Rollercoaster of Emotional Distress

Have you ever felt so confuse, so lost that you don't even know exactly what are you feeling? That you want to shout, cry, punch and hurt yourself all at the same time, just to see if the distress go away?

I really hope you didn't. But if you didn't, then there is no hope that you will ever understand how I am feeling these last days. It is not the first time I feel like that. I have been there before. Fortunately, not so many times, though. But usually there is a reason for feeling like that, and this time I was caught by surprise, just out of the blue. I woke up yesterday feeling like dieing. Without a clue of why. Just sad, unmotivated, tired, frustrated and most of all, very angry with myself. That was a horrible start for a day. And it scaled up.

I think that everybody have their own internal demons, their own ghosts. You know, that kind of bad memory that you do your best to forget, to not think about. That kind of thing that hurts so much that make you question why the hell do you keep going on? That would make you accept to cripple a limb with a chainsaw if that would make the painful memory go away forever? Or maybe it's just me. But the fact is that I have my demon. I really thought that it was gone forever, or better saying I didn't thought of it at all for a while and then Ididn ' t expect it to come back. But it did. It came back strong and hitting me at all the sides. Maybe it is some kind of mechanism in the sadness that wants to ensure that you will do feel really bad. And as it was, I woke up pretty bad for no known reason and after a few hours like that my demon started to hit me. Softly in the beginning, but stronger and stronger until it became unbearable. I tried the standard procedure for depression: headed for the gym, worked out for an hour, back home, shower, head to the lab, working on my research. Didn't work. I was not even being able to concentrate on my research. Every 15 minutes I had to stop and try to put myself together. Then I used the last non-chemical resource, the letter. A few years ago I had a similar problem and decide to write a letter for my demon. Saying all I wanted to say, or all I could think about saying, as if it was a person. It was a letter never meant to be send. It is a letter to me, actually. By now it is almost like a living thing. When I am fighting my demon I use to read the letter again and add or remove parts to it, so it is almost like a dialog. Sometimes the letter is so harsh, so mean and aggressive that I question if I wrote that of if it was somebody else. Sometimes it is so full of clichés and third class sentimentalism that I feel pity and disgust for the pathetic soul that wrote it. Reading and rewriting the letter helped a bit, but no so much. Helped enough to let me keep working, and surprisingly the day was even productive.

Around 21:00h I just wanted go home, 12h in the lab is enough for one day. But I knew I would not be able to sleep, so I decided to go see a movie instead. I watched ``The Golden Compass''. It was a good movie and for the duration of it I could not think about anything. But I eventually had to go back home. I really didn't want to go back to my 六畳 (rokujou) apartment, but I had no much options on that. It was not the best night of sleep, but after ½ bottle of wine I was ready to bed.


I woke up today not much better than yesterday, but I called home. I could talk to Anyssa (my oldest daughter) and to Karin (my wife). I really needed that! It was SOOOOO good to hear their voices, to talk to Karin just about everyday things, how are the studies going, how are the kids, how Samiya is learning the names of the letters, and Tatsu is starting to read hole words and Anyssa told me that she is liking the gymnastics classes, etc. I miss that so badly. I miss hugging them before they leave to school, listening they complain about each other and things like that. And I miss being with Karin. In many ways. I miss her voice, her face, her smell. I miss talking to her. She always was my friend, the one that was there for me, the one I talked to when I needed and the one that talked to me. (She always asks if she talks too much. I don't think so. I like to hear her.) And today, after I talked to her, I was feeling happy. Really. I went from dark sadness to shinning happiness, and I was very happy for a while. But my demon came to hit me again. But weaker this time. I think it was still the "Karin-effect", so to say.

So today again, I thought that going to the movies would be good just to not think about anything. Just that this time it didn't work so well as the previous one. I went to watch ``Jumper'', but the movie did not catch my attention.


After coming back from the movies I decided to write about how I was feeling in an attempt to organize my own thoughts and maybe overcome whatever started the depressive spiral I got catch in. Now, at the end of the text, I still don't know why I suddenly started to feel so bad, or why I keep thinking over and over again about things I want to forget, but I am feeling lighter. Maybe is the process of writing itself that helps, or maybe is the illusion of be talking to somebody, I don't know. But it helped.

Shodan-shinsa

Este post está em inglês, porque eu quero que alguns amigos que não falam Português também possam lê-lo.

This post is in English, so my friends that can't read Portuguese will be able to understand it. By the way, my English is not that good, so there will be, most likely, mistakes. Sorry for that, and hope you don't mind.

小野先生、大城さん、宮田さん、合気道クラブの皆さん、まだ日本語で書けないですみません。

Since I can remember I always was fascinated by martial arts. Of course, some decades ago in a small town in Brazil's countryside, a boy did not have much opportunity to put this fascination to work. Specially a boy from a not so wealthy family. Even so, I convinced my parents to let me take a few classes in the only Karate dojo in the town. My grandmother made my karate-gi taking as model the gi of a colleague. (I love my grandmother. She is the closest thing to a guardian angel that I know.) I didn't train for long, before the first exam (that must be paid, of course) my parents said I would have to give up the classes. It was too expensive for them.

It was some 10 years until I could train any martial art again. After moving to Vitória, the capital of my state, I got to know Tae Kwon Do, a Korean martial art that I had never heard about before. I loved it. It was very dynamic and used kicks a lot. I was good at kicking. I trained with master Hong (a real Korean master, former army's captain) for one year. But he closed his dojo, and I changed to train in another gym. Tae Kwon Do has 10 grades (from 10 to 1, being 10^th the lowest) before black-belt. I trained hard for 3 years, and was 3^rd grade. Only 2 exams left before black-belt. I even participated in a contest. Not very successfully. I was heavy-weight, i.e. over 78 Kg. Thing is that my opponent was, of course, also heavy-weight. I was 80.5 Kg and he was 117 Kg. He stroked me with a punch and I lost a tooth and the fight. But even without a great performance in the contest I was happy and training hard. Maybe too hard. In one training session I hurt my right leg really bad. Bad enough to make me go through physiotherapy for 6 months, and even today, 14 years after that I still feel the muscle every single time I stretch. It was the end of my Tae Kwon Do days. For years after that I could not raise my leg enough for a decent kick. I always practice stretching, so today I can kick pretty well again, but it took me a decade to recover. (OK, maybe with more physiotherapy I had recovered faster.)

Then, I saw a demonstration of Aikido. There is a nikkei community center in Vitória, and a sensei of Aikido had moved to the city and started to teach a very few students. No more than 5 I think. The sensei was old, about 80 years old, and died about 4 years after he started teaching in Vitória. Now his former students were trying to keep his legacy alive opening dojos, and did a public presentation to promote it. Honestly, I did not thought, at the time, that the "throwing people flying in the air using their own power" would work for real, but decided to give it a try, since I could not do almost any other martial art due to my leg injury. To my own surprise I found myself being thrown in the tatami many times in the first class, and started to think that maybe that thing could really work. After 3 or 4 classes I had been hooked. I was loving the Aikido classes almost as much as I loved the Tae Kwon Do ones. I was luck. 3 former students of the old sensei opened dojos. I choose the one of Kabazawa sensei, a small Japanese guy that moved to Brazil some 15 years before. He had done judo since ever and learned Aikido with the old sensei after adult. He was the one with the more dynamic and energetic style from the 3 students that opened dojos.

In Brazil it takes much more time to get black-belt in Aikido than here in Japan. Usually you have to train seriously for 4½ to 5 years before you can be a shodan (black-belt 1st dan), so I trained for almost 3 years and was still 3^rd kyu (the grading is from 5^th kyu to 1^st kyu, being 5^th kyu the lowest), and preparing to do the 2^nd kyu exam. By that time I had already finished college and got married. I had a job (for some time 3 jobs, actually), and me and Karin (my wife) was both working a lot. I started skipping Aikido classes because of the work, then I got a teaching job in a private college and could not go to the training anymore. After that I still tried to go back training, this time early in the morning. Trained for about 6 months, but my work schedule changed and I quitted the training once again.

After that a lot of things happened and I end up here in Japan. Here they have a lot of clubs or circles in the university. For the most different things: singing, dancing, playing drums, and, of course, for many kinds of martial arts. I went looking for a club of Aikido. I found the biggest one first (I discovered later that there are 3 clubs of Aikido). It is a good club, but they train from Monday to Friday, from 17:50h to 19:00h. This is complicated for me because I usually have meeting with my adviser at this time. But, then I found out about some "Competition Aikido Club". That sounded strange at first because I always heard that there is no competition in Aikido. But the time of the training was excellent, Tuesday and Thursday from 19:30h to 21:00h. I went to watch a training class and the people at the club were so kind and friendly. And it was a very dynamic style as I like it. In the end of the training there is always randori-renshu, which is almost like the fight training I used to do in Tae Kwon Do. I felt really well at the training. That was a little more than 2 years ago. I have being training almost without interruption during this time, and the people in the Aikido club are basically the only Japanese friends I have. (I stay most of the time alone in my lab.)

Last Monday, December 24^th, 2007, I did my shodan-shinsa, the black-belt exam. And I passed the exam. I am black-belt now. Of course, a lot of people are black-belt. Of course, it is not that big deal, and it is just the beginning. After that there is 2^nd dan, 3^rd dan, etc. And a shodan is no more than a beginner that have mastered the basics. But to me this black-belt means a lot. More than I can explain by words. I know that may sound foolish, after all, as I said, it is not so big deal, and there are a dozen other black-belts on our club only. But I don't care if it sounds foolish. Having got this, having earned this black-belt, has a taste of accomplishment, of self-realization. I do feel great about it, and I have so many people to be thankful. For so many things. To Zé Carlos, my Tae Kwon Do instructor. To Kabazawa sensei, my first Aikido sensei. To Ono sensei for his support here in Japan. To Ôki-sempai that trained so many times with me and was my partner in the exam. To all the kind friends in the Kyogi Aikido Club. And to Karin that was my support, my sparring (poor Karin), that was always there for me.

Ôki-san, my sempai and partner in the exam, and me. Ono-sensei had to leave before the end of the exam, so he is not in the photo, but he was there too.

After the exam, as it was Christmas' eve, I had a dinner with some friends. I was so happy that I drank and ate a little too much. The next day my stomach and my head remembered me that moderation, even in happiness, is a virtue.