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I don’t know if writing in a journal is a good idea. All it does is bring up fucked up memories.

Like how I think I’m realizing that I can’t mentally take it when people that I care extremely about leave my life. I guess that’s a big trait of Scorpios. I’m still mourning what’s happened almost a year ago. I wish I can shake it. The only way I’ve found how to do it is to find someone better, but they haven’t presented themselves to me yet.

I’m thinking about the earliest time when I was 12 and my bestfriend suddenly stopped it–Being my friend. She was popular and pretty. I wanted to be like her, but I was the awkward looking, ugly second class clown banana. I don’t know. I guess the old clique she was with decided to be friends with her again or something and I was on the outs. And then they spread this rumor how I was a lesbian. I didn’t even fucking know what that word meant. It happened right before I the end of 6^th grade.  I ended up not hugging anyone or showing physical affection to anyone for years until I was in my early to mid-twenties when I finally realized that it was okay to hug a female friend and being comfortable doing that. For the remainder of middle school I became a loner and was constantly teased. I cried a lot; In class and in my room.

I wished I was dead.

I didn’t have a best-friend until 9^th grade when I met R on one of the first days of school.

I started martial arts when I was 12. That was the start of a great outlet. I was a natural. My sensei said I had great technique. On the nights when I did have training I felt happier. I would sleep earlier than the nights when I had insomnia. I lived for the days when there was karate. I could not wait to go to the dojo and do drills. It was one of my first tastes of distraction from my everyday crappy ‘tween life. It was a different distraction. Instead of imagining that I was having an adventure with fictitious characters in the books I soaked up from the library or the bookstores or from the movies that I would watch on cable, but I felt like I was living it. I was accepted somewhere. For that whole summer I started to have insomnia and didn’t sleep until 2-4 in the morning. I longed for friendship. For the first time I had friends outside of school. The best part? None of them knew my other shitty school life. Instead they knew that I was strong, quick learned, funny and social.

I learned self-discipline. I pored over Black Belt magazine and books about martial arts. Words like DETERMINATION, PERSEVERENCE, and HARD WORK jumped out of me. At the time when I was 12 I didn’t grasp the full meaning of it.

Until now.

Intensity.

Last year's birthday- I was really happy then.

I feel like Edward Norton’s character in “Fight Club”:

“If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?”

I honestly can’t think of an exact time when capoeira actually started to “click” with me. It’s the little things honestly. Like going through a whole class where the adrenaline is pumping so much that it’s hot, yet you’re still going. Or singing in the roda and feeling the energy and seeing everyone give the same amount and effort that you see the axe elevate before your eyes and the game gets better.

Capoeira has played such an important part of my life. At the start of 2005 a relationship was ended. A serious relationship. I thought I was going to marry him. I loved him. And all of a sudden in a span of New Year’s Eve, it was gone.  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t sleep for 72 hours straight. I had people stay at my place and keep me company because I didn’t even know what to do. I lost over 20 lbs and barely ate a real meal for 3 months.

The day after my friend S asked me if he can do anything and I told him to take me to the main studio where I took an hour of the mixed class @ Mestre Amen’s at the main studio. I was only able to take an hour since I didn’t eat or sleep. I was getting nauseous.

From then I started to venture out to take classes anywhere I could go. I felt normal, it was the only time when I wasn’t thinking about what had happened. How I could have changed it. The past, the future. Capoeira was my outlet.

But I know my game changed. It’s gotten aggressive, confrontational. His head, my pain–I’ve come in with everything I have and leave it in there.

And lately I’ve been hoping that capoeira would fill the void, but I think I’m starting to get tired from the traveling. The panic attacks have been coming back, but instead of insomnia I’ve been waking up disoriented for the first 5-10 minutes. I’m tired. I’m bored. I have enough friends. The one person I want to talk to hasn’t excited for almost a year.

I need something to happen. Something non-capoeira related for once.

1st Post

I honestly didn’t know where the obsession started. I do remember how I got my start in capoeira.

I remember my friend telling me that his Tang So Doo school now had capoeira. So after a shift at EB Games where I used to work way back in 2005, I visited the school where I saw Professor Xingu flip around and spin on his head in the roda. I was really interested and didn’t even know if I could do half of the stuff that all of the students were doing. I honestly don’t even remember most of what had happened in the roda. I did remember his energy and how he lit up whenever he saw something cool.

So I tried my first class and felt like an ass for the next 8 months.  I was 60 lbs heavier. I wore a size 14 pants and guy’s medium shirt. No one really wanted to ever partner up with me. I couldn’t do anything on my right side and just got my ass handed to me since I was the only girl almost every class. (At least the only girl most of the time that was never talked to.) I always wanted to quit honestly, but I was too chicken shit to even tell him that I wanted to quit. So every month on the 1st Xingu automatically debited tuition, but I just kept on going.

I was going through a lot. I attended an intense 1 year nursing program so I was only able to go once a week. I could have attended more, but I wasn’t the smartest student and needed all of the study time I can get.  Due to pettiness on the part of other females, was completely alienated in school. Oh, and not to mention, my boyfriend of 6 years who I thought I was going to marry, cheated on me. I felt as if I had no support.

One day it just hit me. I decided to lose weight, eat better and train. 8 months into it, I lost 10-15 lbs before my first batizado and soon after it just clicked in my head that I have every right to exist and be in class. As soon as I graduated nursing school I started to attend class consistently 2-3 times per week. After my second batizado I was more motivated to practice the berimbau and to learn songs. At night at my graveyard shift I would write lyrics and songs and practice when there was downtime in the hospital. Up until my third batizado I started to make friends with other capoeiristas through the Metropolitan area and realized how big the community of capoeira actually is.

I’ve been playing capoeira for 4 years and up until 2-3 years ago have become even more serious about it. Out of the original people that have started with me, I have stayed, surpassed and now I have no qualms about playing them hard. Because I’ve put my time in. I’ve also gone down 10 pants sizes and now wear a female small/extra small. Any precursors to hypertension and diabetes I once had are completely gone.

Capoeira is in my mind all the time. I find myself singing songs, thinking back to past rodas, what I could have done wrong, what I did right, what shirt to wear to class….

I’ve fallen in and out of love in these 4 years, experienced births, deaths, and after everything, capoeira has always been there. It’s the only thing after a shitty day or now matter how mad or sad I am; for those 2 hours nothing matters.

I feel normal.