why? Because I’m a weirdo. Anything I want to talk about is not really discussed in the circles in which I run (mostly Taiji). Even the weapons is not something my classmates can relate to as my teacher doesn’t really teach them on the regular. And I know I go on and on when I should just shut the fuck up.
I am fine with the very smallest of small talk–like at the grocery store. Even then, though, I can fuck things up by talking too much. When I was a kid, I didn’t think I should talk at all because my parents made it very clear that children should not be seen nor heard. My father didn’t want anything to do with me whereas my mother just wanted to dump all her problems on me. Neither parent viewed me as a person in my own right, so I was not supposed to have any felings–especially not negative ones.
I spent the first twenty years of my life keeping all my opinions to myself. Then, for the next twenty years or so, I went too far the other way in insisting I had the right to talk at length any time I wanted. Now, I swing back and forth between not talking at all and talking way too fucking much.
In addition, I feel like it’s my responsibility to keep a conversation going. Again, that’s because my mother forced it upon me. Even though she was not the smoothest of conversationalists, she felt it was part of her duty as a woman. There was a long list of unspoken expectations she had for me as a girl.
It’s getting very late, and I actually have to get up tomorrow at a designated time (class at noon), so I’m going to wrap this up now and continue tomorrow. It’s very short, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. I want to talk more about gender because it’s foremost on my mind at the moment. We’ll see how many more posts I’ll write about it. I wish it didn’t matter, but it does. If not to me, then to the world around me. That’s just the way it goes.