Nightmare Stew

Are They Still Watching?

TW: Self-harm, anxiety (takes a turn from more light-hearted to aggressive fairly quickly)

My heart beat out of my chest, my breath, uncontrollable, my thoughts racing faster than I could control them. Managing these things has always been difficult, especially when it came to Jiu-Jitsu. When I started martial arts, I was seven years old, so quiet that I was almost unnoticeable. My parents decided that for me and my confidence, they were going to enroll me in JiuJitsu. The day was bright and there wasn't a cloud in the clear, blue sky. You could have fooled me. When my parents drove me to the "Little Ninjas" class, I was so scared that I arrived at the gym whimpering. We learned the basics that day, moves that I will never forget. I settled in and even talked to a few new people. That was until the coach said, "Now we're going to roll. Pair up." Being a seven-year-old girl, my mind went straight to the idea of doing summersaults. I could not have been more wrong.

That day, I learned that "rolling" meant sparring, or fighting with each other. Looking back, I believe that this is where my fear of not meeting expectations crawled into my head. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I would walk in and cross my fingers, that I would not have to roll. Regardless of my hopes, it always happened.

Yet, two years later, I was at the top of the class. I had excelled and found my rhythm, beating almost every boy in the class. The coaches praised me, gave me security in their class, but in that, they also gave me a new fear. I gained confidence, but also a fragile ego.

I was ready, they said. I had been enrolled in my first tournament at eight years old. The days were flying by, and finally, I had arrived. It was so long ago that I can not recall the little boy's name, only that he was my first and only fight of that day. I never saw him again.

The air was freezing when I stepped onto the bright yellow and blue mats, we shook hands, I became oblivious to my surroundings. Faintly, like an echo, I heard a whistle blow in my ear. The crowd was shouting around me, but I couldn't hear it. Before I could register what was happening, I hit the ground hard. Bang. A hand was against my face. Bang. My arm was being stretched past its limits. Bang. Thirty seconds had passed, the referee had ended the fight, and someone else's hand was being raised.

I can't explain what this did to me, I just know that I thought that my coaches and friends would look at me differently. I truly believed that they would look at me like a loser, a coward. This scared me. I was strong and confident. Thirty seconds in a high school gym took that all away.

I gave up on tournaments, begged my parents to not make me go. I went to frightening extremes to try and get out of it. Shocker, I was forced to go back again, again, and again. Over and over again the pressure built up inside of my young, impressionable mind. I needed a way out.

The search for an unrealistic and un-obtainable escape left me grasping for ways to fail. My search bar became littered with questions like " how to break your ankles without pain" or "how to make yourself throw up. " As the self harm was never a permanent or completely reliable escape, I was left reeling in fear and felt tailed by disappointment. 

It seemed I had no escape. The "how to break ankles without pain" lost the "without pain." I was hopeless and crumbling at the tender age of ten. 

I was not ok.

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This was more of a vent piece, re-worked from an old school essay. 

Once again, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed (but did not relate) :)