Fuck, why can’t I go HAM all the time?
This week not only did I pull my groin but I also accidentally hit a wall so hard in my kickboxing class during a roundhouse kick set up that my middle left toe is now black and blue all over (my second toenail casualty this year).
The evening before I went to this kickboxing class I had a package containing a Batsheva skirt (it was on sale) stolen from my building, which hasn’t happened at my apartment before. I was so infuriated that from this kind of anger that it made me almost laugh; anger is an emotion that always makes me feel young. I started therapy my second month in New York and I was freshly 18. My first few years in therapy I learned that anger was always a baseline emotion I was feeling because I could not let myself feel anything else. I had a lot to move through: being pissed at my parents for a wide variety of grievances from my childhood, being fat at an acting school, defeated that I felt poor at my rich school no matter how much I lived off my loans to keep up with the other kids, betrayed that my country could elect a fuckhead like Donald Trump while realizing a load of other barriers in America. I could go on but I don’t want to.
I was stuck in it and I didn’t know how to get it to shut up other than drinking it down, then I was able to feel what I thought was joy, happiness, and bliss. I have done so many things at a high velocity and intensity in the name of “bettering and improving myself” that I have instead injured myself through. Drinking is a big example of this, but I’ve hurt myself in other ways in the idea of “bettering and improving myself”: being keto, running 7+ miles every day, binge eating, etc. I have put myself through so many extremes because they all feel boring after they stop working.
Going HAM (hard as a motherfucker) is my way of control. I love it. I’m in an industry that is so subjective and success - or, how I have defined it for myself - in it is statistically low, so how else am I suppose to feel like I’m accomplishing anything unless I have activities and skills I can go hard at? Going hard makes you feel accomplished, which is the closest I’ve ever felt to successful. When my package was stolen I went for a run that evening to sweat it off. I didn’t feel anything but fury until I got back and felt an insane amount of fatigue for only a 5k. I pulled something because I didn’t give a warm up much mind: I thought maybe one of my neighbors was a thief! How else could I think of anything else to protect myself from future harm when I already felt at risk in my home?
The next morning I went to kickboxing to sweat out the residual anger I still had in my pocket. What a better way than to beat the shit out of an inanimate bag? I had no idea what this thief looked like but the bag absorbed the imagery that it was anyone and everyone. Now my toe is black and blue.
Later that day I figured out who actually took it through security footage from my building management: a random man buzzed my building, someone let him in, and then 20 seconds later my package was taken. It was not a neighbor, but some elderly man with a cane. I laughed.
My refund is coming and I scheduled a visit with a physical therapist for this week. Tomorrow I will run again with a well-fueled and stretched body, easily. Today is my rest day.