21 In-Progress

21 In-Progress: To get a black belt in a martial art.

My history with sports is a highly interesting one. When I was four years old, my parents had me start taking gymnastics. I learned to do cartwheels, somersaults(on the ground) and flips on a trampoline without falling upon landing. I conquered my childlike fear of heights over the course of many years.

I continued taking it until I was about ten or eleven. Because then I started getting all my growth spurts, and I quickly became taller than the rest of my team. And I wasn’t ever getting much better– I didn’t have the passion for it. I couldn’t pull myself in a flip over the bars. I couldn’t ever do a backbend without help, and definitely not a handspring. I couldn’t ever do any air acrobatics without the trampoline.

So I quit.

I would have had to have been seriously determined to ever get anywhere in gymnastics. Most gymnasts are extremely short– they need the least possible weight to be throwing around in flips and handsprings. And my height now is 5″11. So I’m not sure how well that might have worked out, had I continued doing it.

During that time period, my parents signed me up for swimming lessons when I was five. I went to my first lesson and refused to even get in the water. Just refused. And a couple classes later, when they finally got me in the water, I refused to do any of the things the teacher was saying. I wouldn’t put my face in the water, or even my ear, or anything. I wouldn’t kick my legs.

It took a long time and several charts made by my parents, but eventually I did all the things the other kids were doing. By the time I was eleven, I was an avid swimmer. My teacher went to my mom and told her I should be on a swim team, but my mom asked me and I said no, because I didn’t want to just do laps or anything. I just liked to play in the water. But I was getting too old to keep doing the classes where it’s mostly playing, so I quit that, too.

I almost regret that, now. Almost. Because I adore swimming now. I jump in and dive in and swim underwater and love it all. Now I think that being on a team would be freaking awesome.

However, it’s too late for that now. So that was that.

Tennis was short-lived. I only did it for a few years when I was young. Maybe six to nine. I could hit balls that were thrown toward me, but my mom and I never made it much farther than three or four returns when we played by ourselves. Granted, I was nine, but still. It just didn’t last very long, and after a while my mom got offered a job at the gym to teach yoga at the same time as my tennis class. Tennis was dropped.

When I was eleven, I took ballet. It doesn’t quite count as a sport, I know, but it was just something I did. And to be honest, I’m not quite sure what I was thinking– I never really liked it. I quite after the first year. My sister took it for about three years before I did, and I think my wanting to do it had something to do with the pretty dress she got to wear to the end-of-the-year recital– but it just didn’t last. It really wasn’t my thing.

So after that was over, there was about a year or so in which we weren’t doing any sports. I asked my mom if we would start up swimming again, but it was still the whole team thing, so no. And plus things were starting to get more expensive, so she said I couldn’t start anything again unless I was going to stick with it.

At some point during that year, I became attracted to the martial arts.

I’m not sure how, when, or exactly why. It just came into my head one day and it clicked as something I wanted to do. I thought about the people in the movies who did it and always thought it was so cool to be able to do kicks and punches and stuff like that.

And I’ve always thought the advanced forms were cool to watch. And the artists always looked healthy– they were never the tiny little scrawny things that gymnasts seemed to be.

So for a good few months, I had the knowledge that I wanted to take karate.

However, I was afraid to bring it up to my parents. I was a lot more shy back then. Like, a lot a lot. You might look at me now and wonder how I could have ever been shy, but just trust me when I say I was. Ask someone who knew me back then. They can testify to it.

But I would write in my journal about how I wanted to take it, and how I wished it would magically come up, and all this stuff. I never wanted to actually bring it up myself.

Luckily, it did magically come up. One day I saw my parents looking over a karate ad and were talking about having my brother and sister do it. I told them I wanted to also, and a month later, we had all started taking at a local dojo.

And I adore it, and all the things I’ve learned at it, both physical and mental. I’ve become physically stronger and learned all sorts of cool forms, techniques, and self-defense methods, as well as become more focused and confident, and less shy and fearful.

It’s done amazing things for me, and I love it. I’ve never once wanted to quit, and have been in tears more than once when I thought we might have to. But I guess God is watching out for us, because somehow we haven’t had to quit yet.

I don’t know if I’m going to get my black belt before I graduate. Maybe I won’t. If that’s the case, then I’ll get it later in life. I don’t regret doing it for all this time even if I don’t achieve that goal right now, because it was one of the most life-changing experiences I’ve gone through.

So that’s that.