Personality Flaws

I don’t think it will surprise anyone to know that I have a bit of OCD.  In some ways that is very good.  I always check my knot before climbing.  I’m super attentive to certain procedures – requiring that all steps are followed – even when I don’t want to.  And I pick paint.  I also peel wallpaper.

My first house had these fantastic wood doors that somebody had painted over in the early 60’s.  The original finish was shellac.  Which often has a waxy finish.  The lead paints that were used to cover the wood eventually lost their bond and after years of repainting – the final coats with acrylic latex paint that has mediocre adhesion but awesome stretchability – meant that there were layers of paint just bubbling and waiting for me to peel them off.  And I would.  I would spend hours peeling paint from the doors in that house – while I was talking on the phone or waiting for the laundry or just thinking.

Wallpaper fairs no better.  I actually cannot put wallpaper in my houses because I can’t resist picking at the seams.  At my old church I peeled all the wallpaper off the walls around the toilet – because that is where I would go and hide after church was over so that I wouldn’t have to sit by myself while the rest of the kids talked and played together.  Yeah.

The same goes for stickers.  I had stickers all over the top of my old laptop.  It was fine as long as the edges stayed down, but the first time a corner started to peel and it took every last bit of my willpower not to start picking away.  I  may yet succumb.  And when I bought my new laptop, the first thing I did was peel all of the stickers off – all but the microsoft sticker with the operating system code.  All the stickers on the palm rests are gone.  Actually, that is true for all of my computers.  Same goes for books.  I always peel the price stickers off.  When I was buying used books from the college bookstore, I would peel off the often several layers of used stickers as I was reading.  And if there was glue left, I’d use mineral oil to remove it (note: mineral oil as in baby oil or body oil does a great job at removing sticker glue without damaging most surfaces).

Now I pick at my dog.  Fate would have it that my dog sheds in a way few non-Akita owning pet owners can understand.  Her fur comes out in handfuls.  It has been coming out in handfulls for almost two months now.  It will continue to come out in handfuls until June.  I can fill a trash bag with fur in less than 20 minutes and not have made a dent in her shedding coat.  But what is worst is that she gets these tufts of hair that have totally released from the skin and are sticking up and out but that are held in place by the curly nature of the adjacent hair.  See, her undercoat looks like somebody took their toddler’s super fine hair and put it in one of those ’80’s hair crimpers.  It’s all kinky and wavy and super thick.  And it sticks together.  Except for the little tufts which come loose, and which I cannot resist pulling.  I cannot resist.

Dog is trying to figure this behavior out.  It isn’t petting.  It isn’t playing.  What it is is a kind of primate-esque grooming where I pick at the tufts of under coat and pull the not quite loose hair loose.  I don’t think it hurts her, but this is our first full shed-season together and I know she has never had this kind of scrutiny.  And I can’t help it.  She walks by with a tuft sticking out and it turns into a fifteen minute grooming session where I’m picking at her undercoat and making neat little piles of hair sorted according to color.  White and coarse for the underbelly, white and soft for the chest and legs, gray for around the neck, and black for the back and head.

Tonight I started to pick at her hair and realized that she was so dirty that I couldn’t sort the piles.  To the bath we went – note dragging a 75lb dog by the scruff of her neck is much easier on hardwood and tile floors than on carpet – the sliding, while somewhat distressing to the animal I’m sure, is actually fairly easy.  Poor dog.  So I half carried and half drug her into the bathroom, lifted her into the tub and gave her a bath.  By the time we were done it looked like a small animal had exploded in there.  The amount of hair in the tub and one the floor and the walls and the mirror and the window and the toilet and the sink and the cabinet is almost enough to pet.  I was half thinking of filling her next toy with her own hair – except for the mess that would make when she tears it open.  I have yet to clean it up actually.  Procrastinating.  Or waiting for it to dry enough to be sweepable – your pick.

You’d think that after that kind of activity all of the loose hair would have been loosened.  Not so.  I’m still being taunted by tufts.  And poor Dog has no patience for my manhandling left.  I don’t blame her.

Last night the rats came back – but with interesting results.  The first one started screaming from his perch on the plumbing pipes right under by bed at 2:30 am.  I think he fell of the pipes at that point and beelined for the exit – which I heard him fall out of and then squeal again before climbing the fence and running off.  The second rat was about an hour later.  It didn’t squeal, but I heard it both enter and leave the crawlspace – the first leisurely, and the second in a hot hurry.  So the pepper-spray jelly seems to be working.  I took the day off work to work on my thesis – made significant progress – today so I wasn’t so anxious about waking up in the middle of the night to listen to the rats.  I was almost amused even.  If I go two nights in a row without activity, then I can seal up the entrances with relative confidence that I haven’t trapped anything under the house.  I do not want to trap anything under the house.  The fact that I’m now attuned to their noises means that they’ll have a hard time coming and going without me knowing it.

It’s one of life’s little ironies.  I’ve always been a light sleeper, but I became very easily awakened when I lived in my first apartment/cottage.  People would deal drugs and steal from the cars parked next to my little house, and I learned to listen for the sound of footsteps on the gravel outside.  It got so that even with the windows closed and the wind blowing and the rain coming down I could hear someone walking by my building at night – no matter how deeply asleep I was.  My first two apartments in Sacramento were situated so that I had no direct access to paths of travel – and it was wonderful – I almost never woke up because something was wandering around outside.  But this house is different.  I hear the people walking by on the street at night – and they are walking by at all hours.  I also hear the dogs and the stray cats as they move about at night.  And I hear the rats.  I can hear them when they are on my fence.  I know when they cross the gate by my room and I know when they climb up the water heater enclosure to get access to the roof.  The sound of a rat on the fence will wake me up.

The sound of a person outside my window will actually get me out of bed.  It’s happened.

So last night I got to listen to the rats as they navigated their slightly altered environment.  I’m looking forward to closing them out of my house.  Not that I’ll sleep all that much better – there is always some noise in this ‘hood that needs attention – but at least I won’t be wondering if something is going to be crawling across my bed as I’m trying to sleep.

My next home will be in a townhouse or apartment up above the street level.  I feel a lot more secure when I know that whatever it is that may want to come visit me needs to navigate 12 or 15 feet of vertical space first.

So yeah.  OCD Paranoia.  And you know what?  Those are the personality bits that I’m actually comfortable with.  They’re useful.  Kind of.

A Bit of Fiction

A friend of mine likes to share the familiar saying – what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.  I like to follow that up with “yeah, or leaves you scarred and horribly disfigured.” but that is just me.  It’s a cliche, the whatever doesn’t kill you saying.  Things become cliche for a reason.  Usually because of their proximity to a truth.

Today I went to my second ever office holiday party.  The first holiday party where I wasn’t deeply wishing there were some sort of spirits to provide some social lubrication – or to at least quiet some of the voices in my head – the voices that are in charge of reminding me that there is so much work to do and so little time to do it and what am I doing at a “party” when I should be writing papers.  Like I would confess to the other voices here.  Whenever I go to a social event like this, I’m always worried that somebody is going to ask me about myself.  A person doesn’t have to ask  very many questions before the answers start to get very awkward.  And I’m not even talking about specific questions.  General questions lead to very strange places in my life.

In the past I’ve been evasive, too truthful, played dumb, just plain lied, and changed the topic when the subject was me.  I can be subtle at this or very obvious.  But the reality is, I like the people I work with now.  They are good people.  And I don’t want to put myself in a position where I have to maintain an overly complicated story.  For instance, when somebody asks me how I know how to do this or that or the other, I don’t want to have to try to remember how much of my story I’ve told them – or worse, which of my stories I’ve told them.

So every time I prepare to go to a social event I plan out exactly how much of my story I will tell.  Just in case.  Sometimes I don’t need it, but more often than not I’m the new person, and the new person is responsible for providing new stories.  This morning, on the way to the holiday party, I prepared my story.  I didn’t need it, thank goodness.  I’m much happier right now being in the background.  I don’t think things will always be this way.  I know they won’t.  But for now I don’t put my name on anything.  I claim no credit, no responsibility, no accolades.  I do my best to be solidly in the margin.

The story I prepared this time is different than all of the other stories I’ve told.  Not in content, because the events are what they are.  But it is different in perspective.  It is not a victim story – I’ve way outgrown that phase.  Besides, still playing the prey when you’ve actually become the predator is difficult to convincingly pull off.  Nor is it still the “I’m responsible for everything” story.  I think I’ve finally accepted that there have been a lot of things in my life that I simply had no control over.  These are things that even stunted my range of reaction.  I did what I could with what I had.  It might have taken me longer, and I might have done it the hard way, but really, I didn’t have a lot else to work with.

This new story is that my life right now is the results of a combination of my choices and my luck.  And neither have been all that great.  At the same time, I’m starting to understand why people come to me when they are trying to figure something out or when they need additional information or a new perspective.  A lot of that has to do with my bad choices and my bad luck – because that is what taught me the most.  Which gives me a new perspective about my choices and luck.  I have been cursing both – I feel like I should be established by now.  But the chances are very good that I’ll never be established – at least not in the way I think I should be.  And maybe I should learn to be OK with that.

In the break room today I was asking questions about what triggered ground cover requirements for recently cleared land.  Yeah, I’m a real ball of fun.  Anyway one of the people I was talking to inquired why I was asking.  I told him about the abandoned houses that have recently been demolished in my neighborhood and how the lots are now sitting open and bare at the start of the rainy season, and how I was hoping they wouldn’t turn into huge muddy messes.  Of course they will, but I’m still stuck on a time in my life when the ground froze during winter, so don’ t hold my optimism against me.  The person who asked me why sat for a minute after I explained the bulldozed houses and then he asked me where I lived.  I gave him my neighborhood and he stared laughing.  “You take the whole living the adventure thing all the way home, eh?”  And I smiled.  “I like to be consistent.”  Which is a total lie, but it sounded witty in the moment.

I’m getting closer to the truth about myself.  The more I’m around other people, the more I talk to them and listen to them and think about them the more I understand my choices and my luck and my role in my own life.  I’m unusual, an outlier even.  But I’m not the only one.  Which is helping me to understand that while I’m sure I am deeply scarred and grossly disfigured, I’m also much stronger than I give myself credit for.  Turns out, all those bad bits didn’t kill me after all.

I know.  I’m as surprised as you are.

Cost Benefit Analysis

The thing that they don’t tell you when you are filling out the grad school applications is that if you are accepted into a program and if you intend to complete that program in a timely manner, your relationship with time will change completely.  This happens gradually with different phases, but with the same result – all those things that you used to do for the simple pleasure of doing them – those things that did not render up a finished product or did not immediately and meaningfully contribute to a current project – those things become unsustainable.  Suddenly there is no time for them.  No time at all.  Even when there is time, it is not linear time that can be used as one would like, but time that is connected to the time necessary to complete each and every unfinished assignment.  A web of time and first and second and final drafts and incomplete research and unprepared lectures and piles of reading and more piles of writing all interconnected until it is impossible to know where one stops and the other starts and no matter what, there is not enough time for it all.

I spent years of my life just wishing for each day to come to an end so I could be done with it – never looking forward to the next, but simply satisfied that the time was passing.  Those days time couldn’t pass fast enough.  In my foolish 20 year old heart I assumed that it would never change – that I would be passing time for the rest of my life.  I was so wrong and yet right that I am sometimes amazed at my own path.

Yesterday I took a day for myself to spend some time with a friend doing something that I love – playing in the snow.  I had an unorthodox childhood – my introduction to the suburbs was late and lacked any of the sense of “safety” that originally drove families out into the hinterlands.  Instead I spent my childhood living on the edge of some of the last truly wild land left.  Winter was serious business in the little town I called home.  The town itself was nestled in a shallow but expansive valley up in the mountains.  The horizon was framed by mountain peaks on all sides, and the foothills to the next range were within walking distance of the one traffic light in town.  They would close school on snow days, and on days when the temperature dropped so low that it was dangerous for kids to walk the few blocks to school. The town was mostly poor, and many kids didn’t have good cold weather clothes.  I remember girls walking to middle school wearing light jackets on below 0 days, their hands and faces numb and pale from the cold.

And I remember the times I got so cold that I was sure I would never be warm again – the times I got ice in my boots – that never melted even though it spent hours against my skin – the times I lost all feeling in my hands from the elbows down, the times I would come home with strange patches of white on my nose and cheeks and ears.  I remember the times it ached to stand next to the wood stove.

There are also parts that I have tried to forget.  Like the mornings I put on a dress over my tights and winter boots and long coat and went and stood in the cold on a neighbor’s porch to explain the bible to them.  The mornings that the car holding the missionary group would get stuck in the snow and I would be out with the women in their nylons and the men in their pressed slacks trying to push it until the tires could get traction on the dirty brown ice.  I remember feeling almost naked in my JC Penny dress and white nylons as the cold wind blew right through me – chilling to the bone.

Yet when we left, the thing that I missed most – more than the mountains or the people or the town or the home was the weather – the seasons – the snow.  I missed that unambiguous cold.  I could not get used to days of 40 degrees that felt so much colder than the below 0 I knew.  I desperately missed the wood stove with its obvious heat source – its “stand here and be warm simplicity”.  I missed standing out under the huge pine trees – the ones so old and sturdy that the first heavy snow would create surprisingly warm caves around the trunks.  I missed the frozen ground and the clean whiteness of the cold.  I was not prepared for green grass in winter and mud mud mud everywhere.  It felt unnatural.  Wrong.

It has been over 20 years since I left the snow country.  Yet every time I get a chance to return to the snow I feel like I have reconnected to that child who used to dig snow tunnels from the front door of her house to the mailbox on the street.  This year I have decided to make an effort to allow myself some of that time.  Yet the expense…  Oye the expense.   The monetary expense is one thing.  Nothing is free.  Nothing should be free.  And I accept that.  But the time expense?  The time that is so intrinsically intertwined with my every waking moment that I can never forget what I “should” be doing?  That expense is usurious.

I’ve come to realize that a major part of my current malaise regarding my studies has nothing to do with the topic or the teachers or anything so simple and accessible.  It is because I am tired of living without creativity and intrigue and fascination and curiosity and danger.  I need change and risk and time to squander figuring out how stuff works and how to make the things I find interesting.  I hate feeling guilty for reading literature or studying 19th century costumes or sliding down the mountain as the falling snow absorbs every unnatural sound into a kind of natural white noise.

There is irony in this guilt.  My intellectual stores are empty.  Creativity and fascination and adventures are my intellectual nourishment, and the less I have given over to these pursuits, the less I have had to spend on long-winded papers and in-depth studies.  I feel like I’ve been regurgitating the same things over and over – a sort of superficial moral outrage cloaked in academic language that I pass off as analysis.  It goes nowhere.  Yet I have nothing to supplement it with – no art, no music, no emotion.

Only memories.  And those are… tainted.

One winter, when I was 12 I was riding one of our horses in the far pasture near the marsh.  She was not my favorite horse – but I was one of the few people who could exact obedience out of her when she was feeling obstinate.  That afternoon she was unusually nervous – a storm was coming, and the temperature had dropped remarkably fast in a very short time.  I was ready to turn back to the barn when she started bucking on the ice.  We both went down hard, my leg under her side, and my head hitting the solid ice with a crack that echoed in my ears.  I was lucky that I did not get tangled in the saddle, and that she did not crush me in her struggle to stand.  She was the largest horse we had at the time.  She was long gone when I came to – the second time I had been knocked unconscious (adventure and I are close companions) and I remember lying there on the ice, very aware that I needed to move, that I was so very cold, that my head hurt and my ears were ringing and that nobody would know where I was or would come looking for me for hours and that it was getting dark and that stupid horse was still wearing my saddle.  But I so wanted to sleep.  For just a little while.  Just a nap really.

I didn’t sleep there on the ice.  In the end, it was the saddle that made me get up and walk back to the barn.  I broke a cardinal rule that day.  I did not get back on the horse that had thrown me – and I was never confident on that animal again.  But I did unsaddle her, water the rest of the horses and walk home just as the wind picked up and the temperature dropped well past freezing.  I fell asleep on the sofa in front of the wood stove.  I didn’t tell my mother until later what had happened.  I’d likely had a concussion.  Not the first or the last.  Still, not something to take lightly.

These days I feel like I am still lying on the ice.  I know that I cannot stay where I am.  The list of concerns running through my mind are long and serious and paralyzing.  I just want to rest.  Just a quick nap.  But the time to move is coming.  I just hope that this time, when the time comes to finish what I need to finish, I’ll have the motivation to get up off the ice, and walk through the frozen pastures to the barn and finish my chores.

And hopefully, when my time is mine again, it will all have been worth it.

Liquor is Quicker…

I’m not an alcoholic, I just…

Yeah, that phrase isn’t at all suspicious.

Dog is on a mission to lay down in every spot in the house to see which is best.  She just did her circle and flop routine in the closet.  It’s not even a big closet.  But there she is, wedged between the high-heeled sandals that I never got a chance to wear this summer, and the black satin evening gown that I’ve never worn in public.  If I didn’t know better I’d think she was making commentary on my jeans and t-shirt/slacks and button down lifestyle – the lifestyle that does not involve ever looking or acting like a girl.

Not that I’m all about the nail-polish and the designer handbag.  I have this theory about women, the more high-maintenance their hairstyle/nails/make-up, the more high-maintenance their personality.  And honestly, I don’t have the time or energy for it.

Men, on the other hand seem to feel differently.  I guess there is something to those high-maintenance girls that they find appealing.  I wouldn’t know.  I haven’t been on so much as a date in… well, if I’m being honest, it has been a very long time.  I’m all about making do, so I try to count the things that really don’t count.  I’m great at making friends.  And I’m good at fostering a certain level of intimacy.  But that is not dating.  That is hanging out with friends.  Everyone goes home alone.

I’m not complaining, or rather, I am complaining, but I don’t expect any sort of resolution.  This is my choice.  Or my sentence.  Not sure which.  Someone asked today if I love Dog.  I care about Dog.  I want Dog to be happy and to have a good life.  I want to do what I can to aid in that.  But Love?  Love is a strong word.  I feel the same way about my friends – I want them to be happy and to have good lives and in that way I love them.  But Love?  No.  Not Love.  I think about my life and there are a lot of things that I would really dislike giving up, but there is nothing here now that I could not walk away from – without looking back.

This is what I’d hoped that having Dog around would change.  I’m so emotionally detached from everything around me, I’d hoped she would help me reconnect.  And in some ways she’s been a godsend.  I like having her here.  I like having something that is happy to see me when I get home at night.  I like having something that is excited when I wake up in the morning.  It is soothing to my ego.  I feel a little less invisible – a little less expendible than I used to.

At the same time, I know that my status in her life is a matter of chance.  If not me, someone else.  Or no-one else.  It all ends up the same.  Worm-food.

In a conversation with my mother today I told her I have no expectation of making it to fifty.  She was telling me that fifty feels so young.  I do not doubt her.  I feel young now and it isn’t until I look in the mirror that I remember that I’m now counting my age by decades.  At the same time I want to be done.  So badly do I want to be done.

This is something that I didn’t want to write about here.  I’ve done the pathos thing.  I’ve gone through the therapy and the drugs and the whole deal.  I did not want another of my writing experiments to spiral down into the realm of constant-self pity.  Yet, it is self-pity or nothing at all.  It is where I live.  It is where I’ve lived for a long time now.  I comfort myself these days by promising myself that if it ever gets that bad again I have permission to check out.  To call it good.  To be done.  To die.  And then I keep adjusting the definition of that so it doesn’t include the now.  Because I’m not quite ready yet.   Not yet.  Though I’m close.  I’ve been close for a long time now.  I don’t know what to do with that.

I have the best friends in the world right now.  I have people that I care deeply for and that I know care about me.  I have shelter and intellectual stimulation and a constantly growing set of hobbies.  I do whatever I can to keep my mind occupied.  And when I know that I cannot keep it occupied, I deaden it with booze.  But I also know that I am lonely.  I’ve been lonely for so long that it is part and parcel of my self-identity.  When I dream at night, I dream about what it is like to be alone.  When I daydream about the future, there is no-one else around.  This is it.  Not even my subconscious believes that this will ever change.

The funny thing is that I watch my friends and neighbors as they navigate their relationship drama, and I want nothing to do with any of it.  I almost feel superior – with my emotional detachment and what-not.  Almost.  Then I remember how many years I’ve spent alone.  Years.

I’m living by a new policy these days – get as much life lived as I can as fast as I can.  I don’t expect to live to a ripe old age.  It would be foolish to pretend that I’ll have time to do the things I want to do later.  I won’t.  And as I’m not stuck with anyone else to worry about, there’s nothing to slow me down.  So when this life gets old – and I know it will – I’ll be in a place where I can end it without guilt or regret.

In the meantime, it is a matter of endurance.  And balance.  Liquor is indeed quicker, but just how much booze does it take to erase the lonely?  Maybe I should make a scientific study out of it.

Self-Help Thru Whuppins

In an attempt to maintain some sort of sanity (and to prevent every conversation from devolving into a rant about my thesis) I’ve been trying to read books about things other than land use policy.  Do not fear, I still read a great deal of land use policy. Piles of it. And it still gets me riled up. But, as a medium for personal growth, land use policy is generally lacking.

I read a lot this summer. I’m still reading a lot – generally reading has superseded my other “relaxation” activities (knitting and re-watching movies) and I have found that much in the same way that I stand in front of the open pantry wishing I had a bit of cookie or licorice after dinner, I will stand in front of my bookshelves and search for something to satisfy my literary craving. I have a lot of books, so this would seem like a desire that could be met in-house. Not so, as evidenced by the piles of new books stacked on every flat surface of my living room (and some not so flat, as Dog has discovered).

These new books fit one of three genres. They are crime/assassination thrillers with complex good/bad guys and a realistic approach to fighting, evasion, and investigation. I care not for long descriptions of physical appeal (how rippling were those abs?) and prefer detailed depictions of the procedure necessary to determine that one is not being followed. Or they are books about how we are messing up our planet by eating unsustainable foods and living in unsustainable neighborhoods and using unsustainable transportation and how all of that is connected and how it has been subsidized and fundamentalized and become such a part of our existence that we can’t imagine not living that way, even though our lives could arguably be healthier, happier, and more meaningful. Or, because the first kind of book gets me excited, and the second kind of book gets me angry, I read books about how to be a better person.

I’ll be straight with you. I’ve started one book on how to be a better person, which almost immediately triggered my gag reflex, and I just finished one book that was technically about how to survive violence that felt like the author knew me – didn’t just know my personality and my experiences, but my thought process and the words that I needed to hear. To be honest, it caught me by surprise. And now I’m reeling a bit. I expected the book about learning to let go (which is what I will get tattooed on my wrist as soon as I am done having surgery on it – an odd tattoo for a climber to be sure, but there you have it) to tell me the things I needed to hear. Apparently either I’ve already moved farther along in the letting go process than I thought, or I am not in the right place for that book because it just made me aggravated. When books start throwing out the “self-love” terminology I find my skepticism kicks into overdrive. When books talk about acceptance AND self-love I start to get that bile in the throat taste. I have never been an acceptor. I do not want to accept – or at least, I do not want acceptance to be my default state. Not for myself, not for the world around me, not for my life.

Change does not happen through acceptance. Change happens through action (and sometimes there is a good bit of resistance too – which is generally a waste) by choice and by recognition that the status quo is Not Good Enough. I remember the first time my therapist told me that I was good enough – he was trying to help me establish some sense of self-worth. He asked if I understood and then if I agreed. I told him I understood but that I didn’t agree, not then, but I’d keep working on it. He took that to mean I’d keep working on acceptance. I meant that I’d keep working to make myself better, stronger, calmer, smarter, more confident, more social, more empathetic, a person who is good enough.

I have a very good friend who is deep into acceptance and finding inner peace. She gets frustrated by me because my reaction to perceived setbacks is often self-denigrating, and she can become infuriated at my emotional flailing at what she identifies as problems inherent in the human experience. This is because I will not simply accept conditions as they are. First I will try to outsmart them, then I will try to get around them, then I will try to overpower them, then I flail. I will not accept until it is obvious that there is no alternative. And even then I will pout.

Yet, for the first time I actually understand why I do what I do and why I cannot ease into acceptance – and I can say with some confidence that it is very unlikely that I ever will.

I just finished Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts by Rory Miller. The book is full of pointers and concepts created to not only explain what happens during a violent encounter, but how to prepare, avoid, engage, and survive one if need be. It is not a macho book. It does not glorify or romanticize violence. Nor does it feed the paranoia. What it does do, though, is explain how violence really happens, and what really needs to be considered before a person finds themselves in a violent situation. How unfortunate it is that the only way to learn what needs to be discovered before being thrust into a violent situation is having experienced a violent situation without that preparation.

At the close of my marriage – when the abuse was still too fresh in my memory to have become part of my story, I joined a martial arts school and began training. I never told my instructors about the abuse. I never even hinted. But one thing was obvious, I was aggressively hunting for change. Not only did I not want to be a victim in my story, but I did not want to be a victim in reality – not ever, and change – a fundamental adjustment to my personality – was the only way to make sure that didn’t happen.

But change is not easy. It hurts. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. It is like going through a box of mementos of your life and tossing the stuffed animals and the spelling tests with gold stars and the greeting cards and school photos. They become things that belong to someone else, and while it is often heart-wrenching, it is also liberating. The key is to stick with it – to keep pushing the change – to not give up. Because giving up is anathema to change. Because acceptance may be less painful, but it doesn’t actually alter the situation.

I realize now that I am someone who would rather hurt and work (fight even) toward altering a situation rather than someone who can find peace in acceptance. I’m not looking for peace – at least not as a permanent fixture. I don’t want drama or war or violence, but I do want the conflict and challenge inherent in change. I want to grow and push myself against my boundaries because I realize that the boundaries I find so limiting are almost always of my own creation. Because that is how I overcome them, through conflict – and that is where I get as close as I ever will to peace.

I’ve been frustrated for a while now because I could not figure out how to get “past” my need to constantly push myself. Frustration leads to punishment (seriously – Meditations had some of the best treatment of “punishment” and its worthlessness as anything other than an expression of sadism (or in my case masochism) that will give me a lot to think about for a while) which ultimately leads to injury or damage or exhaustion or any other of a dozen blocks that stop my progress. The problem isn’t the pushing, the problem is the frustration – the expectation that I should be working out my issues some other way, that what I’m doing isn’t right or best or even beneficial. The reality is that maybe, just maybe I should accept that acceptance isn’t for me. And maybe I should quit thinking of change as a unilateral motion – that can only be accomplished one way.

Like the book said, it isn’t the technique that means the difference between survival and failure, it is the preparation, committment, and intent that are going to be the determining factors. I think I just got a glimpse of the forest through the trees.

My History of Violence

I’ve spent a lot of time considering how to tell this story.  At first I figured it would be chronological – a simple line forward from that to that to this.  Yet I haven’t written that story – I don’t know that I can write that story.  There are parts in the tale where the telling is difficult, where the mind takes over and the heart hides and the voice slips into the monotone of survival.  And that is not the truth.  That is not how it happened.  I was responsible for my choices – even when I chose to do nothing.  Especially when I chose to do nothing.

I grin when I spar.  A well placed defense or a well-timed strike will make me smile like an insane person.  And if my opponent lands a perfect hit – the kind of hit that I know would have taken me out of the match were we fighting for real – I giggle like a psychopath.  I cannot help it.  I take delight in the art of combat.  Besides, it disorients my opponents.  And that is never a bad thing.

I was not always like this.  Fighting – physical violence – used to terrify me.  I didn’t like getting hit, and I really didn’t like hitting.  My first forays into the ring, back when I began studying the martial arts, were humiliating disasters.  I would try to defend myself, but I could not bring myself to attack.  My end goal was simply to survive without serious injury until the bell rang and I could escape.  As often as not I got injured.

I learned that as unpleasant as pain is, it is not fear-worthy.  Only recently have I realized what a valuable lesson that is.

My life works better when I’m fighting regularly.  I function better when I’m fighting regularly.  There is something about the immediacy of combat, the paring away of everything but that exact moment, the total focus on what is happening right then that I find cleansing.  Perhaps it is that fighting quiets all the other voices in my head.  I step into the ring, my gaze narrows on my opponent, and everything else slips out of focus.  My thoughts still and recede and my mind and body become a singular entity.  I can feel the ligaments in my hips and the tendons in my knees.  I can feel the bands of muscle across my shoulders and back.  I can feel my stomach and my liver and my kidneys and my intestines, wrapped in muscle and bone and flesh, as they adjust their function and quietly enter survival mode.  I can taste the adrenaline pumping in my blood,  metallic on my tongue and electric in my throat – as though I’d swallowed a 9 volt battery.  And my mind goes quiet.

I cannot explain how wonderful that silence is.  Most of the time I have what meditation experts call a monkey mind.  Except it often feels like a troop of monkeys – all screaming and swinging and throwing their shit and trying to escape out my ears and eyes and nose and mouth, and the only thing keeping them in is my skull and my skin – my flimsy eyelids and my chapped lips.

I’ve understood the advantages that the martial arts bring to my life for quite some time.  Yet for some reason I resist acting on this knowledge.  Perhaps it is because I view fighting as a recreation – much like other people view exercise in general.  I make excuses about not being able to afford it (I can’t) and about not having the time (I don’t) and not wanting to start over from scratch someplace new.  The truth is that I can’t afford not to.

I remember the first time I was struck as an adult.  It’s not something I’ll ever forget, even though I experience the memory as an observer instead of a participant.  I see my eyes go big with shock at what is happening.  I see myself stumble off-balance and fall through – not into, but through – the closed laundry room door.  The latch holds while the wood breaks and splinters.  I see myself on the floor, as stunned as I am hurt, trying to reconcile what just happened with my previous understanding of the world.  Even now I can hear the monkeys screaming.  Silly monkeys.

I didn’t walk into the dojo that cold sunny afternoon in December with the intent of learning self-defense, though I’ve allowed the inference in other tellings of this story.  I walked in there because I wanted to be a different person.  I thought I wanted to be Jackie Chan or Jet Li or Michelle Yeoh.  I thought I wanted to look like a fighter – a harmless mimic of violence.  I thought I wanted it to be flashy and impressive and essentially useless – like a hollywood fight scene.

I did want to be a different person, but it wasn’t Jackie Chan that I wanted to be.  It was a better, stronger, faster, braver me.  I thought I wanted to learn how to intimidate others.  Instead I learned how to take care of myself.  I lucked out.

This afternoon I was sparring with a friend who is still new to kickboxing – the martial art I’ve been teaching him.  I was, at one point, a good enough kickboxer to compete in the amateur leagues.  I’m a long way from that kind of condition, those reflexes, that skill.  But I remember enough to teach the basics.  Tonight he made the perfect block.  It put a bruise like a quarter on the top of my foot.  The impact was so right, the pain so familiar, the execution so flawless that I couldn’t help myself.  I was so proud of him, and so pleased with the moment that I almost broke into dance.  I threw the horns and laughed and cheered.  While he was concerned that he had possibly hurt me (he didn’t) I was ecstatic about his progress, that now I can move just a little bit faster and we can spar a just a little bit harder and the periphery can get a little fuzzier and the instant a little sharper.

I only plan about two sessions ahead these days.  He’s a quick learner and in a couple of months there will be little left for me to teach.  And while teaching is good, so is learning.  It’s been a while since I’ve been on the receiving end of a lesson in violence.

I’m overdue.