Warrior

This is going to be an ongoing, messy, ugly, difficult story about redemption. It is going to be a fight.  I wrote this original post on the 16th of April, just one day after merciless flames consumed Notre Dame. The event gave me great conviction of the value of human creativity, and most certainly great pause at how necessary it was I find something creative to do, despite how completely I felt I was failing at everything.

This is a story about depression and my fight against it, it is about recovering from abuse, it is about learning who I am, learning how to value myself, and learning how to not accept guilt as a first reaction to choices I am uncertain of in life. But most of all it is the story of my journey through Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I know Jiu Jitsu is going to teach me things I need to know about myself, and free me of things I desperately need freedom from. I know it is going to help me learn about who I truly am. I know it is going to help me reach into my person, and discover my true identity. I do not believe I am thinking about this on too grand a scale. I believe Jiu Jitsu is going to help me connect with and understand myself in a way I have been unable to in my life up to this point. I believe God inspired me to pursue Jiu Jitsu because He understands me perfectly, and knows exactly what I need. I believe this so fully right now I am going hard in the direction towards learning this gentle art, because I believe there is treasure in it for me, there is a story within it for me, there is redemption within it for me, freedom, confidence, family, pain I consent to instead of pain I am subjected to, humility, and a wealth of knowledge so deep and so vast my frenetic mind will never reach the ends of it.

April 16th, 2019

The morning broke and the few shards of sleep I had gotten, felt held together by Elmer’s glue. Something made me want to hear Kaerenai Futari. It makes sense when a girl is feeling fragile, and desperate she would crave the comfort of a father. I know his version of the song doesn’t work on Myspace, who uses Myspace anymore anyways? When I went and tried to listen to it anyhow, and I confirmed, yet again, it doesn’t play, I fished around and listened to a thin version by a young Japanese lady on Youtube. I cried because it is thin, and my dad’s is not, I cried because of the tragedy of love in the song, two lovers who don’t get to go home, and I cried because of the the story the way I know it, and of how my dad told it to me. I cried because it is in Japanese, and I love Japanese because he speaks it, and I do not. I cried because he tells good stories, and because he plays music so beautifully. Maybe mostly I cried because I can’t listen to this particular song the way he plays it, or I will have to be in the same room with him, which I can’t do, because he abused me, and he isn’t sorry. It is enough tears to wash away all the glue holding my shards of sleep together, and even the thin vibrations of the song shake me sufficiently enough I walk down the stairs to my husband in pieces. So many nights I go to him in tiny desperate pieces crying that it is never going to get any better, even though I know it is distressing for him to hear me talk like that. Even though I know so much of this pain is the anti-epileptic drug I am trying to come off of. Even though I know it will hurt him to hear me say it.  “Aubrey go outside, read a book, go play with the baby, or play the piano. If you just sit here in the basement with me, I have to choose. I can either care for you or I can work, I can’t do both, and if you sit here and talk about how it is never going to get any better, I am going to choose to take care of you.” Nate’s eyes always get very big when he is exasperated and afraid. “Just work then Nate.” I explain to him the rotating nature of our support system, and how often he will believe what he is doing is supporting me during a difficult time, when in truth what is happening is that we have clumsily switched and I have begun haphazardly supporting him.

Depression sinks both people in a marriage, not only the person suffering from it. I grab my illustrated copy of The Hobbit and go outside. Dave, Nate’s dad, had been over babysitting Emmanuel a few days earlier, and in the time it took for a lunch date he had made his way through more than a quarter of my version without illustrations. I was pretty impressed at the time, and also certain he had grabbed the safer, less interesting copy of the book, not wanting to risk the copy he knew I treasured. Before I relented to the outdoors and The Hobbit, I detailed to Nathan how reading with the baby, or playing the piano, or doing anything with grubby toddler’s hands grabbing at me, was nearly impossible. “I have to get up and do work with the baby every day, and I have to just get through it. I think what you are doing is making excuses.” Peering out from the dark of my depression I understood he was potentially very right, so I grabbed the book and went outside. A few paragraphs into the book the baby made some loud demand and I put the book back down again. 

Sitting in the sunlight eased some of my pain, some of the despair at how little sleep I was getting, and my certainty at how little I would be getting in the weeks to come, but after a few exhausting rounds in the yard with the baby I sat my trembling, half starved legs back in the chair on the patio, and planted my forehead onto my forearms. I gazed at the fading deck through the grated table. “You are going to have to fight your way out of this Aubrey. You are going to have to fight so hard.” My mind is always racing faster than my tired spirit can keep up with. “But I am really not that good at anything. I am really not that good a singer, not that good a writer. What can I take up now at 35 that it is not too late to take up. Something I can really fight for? What can I do that will take as much fight as I am going to need. What thing can I do with a grubby little toddler clutching for me at every moment? What? Am I going to fight hard to read books? You can see just how that worked out. I am not going to fight hard enough for music, I am just not good enough. I am not going to fight hard enough for writing, or poetry, I am just not that good, not good enough to fight as hard as I am going to need to fight to get out of this pit. What am I going to fight hard enough for? I need something to fight for and I have nothing.” Even James Cameron has not ventured to so dark and deep a place as answerless exhaustion compelling you to suicide. Right at this moment I was not in so dark a place but it hadn’t been that long. I knew my healthy mind didn’t really believe I wasn’t good at anything, but the darkness of my mind in this moment was stubbornly not penetrated by the sunlight. I sent my prayer out into the dark. “Please God, give me something to fight for.”

               

When I met Nathan, back before either of us had ended our first marriages, he was fresh off a new Jiu Jitsu injury. A larger opponent came down hard on his knee and took out both his ACL, PCL, and his MCL. He didn’t know it at the time, but it would spell a goodbye to Jiu Jitsu for him. One that wouldn’t come right away, and not before he had an opportunity to introduce me to it. At the time I could see the martial art was a pursuit to throw yourself upon, one that became forged into identities. Despite what was clear about it, I was not looking to pursue a sport, I was pursuing a man, and so I did the sport, not really looking to obtain something I did not need. I was going to become a midwife, and would not have time to be passionate about something which required so much passion. It was enjoyable, but once I knew I had my man, his injury started to make the sport feel tenuous to him, and the bruises and sore hands made it easy to walk away from for me. After we left, Nathan’s son Seth dabbled in it some, but for the most part it has just been something we have watched skilled fighters use in the UFC.

Over the course of the last year, as I have dredged my way through anxiety, depression, schisms with my family, and the realization that the man who sexually abused me, and physically abused me to keep me quiet about it, is a raging narcissist, it occurred to me that I fight with everyone. Nathan frequently would tell me how I cut his head off about things, and I cut other people’s heads off about things. I started to see myself as a Samurai suited in armor wielding a deadly sword. I told my first therapist I could see I was always armed and ready to chop off the heads of my opponents. When I sat down with my current therapist for the first time only a week ago, yet again this is how I described myself, as a samurai, ready to chop off heads. Once I decided I did not want to have contact with my father anymore, a number of conflicts grew up around me, and the anxiety that developed in my life became overwhelming. But a girl wants a father, and I let him back into my life again eventually.

Before that time, Nathan and I arrived at the samurai metaphor. We discussed how many times I had taken my weapons out and began fighting hard when conflict sprung up around me. We began to see what a great toll it took on me, every time I would fight with anyone and how very often, most especially my family. It all seemed very unhealthy. We both agreed it was very important I stop fighting with people, but for all my effort, even as I sat in my therapist’s office only days ago, this is still how I see myself, clothed in plated armor, sword at the ready, steeled eyes glaring, waiting, ready for you, ready to fight. Are you ready? 

For the life of me I cannot help it, and when I cannot fight other people, I fight myself. If I can’t beat up on others, I will beat up on myself. My head tells my heart"that piece of writing is really not that good. My voice is not that good." After so many years I finally understand why. When my father came to my house with my mother, on the day I became suicidal, I shared my poetry with him. He read it and immediately gave me a dozen reasons why the narrative didn’t make sense, the words were confusing, the poem should be rearranged, or would be better this way, or that way. I have never been suicidal in my life, they come over, I played them a song and a poem I wrote, and he tells me how it doesn't stack up. After he was done breaking up my fragile pieces he asked “do you know what Ode to Chauveanette is about?” (Ode to Chauveanette is his song) Because, of course, after tearing my art apart, that would be the perfect opportunity to discuss his art and it's superiority. My mother fought feebly and half heartedly in the background, not really giving anything concerted to stop his onslaught towards me in my vulnerability, the way she always has. It is sad, but this is how I have been made. I sat there just days later, staring through the grated table, praying for God to give me something to fight for, knowing it can’t be music, it can’t be art, I am not going to have the strength to overcome the self-critic I have been molded so carefully into. It wont do to pursue my writing, or my music, or anything that comes in the shape of things understood by anyone in my family, because he will be there telling me how to think about it, and I believe that voice. 

Nathan and I have been talking about how I think we should cancel our membership to VillaSport because every time we take the baby there to be watched he gets some horrible stomach infection and winds up with a month of diarrhea. It isn’t worth it. When I do yoga in the classes, I enjoy it, but I must overlook so many things, the philosophies I don’t agree with, my own vanity, my competitive nature, yet I enjoy feeling strong, striving for calmness is a strange juxtaposition which I enjoy, but it is a practice I just don’t quite fit. This morning Nathan and I started watching a Jiu Jitsu video and in it these two Gracie Jiu Jitsu guys are helping another guy learning Jiu Jitsu after he got recorded losing a real fight. The video has them helping him out, and also shows some footage of the guy's with their wives’ practicing Jiu Jitsu. It comes to me all at once. Today I realized it. I told Nathan as I was having the idea, after striving and striving to come up with something I can do, from going back to graduate school, to the getting the membership to the gym, knowing nothing is taking me down to base pairs, helping me understand who I am, and I sat there knowing the thing I was going to have to do was fight my way out of this.

I can admit something. I am very depressed; I have been for a long time. When I was 13 my father fondled my breast while I was sleeping. In the years after, he bruised me, pulled out my hair, drug me down stairs, broke down my bedroom door (that he installed) in order to keep me quiet. I will not be quiet anymore. The year he was in jail for a crime against one niece, when he could have been in prison for the rest of his life for a crime he committed against her sister, I finally told my mother what he had done. I figured he was finally safe enough in jail, he couldn’t be any more in jail than he already was. Really, it was me who was finally safe enough to talk, now that he was in jail. Once she knew my mother cried and cried and told me the thing she had told me many times: “I always vowed if he ever touched any of my kids I would leave him!” I was 30 at the time; she hasn’t left him yet. When I told my sister, she said “I don’t know why you are saying anything now” with a look of scorn on her face. When I told my uncle, he said “I am so sorry, I didn’t know that.” and did nothing, which is exactly what my grandfather did. Nothing is what he did, and nothing is what he said. Nothing is what my brother did, and what my brother said. Everyone who has ever gathered around my father: his younger sister, his father, my uncle, my siblings, my mother, they are gathered around him still, everyone but his niece, the one who understands the kind of man he really is, her and her family. I am going to document this journey for them, because I realize something about myself now. I am a fighter; I am going to go fight my way out of this hell through Jiu Jitsu. I am going to embrace the warrior God has made me through all this adversity. I will not beat myself up anymore. I am garbed in the platted armor of a samurai. I carry a sharpened sword. I am going to embrace it.

April 22, 2019 - Day 1

On Good Friday, after two years, I walked away from the worship team. Sometimes it is not the right time for certain things in our lives, and I think this is true for me with this right now. I have a very complicated relationship with music. I don't know how to not hurt myself about it yet. After two days of bad sleep a final painful blow on the team crippled me on its landing. I stumbled off the stage and into my husband's arms, after sobbing my way through the song I had been assigned. The lyrics felt profoundly true for me right at that moment. In front of a few confused congregants and the band, I fell apart and continued to off stage. Nathan removed my in ear monitors and gave them to someone in the back on stage and then supported my frailty, crumpled person out of the church. That evening, truly wishing not to be be in such an unpredictable, and unreliable place, I let the worship leader know I would be stepping down. 

When it was done, I was relieved. Truly. I have spent four years with this expectation upon myself, that I must somehow be winning, and advancing, and obtaining a position on a worship team. Every time I haven't done it, I have felt crushed, wretched, and have been horribly hard on myself,. I have taken every available nanosecond to consider each of my possible flaws, as the explanation for my inability to gain what I set my ambitions on. It is a battle I cannot win, because I know too well how to disarm myself. I will be as violent, unfair and merciless as the flames of Notre Dame, consuming and destroying anything beautiful of mine. I will cast aside any and all concern for the worth or value of my own creativity until I have nearly no will to carry on in it. I don't know how to not do it to myself right now, so I left. 

Today I bowed onto the mat of Prime Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I looked into the eyes of Marcelo Motta, my heavily accented professor, and there was no judgement for having left four years ago, no judgement from anyone who recognized me, only gladness I had returned. Right on cue with the mat was my humility. It was a refreshing humility, not one I am trying to gouge into my own flesh with a lash, but one that came with laughter. I had no idea what I was doing. Some very basic concepts returned: try to pin down legs, don't let your back get taken (har har...ya right), break grips. During warm up we began doing a pummeling drill. Marcelo paired up with me and he noticed I was tight "loosen up." He told me. "Boa!" (essentially, a way of saying "good job.") Of course, loosening up is precisely why I am there, isn't it? I got hang of that idea better when I paired off with other people. I could feel, in other people, what it was he was talking about, that need to loosen up. The first move we drilled was a single leg drag. As we drilled it, whenever I got my partner to the ground I wound up in her guard. I could not, for the life of me, figure out why the heck this was happening. After drilling it a number of times, my partner noticed I was standing up on the wrong foot when I attempted the take down. I would stand up on the inside leg instead of the outside leg, and end up right in her guard by the time I get her to the ground. "Doy!" 

The next move we drilled was a butterfly sweep. As Marcelo demonstrated it, I paid my darnedest attention. I tried hard to take in as many details as I could. There are a lot of of details that go into something that seems like it should be simple (it isn't)! Controlling the sleeves, foot placement, when to let go of things, where the pressure of your knees goes, how to avoid losing control of the person's upper body. Another white belt and I drilled it and drilled it. When we would start it would seem like the moment I sat down to try it, everything I tried hard to keep in my mind immediately evaporated. That kind of befuddlement is a bit gorgeous in hindsight. I have no self judgement for that moment right now. I wish I could convey how much that means to me right now. I cannot read my own poetry without harsh self-criticism, and uncertainty. When I have finished this post I will have a great personal struggle to be gentle with myself and what it is I am doing in writing down this journey, but that moment of Jiu Jitsu befuddlement, was delight, blissful even, because there is absolutely no reason, I can find in my own mind, to think it should be any other way than pure befuddlement. That is why Jiu Jitsu is the thing I need to fight my way out of this darkness.

As the group moved into 7 minute rolls, I got paired up with a purple belted friend. She was as I have known her to be, kind, armed and ready to shoot you with praise, but also ready to give you enough you're going to learn sweating hard. When I got to the next fight I was pretty tired, and I had been reoriented to a thought I had forgotten since I last trained Jiu Jitsu: I have no idea what to do. As I fought my friend, I kept thinking that over and over, "I have no idea what to do. I have no idea what to do." Into the second fight, that thought wanted to discourage me, and take out my desire to try, but like a lighthouse signaling the way I was able to remind myself of why I showed up today: I am a fighter. I knew I could stop, get frustrated with myself, angry, self-conscious, but I didn't. My new partner took me from tricky position, to trickier one, rear naked choke, to arm bar, and I just laughed. Each new submission was yet another shining example of how far I have to go. But I chose this pain. I gave it my consent. I reminded myself I have a lot of anger I need to fight through. I have a lot of aggression I need out of my spirit. I thought about how angry I am at my dad, how angry I am at my brother who isn't talking to me, how angry I am at my sister who tells me it is my fault he wont, and I fought harder. I fought to get that anger out of my soul. I told myself "I am a fighter, and I am going to keep fighting the guy right now." When I got arm bared again, I didn't get discouraged, I laughed. It was fun. It felt good. It felt like exactly the thing I need in order to get better. It felt like I am right about something concerning myself. It felt like I am one day closer to knowing who I am. Not being good at Jiu Jitsu today felt so damn amazing. I have tore up toes just like I remember. My hair was difficult to tame just like I remember. The mouth guard was strange in my mouth just as I remember, but the mat, the pain, the struggle, the fight, the reason I showed up, all of that was completely different.