- First attempt
My motive to try BJJ was simple: there was a world champion coach* in my gym, I was trying to make the most of my membership.
*It turns out Issac isn’t the only world champion. Sa’idah is a world champion, too.
The very first person I talked with about Jiu Jitsu in Urban Boxing DC was Coach Sula. At that time(July, 2019), I didn’t know his name, and wasn’t sure whether he was just a member hanging out at the gym or worked there. But he was very delightful and told me to talk to a guy on the mat.
The guy was not Issac. The first BJJ practitioner I have ever talked with was Curtis. He told me that he had been practicing BJJ for three years. It was the sixth month since I first tried boxing. Three years sounded very senior to me. He said there were always people who were more senior and more capable. It always shocks me when I remember the look in his eyes – staggeringly sincere, like a precious item I have lost during a war. I could not comprehend how something like that could survive till this day.
I did not enjoy Issac’s class. During the firefighter drill I have to put a person roughly my size on my shoulder, walk to the other end of the mat, do 10 squats, walk back, do another 10 squats. Then the other person do the same to me. I was extremely scared and wasn’t strong enough to do the whole set. Issac taught a closed guard sweep, which sometimes worked on women roughly my size. I tried it on Curtis once, but couldn’t move him at all. I felt bad for being so clumsy. He seemed to feel embarrassed for his size. Plus at that time I was still recovering from my knee injuries, doing sweeps made me worried. Overall I felt I wasn’t strong enough to do BJJ.
2. Cyrus
The first feeling I ever had after walking into Urban Boxing Bethesda was panic – because I couldn’t see where the cubbies were. But I already walked in, people have seen me, it would be more difficult to step into this place after running out in panic. Luckily a guy at the front desk talked to me and I saw the cubbies with his help. This was August 5th, 2019.
I live in Foggy Bottom. I am autistic, easily startled and deadly curious. The thought of spending an hour on the metro to visit UB Bethesda used to make me feel exhausted. But Loic spoke highly of this location, and I was curious about Emmanuel’s teaching because of a Yelp review.
So I decided to try Emmanuel’s BJJ class. The class had already started. A group of muscular men were doing warm-ups in a circle. As a tiny person with female appearance, I didn’t start panicking when stepped into the circle, because I hadn’t recovered from last episode yet. Things went really well after this – Coach Cyrus took me under his wings and spent the whole class teaching me basic techniques. I find myself getting super thrilled pushing people around. And the techniques are so basic that even a clumsy person like me can get.
It turned out the other coach was Charles. So who was Emmanuel? I ignored the question for the moment because I figure that I would be OK training with Coach Cyrus. I was like a newborn duckling imprinted on him. But he disappeared since my second class. Now I had to train with Charles. The first test comes right after the class started. Charles asked us to do arm hang, but the bars were too high for me. I stood there feeling awkward and helpless. Charles noticed me and helped me get on the bar. I told him I could get off myself because I didn’t want to trouble him. Of course I panicked, again, in the air! My heart was about to explode but I was too shy to ask Charles. Eventually I let go, with scream because my feet hurt. Charles heard me and said next time he would help me. This is the reason why I didn’t stop going to his class but stopped panicking. I was seen.
I soon get addicted to Charles’ Jiu Jitsu class. I just enjoy the thrill of making a move. My knees suffered a lot. At one point I couldn’t stand for more than an hour after a one-hour class because it was painful and worrisome. My knees hurt whenever wherever I sat, too. I didn’t stop going to the class. I have to admit it wasn’t a rational decision. Because at that point I didn’t know whether my knees could eventually take that instead of getting worse. I also felt sorry for Charles and Cyrus – thank goodness he returned after a few weeks! Because I felt I was so extremely clumsy, couldn’t remember anything, often couldn’t hear them, spoke very poor English, and my brain would suddenly go offline during whatever exercise. Although they never expressed any concerns, impatience, etc. I felt like they were better off without me there. But, again, I enjoy the class I just gave up on thinking about what was best for the coaches.
Coach Cyrus is like Master Shifu(red panda from movie Kung Fu Panda) with the temperament of Po’s foster father Mr. Ping. He is talkative, super patient and supportive. He had to talk me through a technique over and over and over again. I was basically an infant with very little control. He is clearly neurotypical. He tended to respond to a fact or observation with emotional support. I appreciate it but also didn’t know how to respond to it. It seemed that he didn’t want me to feel frustrated just because I was not good. But his comfort often made me feel nervous and tired. because when he provided support, my emotions were pulled up from peaceful deep sea submarine mode to the surface to do dolphin tricks. I have to use force to: (a)suppress logic thinking; (b)pull emotions up; (c)search database for a proper response, which I often don’t have. And when my emotions are back on the surface, I get more self conscious about how much I suck. Since this is very tiring for me, I feel like I make Cyrus do extra work.
The truth is that failures themselves don’t bother me at all. Failures don’t have emotional value by themselves. As long as I don’t get injured, I can keep going.
What traumatized me when I was growing up was the harsh humiliations came along with common mistakes – the teachers I grew up with claimed that they believed children were heartless monsters who only want to do bad things, if they didn’t get punished hard when they get a calculation wrong, they would keep getting worse until ended up to be criminals. Now at this point in my life, I’ve already figured out that those were excuses they used to justify them lashing out at defenseless children. But when I was little I realized no matter how hard I tried, I could not get myself out of the fate of being humiliated harshly at unpredictable rate for things I couldn’t control. And I was supposed to appreciate their kind concern for me, they only did that because they cared about me and wanted me to be good. I was angry about all the things didn’t make sense to me. But since nobody took my perspective, eventually I reconciled all the facts with one logic: this was my fault. Everything that didn’t make sense to me – all those humiliation suddenly dropped like a avalanche; all of those riddles I couldn’t figure out in my workbook(now I know they are part of the kickback system); once I forgot to bring a textbook, and the teacher hit my head with a wood stick, it hurt like hell – was my own fault. My life was a waste of resource. And I was punishable by death for any mistake.
I grew up with one wish – to be invisible to teachers. I don’t mind failing infinite times. I just want to do my own thing without the fear for avalanche. The distress I got from the teachers’ voice haunted me for many years, and became the source of this delusion I had, that I would make a mistake and destroy other people’s life. It is ironic because the teachers who traumatized me this much did so because they valued me as their top student.
When I am at graduate school, I can just stay quiet and not getting in anybody’s way. But in BJJ class, I cannot lay low and do nothing.
I have to practice the techniques while being physically retarded. I have to be seen. Cyrus has to tell me over and over again, step by step. Charles works more with other students. Cyrus is like an aid for a child with special needs. I don’t know how much Cyrus knows how embarrassed I was for myself. When I was a kid, I was the bright one. I once solved a math problem the smartest teacher couldn’t solve. I was repeatedly punished when I was literally the best. But in Bethesda, I was literally the worst: smallest, slowest, weakest and clumsiest – I saw a guy who came for the first time could spin better than me when I was already training for months. I often couldn’t hear the coaches. I forgot most things that was taught. Supposedly being the best should give me some leverage. Now I am a dead meat with zero good standing. I was like a swimmer who was constantly drowning, and Cyrus had to rescue me over and over and over *100 again. Thinking back I couldn’t remember how I moved pass that stage.
Cyrus only got upset with me once. It was a Thursday, we were practicing rear naked choke with resistance. Every time he escaped from my legs pretty easily. He said in an unhappy voice that I gave up too early. If this were the beginning of a fall out, here are the reasons:
- My knees still hurt. I didn’t know how serious it was and didn’t want to exacerbate it.
- My knees got hurt in the first place because I didn’t give up in time. It was one extraordinarily intense boxing class, I couldn’t do one full push-up, but was asked to do 100. I did them with my knees on the ground. I ended up with severe pain and could barely walk for over a month. I felt extremely stupid for putting myself through this. I should have thought more carefully and quit early.
- I highly suspected that Cyrus was upset because of something else. He just lashed it out in training context. If you understand how cognitive rigidity works, you would understand this is a deal breaker.
Any one of those reasons could become a deal breaker, because I was that fragile.
I was surprised, too. I only got upset because my coach was disappointed with me, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. So the next day in Loic’s boxing class, I arrived half an hour early and tried to hold the bag with my legs. To be honest I don’t think my rear naked choke get much better ever since. But that never came up again.
This is when I know what it feels like to truly trust someone, to truly feel safe. I didn’t attack myself. Just tried to put in some more work. I didn’t have to try hard to convince my devastated self that he means well, like what I had tried and failed for so many times when I was a kid. He just doesn’t trigger me at all. Perhaps the hours we spent on mat, aka, him watching me struggling had eventually rewired my brain. I viscerally know that he has accept me at my worst. He had never and would never attack me for something unfair. The one incident was he didn’t like a choice I made. From his perspective he had a point. He never said you suck at this, why do you bother to stay alive, like my teachers used to say.
As I get to know Cyrus a bit more, I feel like he is kind of like my father, who seldom have strong opinions, is gentle in nature and get along with most people. I feel like Cyrus, although has dozens years of experience practicing martial arts, isn’t great at facing conflicts in life. I, on the other hand, tiny and feeble, but also fierce and opinionated. I constantly see problems and spend hours depicting and discepting them. I feel like when I know what the goal is, I thrive at conflict by channeling my inner thug. After being taken care of for so long, I realized that not everyone needs to be the same(I cannot be that caring! lol). And people like Cyrus will have people like Charles and I to fight for them. I strive to be the bouncer in our class, not because I am any good, but because whoever messes with me would become the asshole who would beat up a tiny asian woman and immediately lose on the moral ground dimension.
(To be continued)
Scopiology 