Reached a low point in my training. Sobbed for hours last night. We did grappling.
When the grappling began, I kiaped and told Master that I'm not healed enough to throw someone over my body, using only my hurt shoulder as the pivoting point. He said okay, watch. A few minutes later he changed his mind, and told me to concentrate and train and that it wouldn't hurt my shoulder.
It did, it hurt so badly that several times I just started crying. Like the time I was throw over my head and landed smack on the hurt shoulder, which was then put in a joint lock and wrenched behind me until I stopped crying enough to tap out.
And on and on it went, holding back tears, crying when I was hidden enough to get away with it. By the end of class, I couldn't hold up my shoulder. I couldn't shift gears in my car on the way home, I couldn't lift my backpack out of the car.
Now I'm a mess. My shoulder is aching, but feeling better than last night, after pain killers, salonpas patches, and anti-inflamatories. But I'm so embarassed that I couldn't stop crying, that I couldn't just buck up and CONCENTRATE and not show that I was hurt, that I'm not sure I can show up to train again.
How much is a membership to Gold's Gym?
SGL, 11:15am
Saturday, September 27, 2003
My favorite class is favorite because of the professor. He's charismatic, brilliant, and entertaining. I wanted so badly to write a great paper for him, so he'd see that I appreciate him.
He lectured for 30 minutes on how our writing was inept. He apologized for the grades, but promised he'd turn us into writers. He listed what we did that we should not have done, and what we should have done that we did not. He told us he's used to people crying over the grades he assigns.
Then he handed back the papers.
I got an A, and under it, written in almost indecipherable scrawl, was "now that's a paper."
Then an upset girl raised her hand. "I don't understand what I did wrong. I want to see an A paper so I can see what you think is so great." The prof said "that'll be hard, there were only 2 in the whole class."
Then he looked at me and said "you got one, didn't you? Let me see your paper." and then read it aloud.
It was the most delightful humiliation I've ever experienced. It's kept me happy and glowing for days.
SGL, 12:24pm
Sunday, September 21, 2003
It was a great weekend. I was sick, but it was still great. Last night Meg and a couple of her Rice pals slept on our living room floor. Ali woke up full of energy at 9, and forced all of us up and out for brunch. It was fun, though the Ricers were none too good for conversation before their coffee kicked in.
Then Ali and I went downtown to the drag, where we walked around and up and down and played in the arcade and ate pizza and got wonderful ice cream with caramel and chocolate chips. It was a perfect afternoon.
And now I'm home, trying to get my act together for the week. I've work to do, and school to do, and this new black belt test for which to prepare. It's making me stay up at night. No, not the work, not the school, but the black belt test. The idea of being a part of that is so exciting and yet so huge and insurmountable and terrifying, that I can only stay up at night, mind a muddle and heart racing.
Ali wants us to start running in the mornings, he says we need to build up our endurance for the test. Yeah, let's add that to my anxiety.
SGL, 11:00pm
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
I'm sick. It makes me miserable. Maybe I was miserable before and this is an excuse for expressing it.
10 days til round one of midterms. I'm an idiot, and I think perhaps this idea of testing my abilities in academia was a bad one.
Ali's x-gf, the one everyone tells me is so beautiful, is calling him all the time. This I do not like, especially when I am sitting sick. He laughs at my silliness and makes me a lemon and honey drink for my sore throat. I love him.
Ezra is gone, which I also do not like. He is having a better time of college than me, because he is not an idiot.
My thoughts are truncated because the room is spinning because my body is full of medicine because I am sick.
But Shawn is blogging, so I wanted to, just so I won't be left out.
SGL, 11:35pm
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
I've been told I am to test for black belt this December.
I'm officially freaked out.
SGL, 11:01pm
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Saturday was a ceremony with all the red belts, pum dans, and black belts. I was there, but I felt as though I was looking down from up top, watching the whole thing, not participating. I felt like a pawn in a game, I was a body and no more.
I realized that Master's approval for me will come only when I am one of two extremes (tough and agressive and makeupless, or beautiful and passive and completely madeup), not like the combination I am.
School is hard. I admit it. The classes are kicking my butt. Mainly the probilitiy calculus has me down. Math wasn't a prerequisite, how was I to know I'd fail?
I feel like I've failed in so much more than following some lectures. I feel like I've spun my world so hard and so fast that I deserve this dizzy feeling, this out of place feeling.
The year is flying by. I'm getting so old. I feel so old. I feel so isolated. I wish I knew calculus.
SGL, 10:52pm
Saturday was a ceremony with all the red belts, pum dans, and black belts. I was there, but I felt as though I was looking down from up top, watching the whole thing, not participating. I felt like a pawn in a game, I was a body and no more.
I realized that Master's approval for me will come only when I am one of two extremes (tough and agreesive and makeupless, or beautiful and passive and completely madeup), not like the combination I am.
School is hard. I admit it. The classes are kicking my butt. Mainly the probilitiy calculus has me down. Math wasn't a prerequisite, how was I to know I'd fail?
I feel like I've failed in so much more than following some lectures. I feel like I've spun my world so hard and so fast that I deserve this dizzy feeling, this out of place feeling.
The year is flying by. I'm getting so old. I feel so old. I feel so isolated. I wish I knew calculus.
SGL, 10:52pm
Sunday, September 07, 2003
It's Sunday night. But for the first time in ages, I'm looking forward to Monday. Here's why.
I love American history. I've already read the reading for the entire month of September, and now I'm writing short essays about what I read so I'll remember the material when test time comes.
In Korean, I am the oldest student and 1 of 3 non-asians. It's not a bad place, just an odd one. The class is confusing and little more, so far.
My Italian Civ class is terrific, with a handful of intelligent, older students and a professor who is handsome and brilliant and entertaining. We have a paper due in a couple weeks, but I've already got an outline and a title for mine.
Lastly is my Scientific Method class, where we're doing probability calculus which is so mathematic and complex that I'm lost, but I'm lost in good company. I've made a friend who wants to be my study buddy, so this class will turn out well, too.
And tomorrow I get to dive straight into these things. That is why Monday this week is, for once, not to be dreaded.
SGL, 10:18pm
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
It's great, really, being able to study full time. It leaves me with so much free time, though, time which isn't really able to be filled by work, because it's not continuous enough for me to finish the projects I would start. So I just meander around, I feel alone and ultimately just unimportant.
I have no friends in school, because my friends graduated long ago. The new kids in my classes are so young, with concerns so different from mine, how can I relate to them? The schoolwork itself is delightful, but there's so much more to being a student than that.
So here I am with the classes, which interest me, but little more to keep me alive and awake and happy. Ali's too busy for me and my family seems bored when I gush about school, so I'm learning to keep to myself even more. My shoulder is feeling better, so maybe soon, hopefully soon, god please let it be soon, I can go back to hardcore training.
Until then, I'll keep waking up and putting one foot in front of another, which is often as much as I feel capable of doing. I'll keep waiting for the difficulty of the semester to set in and grab my attention so I can thrive.
SGL, 11:25pm
"Perhaps the essential role of the ego is to mask from consciousness its very spontaneity." - Jean-Paul Sartre
