Fighting with the Bear
The beginning of the week hits hard.
I feel the clouds in the sky are getting darker and darker. I can hear the malevolent murmur around the corners. I feel every eye watching me…
I feel that evil, predatory breath…
I know it’s coming!
I suspect it will hit me on Monday.
Because I cried five times while watching the movie “Project Hail Mary.”
And this should be my solo date — my time of peace and creativity.
There was no peace indeed; I was sobbing without a voice. And I wanted to cry so hard that every person in the movie could hear my screams…
So that’s how I knew:
It will knock on my door in forty-eight hours.
At the beginning of the week, on this fateful Monday morning, after three hours of grinding in the gym, it hit me with a full open hand:
My period came.
Monday is casual, cramps and headache. This is the day when my critical thinking skills still stay unaffected.
But Tuesday…the second day…this is a different story!
This is how I imagine it feels to fight with a bear — it is trying to chop you into several digestible pieces, and you are bleeding while watching the love of your life dying in front of your eyes…
You are devastated…but somehow so furious, you hate that fucking bear while mourning for your lost love!
You want this pain to stay unknown, but as much as you try to bottle it up, it bursts open and converts into sobbing in your jiu-jitsu session(yikes).
I knew I was ready for it in the first ten minutes when the class started, but I held it in.
And it happened in the last five minutes, when my training partner was trying to escape from an armbar, a devastating stupidity from him made the curse be unbound from its chains:
He put his freaking foot inside my kimono, inside my training bra!
And half of my boob jumped out!
He did not realise it, neither saw anything. I put it back.
But it happens so that when someone puts their effing leg in your bra…You want to beat an absolute living shit out of them!
Except you can’t!
And you are not able to say — hey jackass, if you ever touch my boobs again….
Because he will know this, and you do not want to shame yourself.
So what do you do?!
Yes, that’s absolutely correct!
You burst into tears.
Into a full breakout, so that no one knows what happened, and they can only offer you the tissues…
Except your coach, who tries to be supportive yet can’t help but laugh?!
Because in the last year and a half, I have been training, I have a record of crying events:
Probably 30% of it because of some guy (and his crush I have a mental beef with), 10% because I was frustrated, and the staggering 60% because of my period — only the answer was always something else.
Do you feel sad? — he asks me.
I continue sobbing.
Why the hell would I feel sad?!
So you are angry?! Because it’s happening and you can’t control it?!
He really seems to be willing to get down to the bottom of whatever it is.
Me no angry — a cavewoman wakes up, and again, why would I be angry? But mentally, I am back to the picture of me fighting with a bear, and my lover is dying.
Soo… he really tries to be supportive, or just really wants me to shut up.
Me…does not want to exist — cavewoman gets a hold of her desperation and makes a full sentence out of it.
Oh… he gasps.
You did not know it was that serious, right? Well, me neither!
Does it happen every month?
Yes!
Do I spend a week every month agonising about my life and hating every living and breathing creature around me(including myself)?!
Absolutely yes!
Am I aware that it’s just a period?
Yes!
So does it mean it helps somehow?
Fuck no!
Every month it’s just the same.
And today I throw my blue belt(received a month ago), and I curse it — I curse it in three languages, all the languages I know, and I make sure it stays on the floor…
What if I burn it?
I promise myself I will never get back to jiu-jitsu again.
I am really fed up with these crying sessions, and also, I am very bored.
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Where is this community that was promised? The fun? The challenge? The camaraderie?!
Ah, wait, probably this is because we are mostly three people in this class?!
You might say — that’s fabulous — you have all the coach’s attention.
You might be right,
Except I don’t think I really benefit from it. What I benefit from is called variety.
This is a thinking game — and you can’t advance if you are not solving various types of dilemmas — and the dilemmas come from different people of different levels.
Do you know what I solve every day?
A bench press dilemma, because my training partner has an extra 20 kilos than me — so every time I need to move, I think — so if I resist, won’t he plant my nose in tatami?
Yes, he absolutely does it!
So I don’t move; I don’t pass the guard — I don’t try to be cool just to get planted after a second; I try to survive and get my control from the bottom positions, which is an absolute nightmare.
And this happens every single day.
The imagined bear is ripping me, but honestly, I am fed up with it!
When you can’t solve something because it is a high-level problem, you reflect and reorganise.
What can I do with the weight difference? And please, no, no skill can compensate, especially when you are a woman in a circle of men.
Men try to man up!
To be harder, stronger, meaner, more aggressive!
I don’t give a damn about those things in my training — I want to get my job done!
And every sport has its own job and principles:
For example, boxing has a single very simple line: hit and don’t get hit.
So why would anyone take pride in getting hit in the face?
Your brain gets a microcoma every time someone punches you. Do you want your doctors to figure out what happened to that bright mind of yours, suddenly?
And the same goes for BJJ — if you can take a woman half your size, what does it mean for you in your sport?!
Well, absolutely nothing, you are still fighting in your category with your weight, so why don’t you use a little bit of common sense here?
Period or not, I am too fucking exhausted. I get into combat sports because of curiosity. After all, it pushed me to think, even though it feels so counterintuitive, because it seems so violent.
Yes, the violence is a part of it — yet, there comes clear thinking and problem-solving abilities, and the most difficult — to control your emotions and impulses.
I feel like I was created for it, yet the space pushes me out.
The man-up circle beats me up to pulp and leaves me outside — to tell me you are not welcome here.
And the worst thing is I don’t really know where to go — I don’t mind training with men occasionally, but every day, most of the time?
I don’t think the coaching helps either. Some coaches can coach groups with women, but not the women specifically.
In martial arts, you become aware of how much difference there is between the two. And it’s not only physical power — the most obvious- but the resistance, the will to learn and let others learn, and to be accommodating to someone. Everything functions differently for us — the hormones, the body, the sleep-wake cycle, and the desire — what do we want to achieve from our training?
I take a week of BJJ — free.
Just because I am doing something does not mean I need to keep doing it.
But also, I don’t want to make it bigger — the space frustrates me, but I think I want to stay on this journey for a while.
Usually, I say I will think about it and try to change — but this time, it’s not my place to change — I can’t brute-force this problem — my periods won’t disappear, and I will always refuse to go with brute force in sports that require craftsmanship.
The decision does not come from pure frustration because, oh, yes, I have tried with brute force: guess what happened:
broken finger ligament, the other finger popped out as well, damaged elbow ligament, I hurt my ankle joint, and once I almost broke my neck — cried so much because I was afraid.
So if you think I did not try to man up, you are wrong.
Seems like it does not really work for women against men?
I wonder why…ah, don’t all the discussion and repression issues come with the fact that men can physically damage women without even sweating?!
In the business and office spaces, this bravado is handled differently — women use their communication to maintain and advance their status, yet you can’t communicate your way in combat sports; you have to outsmart and outskill your opponent…
The thing is, it requires a really good amount of time, dedication and one secret spice:
The will to fail…again and again.
As every failed attempt becomes a data point, you know what works with whom, why and how.
And you get better veryyy veryyyy slowly.
But as we already experience pressure in other parts of our lives, we don’t really want to hold on, fail and fail again. It’s maybe a challenging game for a kid, but it’s humiliating for an adult. after all, we are so measured by our own KPIs, and do not even have an idea why they matter.
The rest of the week goes by relaxed and easy. I do not pressure myself too much, and I get myself busy eating the delicious food.
Period or not, coffee and great food are a “heals everything” type of medicine.
I zoom out, I have plenty of problems, like unemployment, the endless waiting for the Spanish government’s response to my visa request and the fact that in a month, I won’t have any money.
In the midst of all of this, there is a real bear — more dangerous, more vicious, the one I can’t even try to look in the eyes:
This one is different; this one is a stone wall; this one can’t be outskilled and outsmarted.
This one hates me going back to my “stable job”. It is not cooperating.
Let’s do daily sessions of job hunting — I say.
It does not listen.
It ignores me as if it has its head in the clouds.
I get frustrated. The tears choke me up.
But why? I am in a crisis. Why don’t you care?
I have no answer…my bear does not seem to be interested, and I do not know what is it the bear knows, and I don’t.
We are wondering about next week.
