Quite An Affair

My wife left me for someone else. I am completely shattered. Sensei told me I should keep coming to karate, that I need to be around people. He's right.

Because I'm doing everything myself at home, even though friends and family are helping me, my body is toast. I hurt constantly. In karate I do my absolute best but I cannot keep up with my classmates. At times I find myself just standing in place while I watch classmates work. It's like I just get stuck. I stop moving because I can't do something safely, and then I can't start again. I have to force myself with all my might to dream up an alternative that works the same muscles. It's probably only milliseconds that I go through this adaptation but it can be more than ten times in one class that I have to do it, and while I do, the few seconds seem like an eternity.  It's lonely, physically painful, and jarring. I'd rather take an elbow to the sternum than feel all alone in a room full of people who mercifully treat me as anything but different.

I'm not alone! Everyone is helping everyone else in our dojo and Sensei watches each student carefully. He is sculpting us all into our own best forms. I believe that although he has a business to run he is also choosing every student very carefully. Every student has a trial period and no one's hard work goes unnoticed. Likewise, he expects everyone's best effort, and doesn't let challenges stop us. I consider my Sensei a natural motivator because his eyes are everywhere. That means we all have value to him.

When we slide our feet or pivot I cannot move the way we are supposed to because the skin on my feet is not connected well; I slide inside my skin but have to move doubly to get my foot to move, peeling my skin off the floor and hoping it lands beneath my feet, while the bones inside skate around one another and I try to land. I tried socks but it just made it worse. I tried kinesiotape but it came off in seconds. I froze one time, not knowing what to do. "Don't lose heart, let's go!" Sensei encouraged me.
"I can't do this safely," I said. But I tried my best. It hurt a lot and I got frustrated. I know Sensei understood because he came by and said to take a break, reaching his hand out to signal that I should stop, that he could see my effort but he could also see my pain. I told you, he sees everything.

When I started karate everything I did was painful. Every movement felt like I was slowly destroying my already angry body. I couldn't do a single leg lift without dislocating my hip. My knees had no interest in staying in line with my hips and ankles. Nothing about my body was tolerable in terms of pain or stability.  Five months later I have my third belt, I stay conscious throughout the entire class, my classmates have confidence in me and spar with me. They tell me not to give up. I do leg lifts, squats, kata, just like everybody else.

But I do them my way.

My physiotherapist has put much time and effort into helping me get stronger. I walk better, exercise more safely, and even manage my exhaustion better. Now I am better at finding alternatives but I wish I could afford to go back. Karate is teaching me that, the more I learn, the more I don't know. I can understand why Alberto Friedman decided to study kinesiology. I wish I were well enough to study medicine.

The last eight years of my life efforts have been discarded by the closest person in my world. Now I have to start over and try to find intrinsic value. All over again I have to find my own way to survive. I don't know what I'm going to do. I am hurt, frightened, angry, lonely. But Sensei is right, I should do everything I can to not lose heart. Unfortunately, I feel like I am on life support, relying on karate, work and friends to remind me that my life has meaning, even if I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Even if my own wife no longer loves me I need to find a way to feel valuable. At the moment I am writing this from bed because I subluxed my shoulder trying to do my laundry. That pain means my day is over. I don't feel like my life has intrinsic meaning or value anymore. Others see my life as valuable but I'm having trouble with it. That intrinsic meaning has been lost, and everything I thought I was has been invalidated from the most intimate level. How to cope? "Don't lose heart," I guess. And keep going to karate.