webster

Here's a clip of Hasbulla losing to an actual little kid. That's the sort of stuff my nightmares are made of. I'm not sure why finding out about him had such an impact on me. I'm not even sure what nature of impact it is exactly. Examples of my condition going untreated are rare, but not new to me. The example I've been familiar with all my life was Emmanuel Lewis.

Abdu Rozik is a third example, found through Hasbulla. They're mortal enemies or something. We're supposed to choose our rivalries on our own levels. In many contexts people do this naturally. Others often expect it to go that way. Me, I look for the biggest strongest person in the room and think of them as my primary rival. I guess that has its pros and cons, but it would be an even worse idea if I were still Hasbulla's size.

All three seem to have the same condition, but there's this strange vagueness around it. Rozik's family is trying to claim he just had rickets as a child, which is absurd. Whether going untreated was a choice, or due to impossibility, they seem to be ashamed of it. They all do some sort of martial arts too, which is kinda funny.

Rozik and Lewis have made their fortunes by going untreated. I wonder if it has less do with concern over what the public knows, and more about how they see themselves and their situation. I'm not sure, but they are all textbook examples of what untreated childhood growth hormone deficiency looks like. Strong odds are they all have it, but Hasbulla is the only one admitting it.

Maybe it's just a striking reminder of how far I've come and what I'm trying to do. It's striking to see just how serious GHD is. It's never been about being "short," so much as never growing up; maturing. I find it strange to see how childlike Hasbulla behaves, and how others treat him. He's loved for being like a perpetual child. One YouTuber commented, "best illness ever."

For a while now, I've been ruminating over these people with terrible conditions who are lauded for being optimistic and cheerful anyhow. I certainly don't begrudge them how they feel. I suppose it's throwing into stark relief, this contrast between how far I've come, and how miserable I still tend to be. On the one hand, holy shit it's been a long hard road. On the other, where am I even going.

When someone like my great uncle Daniel would encourage me to be at peace with myself, my situation, I'd get frustrated. Many years ago, he told me that some people live with their parents their whole lives. It's ok. It's nothing to be ashamed of. He never invited me to travel with him though. He once told me he would, but I suspect he realized I wasn't mature enough.

That would be framed other ways, but I've long wondered if that weren't a sizeable part of the problem. Not maturity in an intellectual sense, but something more fundamental seemed stunted. I wasn't ready to face the world. I didn't want to be at peace with that. I wanted to be able to travel with him.

I've been making strides all my life, but I'm running out of time and I've yet to succeed. I realize I'd be more pleasant if I accepted myself, my situation. We're supposed to accept the things we can't change, but I'm still trying. Not that I always have been. When I was with Jenny, I was preaching radical acceptance of ourselves and each other. We are who we are, I thought. Jenny encouraged that, but I was becoming restless. I was realizing this approach to life wasn't working out well for either of us.

center of balance

I've focused a lot on takedowns. I figure no matter what your intent, be it to win a competition, beat someone up, or run away, being able to throw someone is a great way to gain major initiative. Rulesets aside, fighting has three components; stand-up, groundwork, and takedowns. Takedowns are also easier to succeed at against larger opponents than striking or grappling. For me, that's always an important consideration.

In class, we go over different throws each week, but the basics get lost along the way. I do well, relative to most, but I think this is because many don't understand the basics. They attempt throws without thinking through whether they'll have any leverage. I've found it important to keep the mechanics of it in mind.

Every throw, from a seio nagi to a double leg, requires leverage. This means thinking of the person being thrown as a lever to your fulcrum. Keeping in mind which way the lever needs to move, legs going one way, upper body the other, with the pivot point somewhere in between. Focusing only on the legs when doing a sweep make it easily defended against. 

The double leg is an interesting example, because it can look like an exception. It can look more like a football tackle. A properly executed double leg is more about trapping the legs while driving your opponent's center of balance over the fulcrum of your arms. Once they're off their feet, they become easier to lift - or at least their legs do, for a brief moment. That's why double legs can look like a lift. A common mistake is trying to do them that way, people straining to lift each other. Judo throws can be similar in how once a person is off their feet, they can go flying head over heels with surprising ease.

Osoto gari is a common throw, as it's almost similar to how little kids might trip each other. It can seem like one of the most intuitive. That's probably why so many people do it wrong. Myself included, before noticing that it wasn't working out well. You basically put your leg behind theirs and pull them over it, but if they see it coming, they're not going to let you. 

The kid's trip works against someone who isn't expecting it, but if they are, you need to figure out how you're going to get their center of balance past the fulcrum point. Judo practitioners quickly learn to guard their center of balance, so it's important to know how to deal with that, but more fundamentally, to understand why. The tricks used to get a person off balance are no less important than the throw itself.

This can be an arm drag to make someone stumble, so that you can use their momentarily misguided momentum against them. Or in doing a shoulder throw like seio nagi, really understanding why you need to drive your hips down and back to get under your opponent's center of balance. People often screw that one up, because they don't realize how critical the little detail they keep forgetting is.

Class went well. Knee and side were fine. Mondays after kickboxing, we do Judo. Throws and takedowns instead of submissions. It really is amazing what an anti-depressant it is. Just yesterday, I was writing this...

"I think a lot about the nature of self-esteem, and why there seems to be a gaping hole where mine used to be. I think maybe whatever was holding it together failed to survive contact with humankind. I don't know what matters anymore. It doesn't seem to matter what I think. All my ideas," I trailed off, trying to think of another way to say pointless. I think more to the point I was stewing over, ideas have hardly been a substitute for living.

The things I say when I'm miserable aren't wrong, but they only tell half a story. They omit almost everything positive. Not because I think the positives are wrong, but because they feel so much less important. The better my mood, the less important the negatives seem to be. Why does it seem like I'm the only one who sees what's going on here?

There are no objective values we can place on anything. It's all arbitrary. When a negative feels like the worst thing in the world - or easily dismissed, because such is life, and life is beautiful - there is no decision making process involved here. It's just brain chemistry shifting one way and then another. It's neither true nor false, right or wrong.

We don't create physical reality in our minds, but what of all the values we assign to everything? We make that up entirely. The values we place on everything are much more significant to our understanding of life than objective reality, which people are pretty clueless about. e.g. Ok, you stubbed your toe and it hurts, proving objective reality? What does it mean to understand such a thing? Do you know anything about the anatomy of it, the neurology, physics or chemistry of it? Or are you just placing values all over the place and calling that reality?

It's all made up. All the "important" stuff, or whether anything at all is important. Ideas are largely predicated on presumptions of importance, while the very concept of importance is nonsense. Some times this bothers me more than others.

just sitting

Classes went well last night, but somehow I managed to sustain two minor injuries that will hopefully be fine in a few days. Bad enough that I should probably go easy for at least that long. Same old knee, hopefully just a little inflamed or something, and a sharp pain in my abdominal obliques that's probably just a minor strain. Being central core muscles, everything aggravates it. It hurts to cough, let alone upa roll or pendulum kick.

So, a few extra days, at best, of.. sitting here. There isn't anything I want to do or like to do anymore. I'll take care of the few things I need to do, but that's always so oddly difficult, given that I'm bored out of my mind doing nothing else, anyhow. Nothing feels worth doing. I don't know what's wrong with me. 

Loss of hope, disillusionment, jaded. Always so tired. The chemistry of wanting seems all burned out. As things get back to normal, I'm still quite severely depressed, in the clinical sense. I had a great training partner last night. Like a last little ember, I try to focus on that, to get some kind of fire burning again. To keep it from going out entirely.

This isn't exactly what the Buddha means, in terms of liberation from desire, but I think that may be a misunderstanding. Even Buddhists get dodgy around the notion of no-self, but that's foundational to everything else. The self is what we need liberation from. The illusion that the desire is our own. That anything is our own. Our bodies, our feelings. There's no such thing as "ours." 

It's all just causal relationships, but desire is an important evolutionary mechanism. The system doesn't work well without the carrot on the stick. It doesn't bode well for one's mental health to just sit here.

hasbulla

Randomly encountered a meme introducing me to this #hasbulla character recently. He has untreated growth hormone deficiency. He's typical of someone whose system produces none whatsoever. Like mine. I'm not sure people understand when I say that I'd be smaller, if I hadn't been treated. It's pretty rare, and this is what it looks like. 

Hasbulla is 19 years old. Too old to be treated for it at all, as growth plates close during adolescence. It's an illness where we have a brief window within which to refuse to accept the condition. A window which occurs when we're young, so it's really up the parents to figure out if they even have the means to treat it. Some can't afford it, some procrastinate or give up even trying to figure it out.

In many situations, treatment wouldn't be an option. Where it is, it can require extensive fights with insurance companies and the like. My doctor didn't even want to bother testing me, because the condition is so rare. He would have waited until it was too late. Hasbulla looks happy though, and that's what matters, right? No, fuck off with that shit.

I'm reminded of how people treated me in middle school, being new to Jersey, trying to find my place there. They thought my condition was cute and funny and I could have played into that, but I didn't want to be anyone's clown. Worse than dwarfism, people can't help but perceive those with this condition as essentially children. I wasn't bullied. I was liked for the wrong reasons in the wrong ways, and that was even worse. Even most children hate being treated like children. Imagine being treated that way all the time by peers.

Does this sound strange or irrational? To be liked can mean many things. We like and dislike each other on all different levels. We're quick to tell someone in doubt, don't worry, you're not outright offensive, but this is hardly what we're looking to hear. To be wanted or needed by others is to be valued. Those who humbly accept their handicapped social status can be more pleasant. That's an easier way to attain some sense of value, but I valued myself too much for it. 

Now, I'm not so sure. What is self-esteem but an estimate of how others will value us? Whatever attributes or potential we have only matters in so much that anyone else cares. For most of my life, I imagined there are people like me out there somewhere, and surely, they would like me. It seems engaging with humanity has exposed the absurdity of that. Of course it would be nice if neurotypicals liked me more.

I'm very fortunate that I was able to get treated young, eventually almost attaining maturity. Frustrating to fall a little short, but all things being relative. I was so close to living a life of dysfunction on a whole other scale. It's as if I've always been torn between normalcy and that untreated possibility of what I could have been. What I was for a few years there. A little kid, never growing up, just getting older.

That's still me, in some sense, as if I've never quite been able to get away from it. Maybe because of those years before I started catching up to my peers. I looked pathologically young for most of my childhood, as I grew my sense of self. Maybe it's physiological, in that I still don't have a pituitary, I've still got a serious disorder. I've grown, but it's highly unclear how much else the hypopituitarism impacts.

It's intertwined, in that the way the physiology manifests depends on the sorts of experiences we have. The sorts of experiences we have has a lot to do with our physiology.

the body says no

As I walk home, I often realize how sore I am. It feels good to have this evidence that I got a good workout. An hour of kickboxing, then an hour of grappling. I'm so fortunate to even be able to do this at all, let alone do it well.

As I walked to class, I was thinking about this line Gabor Mate uses, where he asks the audience how many times they listen to their gut and regret it. He then asks how many people ignore what their gut tells them, only to regret that. The audience response overwhelmingly supports his proposition that we should always listen to our guts.

As I walked along in bitter argument with my gut, it occurred to me that this can be very wrong, as the gut is often commandeered by mental health problems. That's a defining characteristic of mental health problems to such a broad degree, that we're talking about something most people will experience. Our gut instincts shaped by excessive levels of anger, fear, resentment, or depression.

This point isn't necessarily in contradiction to Gabor's larger point. Which is not so much that our gut instincts are always right, but that to refuse to listen can have serious consequences to our health. It's interesting to think about how this correlates with depression. Evidence suggests that depression is a lot like an immune response. Our instincts are telling us we're sick, and we need to rest and recover. Even hiding can seem like a good idea.

Except with depression, we never recover, and there's tons of evidence that living like that in the long-term is horrible for both mental and physical health. Depression may not even be an exception, per se. It's stressful as hell fighting with my gut instincts all the time. That can't be good for me, either. Every single class, I fend off excuse after excuse. My instincts screaming at me, don't go, this is a terrible idea, and it's going to suck. Today's a bad day for it, it's too hot, or too cold, or I'm too tired. My body says no all the time. 

I remind myself, as I often do, that not once have I regretted going. I always walk home happy that I went.  It's easier to go, being the only thing I do now. When I'm fighting with myself, that point lands hard. I don't do anything else now, so this is all that stands between me and doing nothing. It doesn't feel like enough though. I don't see how training gets me anywhere, and I'm pretty sure I still need to get somewhere.

back to the trenches

I had stuff to do today. My week was planned out, coordinated to do this particular stuff on this particular day, but I didn't do any of it. Now I have other stuff to do tomorrow, and I can't do any of this on the weekend. I could try doing it all tomorrow, but that seems unrealistic, given that I just sat here like a lump today. 

This is the back to normal I've been afraid of. Back to the struggle, after more than a year of just wallowing. I'm no longer hanging on by a fraying thread, but I'm still swimming in a sea of anxieties and frustrations. To relax would be to backslide into doing less and less. My nature is not healthy to give in to, but my nature is also to fight.

So, I'm back to fighting. Constantly feeling like I'm failing, and not doing enough. I often have days like these. Life is so fucking hard when you lack the biochemistry specifically evolved to make it less so. Whether it's endocrine or trauma or whatever else. Nature and nurture are basically the same thing. One is just manifestation of the other, and it goes both ways. Interdependent co-arising phenomena.

My inclination is pretty much to stay in bed all day every day. Not to cook, or grow peppers, or even kickboxing. I have to beat the shit out of myself every day I want to go anywhere at all, including the gym. I dread going anywhere ever. On the other hand, I'm increasingly sick to death of puttering around at home, doing whatever I can rally my waning attention span for, here.

This is why I think of myself as low-functioning. I can't even strive for the things I want to do in this life, let alone the things I should be doing. Some people are better off than I am, some are worse, but this isn't a matter of comparison. That is not indicative of a functioning system. Which in turn has a way of wrecking self-esteem. I'm working on it, but at this rate, it's going to take a lifetime.

park spar

In two hours, I'm supposed to ride my bike to the park to do some sparring. I'd really like to go, I plan on going, but goddammit, is it difficult. I haven't been on my bike in two years, for one thing. 

..and I realized I didn't have much more to say about it than that, and should probably start getting ready.

Now, five hours later, I can report that as soon as I was on my bike, I realized that I hadn't forgotten how to ride, my bike didn't fall apart, and I started feeling better about the whole thing. Still nervous, I pedaled along, there was no turning back. I was out the door and on my way, the most difficult part behind me.

I had a good time. I got to kick lots of people in the head. I love kicking people in the head. As usual, my fears turned out to be silly and baseless. I don't understand why it's always so hard. I write down what a good time I had, in the hopes that I'll remember next time. Maybe it gets easier eventually.

Now, I'm back in my lonely little cave. I'm exhausted, it's great to be out of the heat, put my feet up and not worry about anything.. but it's weird. Going to the park to hang out with people feels like pretending I'm a normal human being for a few hours, only to shamble back to my dismal lair, where I can dispense with such illusions.

Pretending to be human is so hard. I don't know that I could keep it up for more than a few hours at a time. Martial arts is my hack for being able to do that, but sometimes I think the humans might suspect something. Which concerns me, because when they suspect someone of being a mentally ill loner, they can go in all sorts of horrific directions with that.

There's this new guy at my gym, and as we sparred, I couldn't help but notice the hatchwork of old scars up and down his left forearm. Mine are similar, but much older. They're hardly noticeable at all any more. I wanted to say something, about how I might relate, but wasn't sure how that would go. I opted not to risk it and kept the conversation to kickboxing.

I don't know how much of my alienation just has to do with a life consumed by clinical depression, but when I see someone else's battle scars, I tend to think aha, maybe this is someone who might get it. Otherwise, I expect people to be patronizing, at best. Better they don't know anything about me at all.

transience

Classes went well tonight. My kickboxing partner outweighed me by a hundred pounds, and kicked pretty hard. Our last drill involved heavy kicks to a kicking shield. I had to focus most of my energy on not letting his kicks knock me around or wince as I felt them through the shield. When it was my turn, he exclaimed right off, ow, I can feel those right through the shield! 

Then BJJ class afterwards. That went well, too. My partner was brand new, so I took the initiative at the end of class to check with the instructor as to whether he should be doing free rolling yet. I seem to be getting better at taking initiative. Two years ago, I was partnered with someone brand new, who wasn't ready for that, but nobody said anything, so I accidentally clocked her in the head with my shin trying to do a takedown we'd just learned and she never came back. I've been feeling terrible about it ever since. I didn't want to make that mistake again.

During the end of class rotation, I got to grapple someone with a little more experience. Last week, he tapped me out. This week, I tapped him out. It feels so good to be back at it. Hopefully, for a good long time to come..

I've been thinking about how I tend to let almost everyone win. Not outright, but there's always some reason, I don't finish submissions or don't want to be too aggressive or don't want to make my opponent feel bad. Last class, my opponent was not quite as young and breathing so hard, I started going easier on him, then he beats me. He was much bigger than me, I wrenched both my shoulders wrestling with him - but he's in his 30s, so I was worried about him.

It's subtle, but just enough that it makes the difference every time. I lose against pretty much everyone. Until I decide that I'm going to try to win for a change, and proceed to surprise myself by actually winning. Well, ok - sometimes. Hopefully the young athletic dude I armbarred doesn't feel too badly tapping to a little old man like me. 

When the instructor of this class teaches, I move more like an old man, too. His specialty is boxing, and I have a hard time with the style of movement. The main kickboxing instructor left to start his own school in Burlington. In theory, I could take a class there once in a while to mix it up. That could be fun. 

I get so dependent on routines though, and struggling just to maintain them. It's hard to see myself actually getting around to it. It's so important that the healthy things I want to do become routine, moving them from the mire of never getting around to it.

I've found myself using the word "fun" to describe this stuff lately. That's not a word I generally use to describe anything.

more catharsis

I was a terrible boyfriend and a worse friend. I was so wrapped up in my own issues, I took her for granted. I didn't appreciate her. I was a jerk. Of course I can list five things I like about her, but I felt put on the spot by the court ordered social worker, and deflected by arguing against the premise of the question. 

Who gives a shit if it's a dumb question. It would have been nice for her to hear. It never even occurred to me that maybe she needed to hear it. Even if I couldn't think under pressure, I could have explained that and given her ten things I like about her later. Instead, I felt the rehab people were turning her against me. I got stoned and forgot about it. I was a jerk.

I've disabled my Facebook profile, so occasionally I use my old cat's profile to check something or whatever. The last post being that he'd been euthanized. The only comment being from Jenny, saying that he would be missed. That was the last communication we ever had. For the first time in five years (she died in 2018), I went to her profile. Saw the final post from her husband. Saw that she only had a few photos publicly visible.

One of her father, another of her brother, one of her sister, and two photos of a stuffed cat she'd had since childhood that had an uncanny resemblance to mine. When she was little, she had a dog named Happy, too. Only this one photo of her..

Before we met, that was one of the photos she sent me. I wonder if she knew it would be the only photo of her visible to me. Over ten years ago, I sent it back like this.

I miss her. I'm hoping it helps to finally say that.

neurotic catharsis

I'm not usually the sort to talk about such things, but it scares me to think of what it could mean. It scares me enough to say fuck it, I need to get this out. Having someone to talk to helps put things in perspective, so I have to settle for blogging. I'm in far better health than Totalbiscuit was. He was a video game reviewer that I followed years ago. One day, out of the blue, he posted that he had cancer. It was shocking and sad.

A few years later, it had spread throughout his body, and his optimism was relegated to proclaiming it stable for the moment. As he was lauded for his positivity, I wondered if the Cynical Brit might be more cynical than he was showing. I wonder why people care so much about how positive we are, even and especially as we're beaten to death by life's bullshit.

We're supposed to accept the things we cannot change, but no one really has the wisdom to know what those things are. We're also told to keep trying, even when the odds are terrible. We're told that staying positive can help our chances, but really, if stress is a major factor in disease, of course people who are better at mitigating stress will have better odds. What helps mitigate stress? Friends and family, having things to look forward to, hormones like oxytocin and cortisol.

The positive attitude itself is just the manifestation of all that. Attempting to paper over it all to feign positivity is repression and makes stress worse. I think it's often entirely reasonable to be cynical, and find it strange the way we cheer when people in the most miserable situations can still be happy. Sure, it's nice that they can feel that way, but it seems almost beside the point. I don't see why someone just being realistic is any less deserving of the pat on the back.

Maybe this isn't very Buddhist of me, but lately I've been thinking a miserable situation is miserable regardless of how we feel about it. All feeling is essentially delusion, a fabrication of the mind, but the reality of it is that our bodies, including the brain, have all sorts needs in order to function effectively. That is the closest we can come to being able to define something as objectively bad. Every organism is born to function, and the less it can do so, the more it sucks for said organism.

I don't eat much of anything processed. No refined sugar, no meat, breads or pasta. I don't smoke or drink. My typical snack is peanut butter on a rice cake, and maybe an apple, for fucks sake. I don't have the family history he did. I know that it doesn't take much for me to think I'm dying, lately. Cancer can seem so fucking random. 

Class was extra tough. Not in a fun way, but it was what they call a conditioning class. Which means instead of sparring or mitt work, it's just one long intense workout. I had to slow down, as it threatened to make me nauseous again. It was really hot and humid again today. That does seem to be a contributing factor at the very least. As I left, I noticed that I was about as soaking wet as if I were standing in the rain.

For once, nobody was masked. I'd forgotten mine, and hoped it wouldn't be an issue. None of it was even mentioned. Cases in Vermont are down to single digits per day. Only one hospitalized, no deaths. Feels pretty much back to normal. Sure can't say I made it through unscathed. 

probably nothing

I keep telling myself it's probably nothing yet again, but this time, it feels unconvincing. That doctor's appointment on the 14th can't come soon enough. I'm scared. I've been having symptoms for months, but had a hell of a time getting clear enough to make an appointment. I didn't want to deal with this over zoom. It's going to be difficult enough talking to my doctor about it in person.

I knew damn well that I should act quickly, but I just couldn't. Not on top of everything else. For six months, I've been fretting, but it was subtle and sporadic enough that maybe it wasn't blood. Maybe it was just something I ate. It's more often and unequivocal now, though. So, not the sort of thing that's just going to go away. Shitting blood is probably nothing though, right?

Life is finally supposed to be getting less awful, goddammit.

unidentified flying aliens

I don't know why I blog ..but you know, then I get stoned, and I'm just writing, because whatever. I've noticed that aliens have gone mainstream recently. I think it's interesting to imagine rapidly growing numbers of people wondering if we're about to meet space aliens. Must be exciting.

Thing is, space is really big. Time is quite long. It was the Fermi Paradox that got me thinking about the time component of the equation. It seems obvious now, but it hadn't occurred to me that such an alien encounter would require said aliens exist at the same time we do, relatively speaking, and that this is at least as astronomically unlikely as them existing nearby. Relatively speaking. If they're out there, it was a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.

The premise of the Fermi Paradox is that given the vastness of time, if they're out there, a good portion of them should be far older and more advanced than we are. Another thousand years and we could be colonizing the solar system. What of a race that's a million years ahead of us? A billion? Given modern technology, at least some of such vast and powerful civilizations would be detectable from hundreds of lightyears away. 

We can come up with reasons why some might not be, but in decades of searching, they've found nothing. Not just government scientists, but at all levels, around the world, even avid hobbyists - nothing. The most likely explanation being that like everything else, it's all transient, fleeting, temporary. Even technologically advancing species like ours. They don't exist long enough to become that advanced. Ever. 

Maybe there are evolutionary laws at work, even at such advanced levels. Maybe this is why progress is impossible, why communism never wins. Power begets power until we're all dead. Maybe it goes this way every time, around the universe. Survival of the fittest eventually strangles itself and starts anew, every time. 

It's possible this occurs before any of them are even capable of interstellar travel, simply because it's technologically possible to destroy ourselves well before it's possible to get anywhere near the speed of light, let alone any implausible wormhole stuff.