You ever have those times where something happens....you say something to someone and realize not only have you leaped before looking, you did so with both feet and your eyes shut?
I don't know if people ever have this, but I will try to explain a part of myself.
I act a lot. I mean this quite literally. I volunteer with a medieval festival, and I help out with the promotional events we do as a part of it, and I go LARPing once a month as well. So I dress up, and take on the persona and mindset of someone else for a time regularly. I know how to cover what I am thinking fairly well as a result and can hide my emotions and thoughts fairly well. It can be very easy to use skills like that in the rest of your life when they are practiced so regularly. It is much the same for people who know their job well, as someone who has done construction for a long time I have a hard time walking into a room or a building without looking at it to see how it was made or repaired or what needs to be repaired. This is fairly common, from what I understand. Anyway, back to my main thought. It can be easy to pretend to be someone or something I'm not, or to make people think I feel differently that how I really do. I hate doing that, I feel horrible lying to people like that, mostly because I hate it when people lie to me. So I try my very best to be honest about things.
It is surprising, that despite how much people ask for honesty and truth, they do not like what they hear. Sometimes they get angry, but what I discovered recently is that they feel fear. I care a great deal about people, especially those close to me. I work hard to be worthy of their love and friendship, and I am willing to sacrifice almost anything for them. My brothers are a good example of this. Yes, we do fight and argue and there are times when we hate each other. Sometimes our friends will pick on one of us, and we will step back and watch it happen, and people often feel that we don't care a lot about each other. I don't always know about them, but I love my brothers. I don't mind a bit of humour so poking fun is fine in my eyes, but if I see something or feel that my brothers are being threatened or hurt in some way, I keep my eyes open to catch it and step in. I hope my brothers realize that if someone comes after them, I will always back them up and support them and protect them if they ask for it or need it.
As the oldest brother, protection and responsibility come easily, and I extend it to my family and many friends as well. I am willing to do anything for them, even fighting. I enjoy friendly competition and working against someone in order to improve myself, but I do not enjoy fights. They are messy and hurtful and more harm than good comes of them. I find a difference between a fight and an argument, but I can explore that thought another time. If, for some reason, I am forced to fight to protect somebody I care about and love, I have found that some of my morals and personal code can limit me and prevent me from protecting to the best of my ability. If and when a fight start, I aim to prevent harm to my charges first, and then stop the fight second. I have spent some time learning martial arts like judo in order to protect myself and others, but I realize I am not the best at it, and that it can be difficult and time consuming to properly stop someone. Much as I try to improve, circumstances are rarely in your favour when it comes to a fight, and so I have been faced with a problem. While judo and my training focus on blocks followed by throws, armbars and chokeholds...these responses and ways of stopping a fight take time, and if I am facing more than one person, time is something I don't have a lot of. Even if there is only one person, I doubt I will have the time to get my footwork to where I need it to make my training work, and so I have been forced to learn other ways to protect, namely hitting.
Hitting is a very basic, simple movement which allows it to be a faster response than the grappling I am trained in. Most self-defense classes will teach you to aim quick and strong strikes to the groin, face and solar plexus in order to buy yourself time to run or make your next move as these areas tend to be the most sensitive for people. So, this allows me to be a bit better at defending people. Now you remember how I said that this desire to protect those I love no matter what occasionally puts me in a moral quandary? It is because of women. Guys fighting guys is so old that nobody bats an eye about it when it happens, but what do you do when a woman is attacking you? As someone who was raised in a home where respect and care was foremost, hitting anyone was frowned upon, and by nature of society, hitting a woman is considered so horrible that it seems they could take your money, ruin your life, and then physically and emotionally and mentally abuse you for years, and yet when you decide to stand up and protect yourself, be careful! If you happen to hit her, no-one will support you. This has caused me trouble a few times, and I find myself frustrated with it. Do I avoid hitting a woman, and possibly allow them to hurt those I love, or do I break that rule people believe is the defining mark of a gentleman in order to make sure my charges are safe? As I have covered, I do not hit without some reservation, but I believe that if it comes down to it, then I would hit a girl. I realize that as a guy I have an advantage in physical power by default, so that such a fight could be seen as unfair.
This is where the title of this post comes in, as this is where I hit my feelings of failure recently. I had tried explaining this to someone recently, and now they are afraid of me. I really don't blame them. Much as I want to promise that I would never hit them, how can they trust that when I just told them I have no reservations about hitting people if pushed to it? This is the problem with being trained in martial arts and how to fight, you are taught to react instinctively. Even though you are taught to control that instinct, if you happen to slip, you might hurt the very people you care about. If you think about it, this is the line of reasoning for most supervillians in films, they want to protect someone and end up hurting them while trying to do so. Warriors only know war, those who live by the sword...you know, all that stuff.
So, knowing that I want to protect people, can you understand how terrible I feel knowing that the very part I use to do that causes someone I care about to be afraid of me? Failure has got to be the most potent of feelings I experience. I feel all the more worse knowing that there is nothing I can do to alleviate the situation. I could say all the right things, explain how I would never hurt them, promise to never hit a girl again...but if they don't believe what I'm saying, what good is it?
I don't know what all I hoped to gain from writing this, really. I hoped you would read it, maybe understand what I am going through and what I am feeling, but would that help? If anything, you might think I was trying to beg my way into your life, and that is just sad. I am better than that, and you deserve better than that. I just hope, whether or not you read this, you realize that I am not that kind of person.
I had hoped to find somebody to love, but to loose that chance because they are afraid of me...of all the things that have tested my faith in hope, this may be what breaks me. Part of me hopes you don't read this, but another part does. I hate for you to see me like this, but as I said before, I work hard to be honest, and I don't want to lie, no matter how much I might gain now I would be losing it all soon after. I'm sorry I failed you so, and I hope you do not think poorly of me, no matter what you choose.
Tyler
