For many years, I classified myself as a pacifist. If someone tried to kill me, I would let them. It was how I was raised–to believe that my life was not as important as other people’s. Somehow, I twisted that into believing that my life was toxic and it would be better for the world if I were dead. I felt as if I woke up each day with a negative balance, and I had to work hard all day just to get back to zero (in terms of my effect on the world).
needless to say, I was very depressed, and this mentality was an indication of that depression. I was also wreathed in anxiety, which meant that I was a hot mess all the time. I woke up each morning, my heart sinking to the soles of my feet. It was a Sisyphean effort that I could never stop. No matter how much I did in a day, it was never enough. It didn’t help that I moved the goalposts on myself all the time, which just made everything more difficult.
This was directly related to my mother. She’s very much a product of her culture, wihch said that girls were worthless except for what they could do for others. Their biggest worth was in their baby-making abilities–nothing else mattered. That was why my mother harassed me for fifteen years to have children. She literally said that it did not matter whether I wanted them or not (I didn’t! At all! Ever! The horror!) because it was my duty as a woman to procreate.
Why yes that’s one of the reasons I currently identify as agender–why do you ask?
I’ve written about how my mother has ragged on me mercilessly for not being a good woman. The fact that I’m fat, not married, bisexual, no children, areligious, tattooed, practice Taiji, got two cats (she doesn’t like animals)–all of it upsets her. When I came out as bi, she said: What next, animals? When I told her I got a tattoo: She told me not to tell my father because he would freak out. When I told her I was going to study Taiji: She said that I was inviting the Devil in to dance on my spine. Which, you know, actually sounds kinda rad.
I can’t remember a time when I told her something about my life and she reacted positively. K and I used to joke about how any decision she made, her mother said it was going to be OK whereas any decision I made, my mother said it was going to fail. This happened when K was driving me to the airport and I was telling her what I had packed. It included a roll of quarters and stamps, which blew her mind. My mother believed in being prepared for anything to happen, but that’s impossible.
When I considered moving to the Bay Area to get my MA, I told my then-therapist all the things that could go wrong. I went on and on for fifteen minutes before she stopped me and said, “Minna, half the things you think are going to happen won’t, and you can’t imagine half of the other things that will happen.” I know that sounds trite, but it really hit me. Her basic point was thatt life happens, and there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it.
t didn’t stop my anxiety, but it did calm it down. I realized that my mother had her own undiagnosed anxiety that was even worse than mine. One of the reasons it made me so angry when she constantly mused out loud is because it correlated with the nervous chatter in the back of my brain. At this point, I have it down to a dull roar, but it gets inflamed when she’s around.
At that point, I had a voice in my head that I called The Dictator. He told me what I could and couldn’t do, and he was very mean about it. Basically, I had internalized the emotional abuse I had suffered and personified it. At that point, my mother no longer needed to beat me over the head with her negativity because I did it myself. My therapist was quick to point taht out–tha tI had become my own abuser.
I would love to say that this statement from my therapist caused all my anxiety to dissipate, but that’s not the case, of course. It did start me on that journey, though. The realization that my mother’s belief were fucked up as they pertained to me. Whether they worked for her or not (I would say not), they were not for me.
The reason I was a pacifist and said that I would let someone kill me rather than kill him (and , yes, it was a him in my mind) was because I didn’t believe I was worthy of life. Think about that. Self-preservation is a strong instnict. I had spent nearly thirty years of my life overriding that instinct because of sexist beliefs. That’s really fucking sad. The biggest reason I didn’t think I deserved to live was because I was a woman–and if a guy wanted to kill me–he should. That is all the way messed up.
When I was having flashbacks in Taiji during meditation, my teacher suggested I walk the circle instead (Bagua, not Taiji). The point is to focus on the opponent in the middle of the circle as you walk. One day in class, I was doing this and I had a flash of, “If it’s you or me, it’s going to be me”, meaning I was going to fight for my life. I would kill my opponent to save myself. I told my teacher about it and was so buoyed by it.
That was the first time I realized that I had a right to live, and more to the point, I had the right to fight for my life. That was when I stopped being a pacifist and acknowledged to myself that I was not going to go out like that. I was not going to endlessly put others before myself and deny that I had needs, desires, and wants. I wasn’t going to become a selfish asshole like my father, but I was no longer going to be a resentful martyr like my mother.
Fastforward many years to that fateful day. No, not when I died twice and came back twice. But to the day when I woke up. I was scared, disoriented, and ready to fight someone. I didn’t know who needed fighting, but I was sure someone did. That was when I knew that I was never going to go gently into that good night.
I am a fighter. I want to live, apparently. So much so that I took on the devil twice and beat his ass twice. To that end, I feel as if Bagua is feeding my feeling of…not aggression, but, not exactly not not aggression, either. Bagua is unlocking something primal in me that isn’t touched by Taiji. That’s exciting as hell, and I cannot wait to continue with it.