In early 2019, I woke up in the middle of the night and had this exact thought: “I could learn kung fu.”
I have never identified myself as an active person, though I’ve had many eras of my adult life where I was one. I had severe knee problems when I was a child and teen, to the point of sometimes walking with a cane; thus, I never did any sort of physical activity very well when I was a kid. After a few years of physical therapy in my early 20s, the knee problems resolved, and I started doing exercise things: hiking, rowing, weight lifting, running, biking. I have never been coordinated, flexible, graceful, or fast, but I did learn that I had endurance. I could walk forever. I could row for a couple hours without stopping. I traversed a couple hundred miles of the Arctic Circle and the entire width of England under nothing but my own power. But I never felt like one of those people who was driven to exercise. I’m a book kid at heart, plus a sufferer of asthma that crops up if I overdo any activity.
As such, I also hate hate hate exercising around other people. I have an eating disorder and a deep dislike of having to match someone else’s pace, whether it’s faster or slower. All I want to do when I exercise is be in my head.
So, for me to wake up in the middle of the night and think to myself that I want to take classes around other people and try to do something that requires coordination, flexibility, grace, speed, and probably lung power… was odd.
Yet a few months later, I found a kung fu school and signed up. I did it because it scared me to do it. I figured if it scared me, it probably was at least worth conquering in some small way.
It turns out, I am genuinely terrible at kung fu. I couldn’t keep up with the class, even in warm ups. Each class ended in an asthma attack and an albuterol headache. My skin was suffering from severe eczema on my hands and feet, and even walking across a room would cause the soles of my feet to split open; many days I just couldn’t go to class because I couldn’t walk. I was (am) overweight and significantly older than most of the rest of the class. I couldn’t do many basics that are kind of prerequisites for even beginners, like a simple somersault or jumping in place or sitting in a squat. And I then I broke my leg in class, badly enough that I needed a titanium plate and 10 pins in my left shin and ankle.
Did that really matter? No. I did improve, well enough to muddle my way into an orange belt. I can do some things I couldn’t do before, like sit in a squat. I still suck at kung fu, but ultimately doesn’t matter, because the only person I was competing against was myself. As long as I was learning something, it was worth it.
And I did really enjoy class, outside of all my physical challenges! I liked that the instructor would be hard on me for putting myself down. I liked my classmates. I liked that there was no pressure to do things I wasn’t able to do at that time. I liked digging down and finding the willpower to go to class, in spite of all my physical challenges, even after long absences and COVID and especially after breaking my leg. (After all, my one physical gift is endurance, right?)
Yet, as time wore on, I went to class less and less often. I found that I didn’t have the energy, three days per week, to convince myself to go when most classes would result in asthma attacks, headaches, split skin, and sometimes a broken leg. The school was a 30 minute drive away. I had to pay for parking. I’d miss tons of classes just because of travel. Three days is per week is a lot of time for me to set aside, with everything else I do.
Even after monoclonal antibodies mostly solved my asthma and skin issues in early 2023, it had become so difficult to reach past my personal roadblocks that there were times where I drove all the way to the school, and then turn around and go back home without walking in. My logical brain knew that my feet were fine and that I probably wouldn’t need my inhaler, but my lizard brain wasn’t giving up those memories.
I haven’t been to class since spring 2024. I was still paying my monthly class fee, hoping I’d find the inner strength to go back. I’d become that person with the looming, unused gym membership. My guilt at not going to class in so long fed into my stress and ultimately furthered my instinct to avoid it all.
Finally, a few days ago, I thought, “Let’s be real. Just stop the membership.”
I don’t want to give up on kung fu. I like kung fu. I want to know kung fu. I want to get my body into a shape where I can do kung fu. But clearly, I’m not learning kung fu right now.
With great sadness, I sent the cancellation message this afternoon.
Immediately after I hit send, I unconsciously started googling around for other martial arts schools that might be closer to home or had a better schedule or…
After a few minutes of this nonsense, I stopped.
To get the sadness and brain noise out, I wrote a note to myself: “If you can hold onto a self-driven workout schedule for a month, you can go back to kung fu.”
Then, after a moment’s thought, I crossed out the “if” and replaced it with “when”.
