Once Upon a Time…

Once upon a time I was dangerous.  Once upon a time I trained myself to fight everything and anything that came up against me.  Once upon a time I thought up ways to hurt others.  Once upon a time.

I am searching for a new motivation.  For years I lived off of anger.  I was so angry with the world around me and at the things that had happened to me.  And I was angry with myself.  Then one day I woke up and the anger was gone.  I floundered a bit and began to punish myself for the floundering.  I punished myself for not being as strong as I wished I was, for not being as self-disciplined as I thought appropriate, for not being as pretty or as smart or as charming as I thought I could be.  And I fed on that punishment.  It was my motivation.  I’m tired of punishment.  I will not do it anymore.  I have no anger.  I have nothing to punish.

I am unmotivated.

I have attached my motivation to negative emotions for so long that now that I have decided that it will no longer be that way I don’t know how to motivate myself.  I don’t know how to make myself do the things I need to do.  I’m so tempted to go back to the punishment – but I hated it so much.  It made me so unhappy.

I don’t know how to be ok with myself.  I don’t know how to be happy.  I look back on my life and there were only a few years in my childhood that were not difficult or painful.  Not that having a difficult childhood is a bad thing.  I am not complaining.  The path that has taken me to where I am has been an incredible one, and I have few regrets.  Ok maybe that one night in New Orleans.  But only that.  But I have never learned how to be happy.  Every moment of happiness came with strings – kind of like laying in the guillotine.  Sure it may be comfortable, but that blade is going to drop any moment.

I am gradually trying to work my way back into the martial arts.  Something tells me that it is the answer to the question I am trying to ask.  It is blatantly apparent how much my body has changed, and I resent aging.  I resent surgery.  I resent all the injuries that have compromised my strength.  And I wonder how I overcome it.  I don’t doubt that it can be overcome.  Martial artists do not live much past 40 if they do not figure out how to overcome the repercussions of their choices.  Not as active martial artists they don’t.

Which brings me to the question – what am I?

I used to be dangerous.  Today I was in a meeting and I surprised myself by how much I knew about the topic.  Last Sunday I tried to remember my kata and found that I could only reliably perform half of them.  It was as though I could not connect my body to my brain.  My body knew what to do, but my brain… it wasn’t sure what time zone it was it.  There is no reconciliation.

For a long time I tied my identity to my ability to defend myself – and anyone I cared about.  I would still probably be a pain in the ass in a fight – though I am not the fighter I was.  But it is not my identity.  Nor am I a scholar.  Nor a public servant.  Nor a wife or mother or lover.

I am lonely, but not in the bad way.  I find that I crave solitude.  And I am a little unnerved by the strength of that craving.  My friend tells me that this is a sign of change.  I can taste the change.  It is in everything I do, everything I try and every time I fail.  And I fail a lot.

But what I wish I knew is what comes after?  Change… and then what?  Because I want to know how much energy to invest.  How much time to allocate.

Or maybe I should just give in and rejoin a dojo.  It would be beautiful to work at a single identifiable goal again.