Serenity

Several months ago I decided I wanted to try my hand at writing. If I glanced around at the creative ventures I have given the most heart, writing would fall second from the top, right after music. On May 18th, I will be 35. I am in the third year of my second marriage, after being married nearly 10 years the first time. I am not working as a nurse, after practicing for only two years. I have decided to send my children back to public school after homeschooling them for three years. I am staring at my Emmanuel, who is eating macaroni with both hands. I surmise he will be much too cheesy to nap in what he is wearing, if he naps at all. There are flaky egg rolls in the oven, and I am hungry after Jiu Jitsu. I am wondering if the egg rolls are flakier or if I am. I'm not the only one to think it about me or tell me they think it about me.

Alien is probably one of my top ten favorite movies, The Lottery one of my favorite short stories. I am a horror connoisseur. If I had the honor of naming a King of horror, I would give Stephen the crown and scepter. When I decided I might try my hand at writing I read his book On Writing; one day I will probably read it again. Stephen writes more than 2,000 words a day every day. He believes in order to gain mastery at the craft, you must practice. When studying accomplished authors (truly any person who ascends to mastery at their chosen craft) you will find a pattern emerges among the most distinguished writers: they write everyday. Yesterday I wrote 2,159 words I am not going to publish on this humble little blog. They were wrought with anger. I spent hours recounting the intimate details of my childhood hurts, spewing horrid imagery of everything I thought was wrong with my childhood and how it is the reason I am having to use medication today, despite how much I do not want to be using it. It wasn't what I set out to write. I wanted to write about my insomnia. I had a bad night of sleep, and last night I had another. I have taken the last step in my taper off this anti-seizure medication before I come off it. I did that on Sunday. Maybe that is why insomnia set in, maybe it isn't. Sometimes medication will help, and then it wont again. I was all in a knot and very unsure about putting so much out there. Before I laid everything bare, I marinated for a while on the decision to post it. I talked to my husband about it, and we came to a very powerful conclusion.

I watched Saving Mr. Banks for the first time a few weeks ago. When I learn of a person who suffered because they had a very broken father, and a very broken childhood as a result, I am always moved. There is a scene at the end of the film, when Tom Hanks (who is playing Walt Disney) recounts the hardships he suffered in childhood-at the hands of his father-to P.L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins. P.L. Travers also has a sad childhood centering on trauma brought on by a broken father. After Disney tells Travers the story of his childhood, he tells her, "I am so very tired. So tired of remembering it that way." If you have ever seen Mary Poppins you know, it may seem as if Mary has come to save the children, but she truly comes to save Mr. Banks, their father. Perhaps I have always known this to be true, and perhaps that is why I love the film as much as I always have. I don't know how to convey how important Saving Mr. Banks is to me right now, but I decided, in all my trepidation, and all my angst at what I lived through, I am also tired; I am so very tired of remembering my childhood the way I do, the way I wrote it down yesterday, in those 2,159 angry words. How anchored my thoughts were in my past, and how completely that keeps me from being in the present.

Jiu Jitsu forces you into the present, which is, lately, where I find myself so desperately wanting to be. I could see how all my words were working against the thing I am trying to do right now: be present. As Nathan and I walked home from the park I was so keenly aware of the disparity between my approach to writing and my Jiu Jitsu. We walked home and I was unable to help feeling great regret about the hours that felt wasted, banging out fitful words, expending energy, and losing it all. How is it I can expend energy I don't need to spend, knowing I am doing it, and knowing I will lose the fight, and not feel regret or failure, when I come to my Jiu Jitsu practice, yet when I spend energy typing out words, expending energy I don't need to spend, and losing it all, I will fight utter failure and regret for all the time I spent working on something I cannot use? Did Stephen King teach me nothing? Did I not use what I wrote yesterday, today? Is there no value in practice?

I rolled today with a one stripe white belt. He was a good teacher, and very helpful. We learned how to shoot in between legs and get hold of the person, then turn the corner, around them, while maintaining hold of their legs in order to take them down to the ground. At some point, when he was practicing the take down on me, I reflexively went to stabilize myself in the fall and he came down hard on my arm. My middle, ring, and pink finger bent back. . . very far. They didn't break, thank God. Before that point I spent a lot of energy doing the moves the wrong way, and then I got hurt, but I don't feel I failed at anything. I am feeling like today is the step I am on that gets me to tomorrow. Going through all my hurts and thinking about my past the way I was yesterday feels on the inside, the way my fingers feel right now on the outside; I feel bent out of shape. I am so very tired of remembering it the way I do. Yesterday wasn't a lost day writing about my past, even if I feel sore about it today; I learned. Today isn't a lost day just because I didn't defend a take down properly and bent my fingers to soreness; I learned. I fired up this computer when I got home after Jiu Jitsu and I knew what my plan was to write about; I got back up, even though I know I'm hurt. Friday I will go back to Jiu Jitsu and fight again, even with sore fingers, because these lessons are too invaluable for only having done two days of Jiu Jitsu, I am seeing too clearly the value of the metaphor already.

At the end of class I rolled with a brown belt and I wasn't about trying to prove anything since my fingers were feeling quiet tender. I spent most of the time during the roll thinking about how appropriate it would be to start strumming my lips, so I asked him a lot of questions, and took a lot of opportunities to pause and consider my navel, since I really just plumb don't know what to do. He would get me in his guard, and I would stand up to try and break out, the way my friend told me to do during last class. I would get onto my feet and this brown belt would tip me right over onto my ass, then secure me back in his guard again. I would stand up try to fight his legs off me, and find myself flat on on my back again. After the third time getting knocked to the ground (finding it all quite hilarious) I said to him, "what is it I am doing wrong here?" he told me. "I have your foot over here and when you stand up I am using it to knock you down. You just need to shake my hand off of your foot and move it away. Just shake it off while you're up."

Right. Just shake it off.