Alive and Kicking... and Punching

Yellow Belt Testing in 1994.

It's a little fitting to be back in Martial Arts so close to the anniversary of when my ex swung at me directly. He charged, and muscle memory kicked in before any other thought. Although emotional abuse was harder to contend with, I was prepared for what to do in this situation, after earning a red belt in Tae Kwon Do and some experience with Wing Chun. Though I never tested at Francis Fong's school in Gwinnet, the lower belts and higher belts all learned the same moves, moves that became ingrained and were highly useful.

The incident went down, because Liam had been doing petty things to keep me trapped at home. He had a habit of letting the air out of my tires, disabling the car battery, and this time, he had hidden my keys. After contending with one of his insane emotional attacks, I decided to leave, and my keys were not where I had left them.  When I confronted him about the possibility of hiding my keys, he laughed at me as he often did to make me feel like the crazy one. But whenever he lied, he had a facial tick that I'd come to notice (he hated that I was so perceptive) and I knew instantly that he had hidden my keys.

"You're lying," I said and I looked around where I had seen him last. There was a pile of laundry waiting to be cleaned next to the laundry room, and a few clothes under the surface, there were my keys, in a place I would have never left them.  He followed me making fun of me and still denying what he had done. I was headed toward the door when I turned to see him charging me, right arm raised in a punch.

Reflexively, I ducked under his arm, grabbing his now punch extended wrist, pulling it forward, and pulling him off balance, as I got him in a headlock that he could not get out of. It was meant to subdue him, restrict breathing till he passed out so I could get away, because I could not bring myself to break his neck. Even in physical danger, I just couldn't bring myself to hurt another, even in self defense... even with all the abuse I'd endured. So instead, I held on, hoping. He then ran backwards, slamming me into the walls again and again, until the hold took affect and then he threw himself onto me on the floor and started crying.  The keys were now long gone and out of sight in the struggle. If I stopped to get them in my escape, I would have been prone. So I just ran.

I ran out the door, and as Liam had insisted, we lived on a small street of houses in the middle of nowhere (he threw a fit that we had neighbors on one side - now I know why). Tears streaked my face as rain started to fall. We were 10 miles from my parents' house, but I was ready to walk there in my nightgown in the middle of the night in the rain. I didn't get there, when Liam drove up next to me, again smiling and laughing at me for walking away. I wasn't going to walk 10 miles with him driving next to me, so I got in the car. (I was kind of scared that he might try to hit me with the car if I didn't comply). We drove back to the house, where I promptly did not forgive him (which he depended on my Christian background to manipulate previously) nor did I let him get away with no consequences, much to his chagrin. I told him to leave. After all, it wasn't long ago, he'd threatened to kill me and drove toward the dead end of a road, because I mentioned the word divorce.

That night, he left and committed himself at the Coliseum where he immediately began manipulating well meaning psychologists into thinking I was the bad guy and that I needed to be there to support him. They were flummoxed when they called me at work on speaker with Liam, and I asked if he had mentioned trying to kill me, which of course Liam tried to blow off as me exaggerating. Then I said that it was hard to think it's exaggerating when he was shouting that he was going to kill me while driving 90 miles an hour toward a road that ended in the interstate. It's a mile marker on I-75 that I still can't pass without remember.  But for the first time, someone started to listen and see that maybe, just maybe he was the liar that I'd come to know.

While it was traumatic, I learned sadly that no one else would protect me, if I wasn't willing to do it for myself. I'd been isolated and abused, while simultaneously having all that abuse projected onto me, where I was completely debased from any support by the character assassination, blamed for all the evil he did to me. This is something that still haunts some older connections and estranged many relationships. People I thought I could trust believed the charming liar, a pattern I've witnessed my whole life with people around me. Heck I fell for it for a while too, but eventually I see through it, which tends to upset people who like to think I'm stupid because I give people a chance.

After the trauma, I have an inclination to hide, to not be seen, and have had other abusers, reinforcing my C-PTSD. So getting back into Martial Arts, I see as a victory. It's something I enjoyed and was good at. When I was a child, I was not allowed to take it, because "you're a girl". I was expected to act like a lady and apparently "take it like a man". After getting tired of being used for practice by my brother and not allowed to learn to defend myself, I took my graduation money and enrolled in Tae Kwon Do.  I had stopped at Red Belt, because at the time it was suggested that black belts would have to register their hands as deadly weapons and if you defended yourself, you would have a harder self defense stance. Eventually I switched to Wing Chun when I moved to Atlanta, which was harder work and more effective. But I found myself combining the two with grappling in actual situations.

I'm very thankful that I made that choice, and I believe that it is effective at warding off attacks. Now my daughter will be able to do what I could not, and it's already good for her. At the beginning of the class, the loudness of the instructor's voice upset her, as mine does when I ask her to do something, but by the end of the class she was having a blast, and many of the things I'd been trying to teach her were sinking in as a good thing.

I know that I cannot protect my daughter from the world, but I can prepare her for it, something I did not have with an archaic expectation of being protected by the men in my life, when ironically, they were the ones I needed the most protection from ... and had the least.  With the whole family doing it, I see many benefits for us in health, and Morgan watching her parents demonstrate respect will be beneficial as well. She's so smart, but being an only child, I worry. Already she's adorable, and I worry what she will have to contend with when she grows into the beautiful, smart woman that I know she will be. I just want to make sure that when that day comes, she will have the confidence, emotional strength, and physical capability to handle whatever comes her way.