Today I, as I do most days, was headed to a Soup/Sub/Salad trailer near my apartment to grab a salad for lunch. It is literally a two block walk one way, and normally my only grievance with it is the fact that around here people like to open and do construction on the sewer lines at noon on the hottest days of the year in August. I will now pause to allow you to imagine the pleasantries that come with a whiff of a river of sewage baking in 105 degree weather.

Now, moving on, today there were no open sewers, and all seemed well in the world, until I got to an intersection that I had to cross to get to my little salad trailer. Now, there is a light and crosswalk directing this intersection, and it’s a small and seemingly innocuous one to boot, so it’s never really posed a problem. A car pulled up at the intersection to turn and seemed to be stopping. The crosswalk said walk and someone else was already crossing, so I moved in, as was my right, to cross the street, and this bimbo idiot soccer mom in the SUV that wanted to turn TURNED RIGHT INTO ME despite the fact that I WAS LESS THAN A FOOT AWAY FROM HER AND STANDING DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF HER MONSTROSITY OF A VEHICLE. I could not believe it, but did manage to go into my “mortal danger” mode, where time slows down and I get a burst of adrenaline that allows me to do things like rip off 60 lbs. of scuba equipment in under 5 seconds 70 feet from shore in the Red Sea or jump forward while grabbing a hold and pushing off of the corner of an SUV before it hits me while its asshole driver STEPS ON THE GAS.

I land a few feet away from the car and take off to the other side of the road, my brain still not entirely under my own conscious control. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am generally a soft-spoken, even shy person who doesn’t like to make a scene. So you can imagine my surprise with myself when, after pushing off her car, I uncontrollably scream at the top of my lungs, as thought I have Tourettes’, “WHAT THE FUCK, BITCH?!”. Everyone standing, running, or walking nearby turned to look at me. The soccer mom in her SUV did not even pay me that courtesy and instead she kept driving, apparently too cynical and clueless to care that she’d just almost rammed another human being. It’s also possible she thought that if she got out of the car or tried to apologize I’d walk over and kill her, which at the time I was mad enough to do.

Conclusion A: People in Austin do not know how to drive.

Conclusion B: Soccer moms with SUVs, I don’t care how much you hate your lives, drink your fucking coffee in the morning.

Why the fuck do I have to be so out of shape? I mean, I know why, when I step back and take a nice objective view of my childhood and adolescence. I know. I get it. I was overweight at 8 because I started hoarding food. I started smoking at fourteen because my crush and friends smoked. I started drinking and popping pills at 13 because I was severely damaged. I would starve and binge and starve and binge – Once I even starved myself to the point of passing out while at my mom’s ex-boyfriend’s house, that was fun to explain (to him, my mom knew about it and did nothing) – and oh then came the drugs, so many fucking drugs, and I starved and binged and snorted and smoked my lungs and heart into oblivion FOR YEARS and WHY THE HELL could I have not just been a normal, healthy person who eats decently and works out and is pretty damn healthy? And THEN, when I finally QUIT EVERYTHING and start running and doing yoga, why the hell couldn’t I have stuck with it? Why on earth did I have to start smoking and lounging on my ass again the moment I got to London, a pack-pack and a half/day habit for TWO GODDAMN YEARS?!

I mean, I know why. I am pretty damn self aware and I know all the deep tragic reasons for this crap but AHHHHHH. WHY can’t I just have been in decent, maybe even good? shape going into this? Because if I had been, I could really be getting everything there is to get out of this, but my lungs and heart are still too weak. Today I really thought I was going to pass out, more times than I could count. I think I’m finally really looking at what I’ve been doing to my body throughout my whole life now and of all the fucking shit, of all the potentially traumatic childhoods I could have had, and really, there are so many fun ones, why did I have to get landed with one that would have me destroying my health so young for so long that now my body is just weak. ARGH. I just cannot believe what I have actually done to myself.

And this concludes my rant for the evening.

And so it is with all the sense of welcoming and appreciation in the world that I have come on board the Zone diet – which is basically just balancing out how many carbs, proteins and monounsaturated fats one consumes per meal. My version is modified for optimal leaning out – it’s low on carbs and high on protein and fats. To all cashews out there: take me baby, I’m yours.

I’ve been doing it since yesterday, trying to achieve 5 meals of 6 blocks per meal, as per the recommended intake for a “small” woman (I think, I kind of figured it out on my own after nutritionist lady confused me so thoroughly that I thought I understood when I didn’t. She was not having a good day.) 3-4 blocks fat, 1-2 protein, 1 carb, and then I add a protein shake on days I do Krav. I do definitely feel less hulkish now – though my Thursday workout fucked up my ankle, which kept me out of the gym on Friday.

My brain and my body are definitely disagreeing as to what my performance level should be. It all just feels so weird, too. I feel like such a jock. I was the fat girl in school who was actually always extremely flexible but never able to do anything beyond that – I couldn’t run, I couldn’t to a pull-up, I couldn’t do gymnastics, hell, I couldn’t even catch a ball until the fourth grade. Then, I was a drug addict. Now, I’m studying Arabic and French (academics are not necessarily thought of as the most gym-oriented people). So for me to suddenly be immersed in a world with wrapped up hands, bruises in places I didn’t know had blood, sports bras replacing regular bras, hot, sweat-soaked bodies beating mats until the gym mirrors steam up and sucking up liquid protein through a straw has me seriously weirded out.

The people at the gym are great, though – I’ve had a few partners who’ve sucked to pair with, but most are encouraging, great people. It’s a kind of support I’ve never known in all this that is immeasurably important: The benefits of someone telling you that you can do it, just push through it are tremendous and something that someone who is not used to much support at all in these kinds of things can really, really appreciate. I’m also seriously considering throwing a day of Crossfit into my week. This shit works.

Before

After, holy shit.

And so, in its own, babbling and barely coherent way, life begins again this week. I went on Monday and was slammed with a work out only rivaled in intensity by my first – and afterward I felt as though I’d just fallen out of a moving train. I was too sore the next day to go to Krav, but I did do a half hour of yoga.

Which reminds me.

My yoga DVDs came in the mail during sick week, completing my collection until I get to the point that I cam move on to Rodney Yee’s advanced workout DVD (Read: that will take years). I use a combination of Rodney Yee’s Power Yoga, which is an hour-long session of intermediate power yoga focusing on the Warrior asanas, and now, Wai Lana’s “Hello Fitness” DVD three pack. I discovered Wai Lana in Wegmans about two and a half years ago and bought her Wake Up Body DVD. This was not the rational decision on my part, as the I was just coming out of a life chapter marked with nothing but drug abuse, lethargy, more drug abuse, nicotine, binge drinking, and self destruction not otherwise specified.  So, in thinking that I could just jump straight from that to a yoga workout involving backbends all the way to the floor, I was a teeny bit of an optimist. Then, over time, I stopped working out and started smoking again, for just under two years of that two and a half years, and now here I am.

Mixing yoga with Krav is a tremendously good idea on my part. The yoga stretches me out, but mentally it’s also about developing a very peaceful core, and a strong sense of balance, and just an overall sense of calm, unmoving strength. It’s the earth mother in me. Krav, conversely, is about fast, explosive, brutal, hard combat – though one must still be balanced and be in control, it’s not about being at peace or finding zen or being at one with a gentle universe. It’s the abuse survivor and the warrior in me. Together, both become more finely tuned, more able to co-exist with the other, more balanced, more powerful in their own ways, more mature, less afraid. So it’s all just fabulous.

Except now I feel like the incredible freaking hulk. I have more muscle, am stronger, and am in better shape right now than I have ever been in my entire life, but the excess weight I’ve picked up over this wildly entertaining journey through life is not coming off at the same speed that I’m putting on muscle. I can imagine this has something to do with my diet, and tomorrow I have a free nutrition consultation at the gym I take Krav in. My goal is to not be hulkish when I am forced for an impossibly small window of time to go back to my hometown, an experience I have put off for as long as humanely possible. I need to, some friends are moving to Europe and I’d like to see them before they go, I have my mom, who is one of my best friends and biggest supporters, and my brother, who is approaching adolescence, and who is so much younger than me I’m in a quasi-motherly position that involves a lot of me wanting to participate in his life and a lot of him not caring. He’s already taking French because of me, though, and it might be nice to see him a few times this year.

And then I have my half-brother in Vermont, and my amazing, adorable, life-affirming nephew. SO, I must go to my home town. And you must understand, I went to high school in this home town. These wounds are painful, deep, typical, and rooted in the pain only an awkward, overweight teenage girl can truly know. I want to walk out of that plane looking and feeling like Xena the fucking warrior princess. We’ll see how the nutrition consult goes – here’s hoping I can stop  feeling like the incredible hulk soon! Less Hulk, more Xena.

Oh yeah, AND I bought a ticket to go see Motorhead in September. Yessss.

I like this one. It matches my arm tattoo, and I like that it is legible but still pretty, with the short voweling. This is one I am strongly considering.

This one is my tentative favorite. The loopy lines would need some smoothing out, but I could do that myself – I think it would flow with a side rib cage best, is absolutely beautiful, and not too sophisticated for this kind of quote. The loopy lines would also look great on top of a flower, and somehow this feels more in keeping to the spirit of the quote than the others.

My friend said that this was a little without character – I agree.

Too quranic for this kind of quote.

What do you think?

1. I vowed to take Krav 7 years ago, after I saw the movie “Enough” starring Jennifer Lopez. In it, she plays an abused, financially insecure wife of a rich, authoritarian, evil man with connections in every intelligence and government agency. She also has a daughter, and eventually flees him with said daughter, a moves which leads to incredible stalking, terrorizing, etc. etc. until she magically finds and, in a matter of minutes, wins over her LA-based crime lord father, who starts giving her money. Eventually, he hooks her up with a Krav Maga instructor. She learns in a month what most people take years to become comfortable with, and kills her husband to protect her daughter. Ah, Hollywood. Well, seven years ago I too was living with an abusive man, and when I saw that movie what really hit me was the following dialogue:

“How do you win?” “I attack.” “And what do you do after you attack?” “Nothing.” “Why nothing?” “Because I never stop attacking.”

As an abuse victim, those words, and the power they entail, touched me so deeply seven years ago that I watched the movie, and the scene where the husband meets his timely end, again and again and again and swore on every God and Goddess mankind has ever invented that I would learn Krav Maga. I was unable to go from that initial desire to walking into a gym offering Krav lessons for 7 years, either because no one was teaching it, or I was too much of a basket case.

2. I don’t just hate the IDF. I felt powerless against them, so totally and deeply, and their presence really scared me. They scared me. They reinforced old traumas, opened old wounds, and created new ones. When I left Israel I was shaken to the core. I feel a need to master their fighting style, something that lends itself so totally to the acquisition of power through the unrelenting and brutal destruction of one’s opponent. Now, my opponents are ghosts, but the IDF play into that and I need to use their own mercilessness against the power they held over me.

And thus, I have finally started lessons at a local gym that teaches Krav Maga. Friday’s class somehow lacked the insane punch of Monday’s and, thankfully, this week’s. I remember in the eighth grade when we did gymnastics, and I did nothing but sit on my ass because we didn’t need to pass gym to pass eighth grade. All I did was sit there, and get fat. Very fat. Now, as I allow these Krav instructors to break my body in ways I never thought possible, I can truly appreciate what an idiot I was then. OW.

The first class, I could barely move for two days. The second left me a little sore just from punching, but what freaked me out about that class was the choke hold. It’s possible that it’s just because it’s so new to me, but when someone puts me in a choke hold my panic button goes off and I forget the combination. Monday, still really sore, but not as badly as last week. Now, I’ve had my fourth class, and I’m getting a little more comfortable with being attacked with my eyes closed in passive stance – as someone whose adrenal glands are conditioned to produce in constant excess to keep her constantly vigilant throughout the day, “passive” doesn’t work for me at all, but that’s something I need to work out. I’m definitely more comfortable with being attacked from the side when off guard than being put in a choke hold. I’m also really not used to the concept of attacking and defending simultaneously – I guess I’m just used to being in such a powerless position that no attack was even conceivable.

Well, it’s conceivable now. All these things take time, but ultimately I think this is going to work for me. Whoo!

Right now I have five tattoos. Here they are:

I’ve started planning a new tattoo design for my rib cage.I want to work with lyrics from Ahmad Qabour’s song “bedi ghani lin-nas” or, I want to sing to the people, that read بدي غني لولاد، بعمرن ما عاشوا ولاد، وبقيوا بهالدنيا ولاد

That roughly translates to: “I want to sing to children, who never lived as children, and remained children in this world.” It actually sounds like crap in English but in Arabic I think it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard, and carries tremendous meaning to me, as a survivor of child abuse and someone who seems destined to spend her life studying and trying to prevent oppression. Now, as a non-native speaker (and non-speaker, really) of Arabic, but someone who has studied the language for a few years and has tremendous love and admiration for it, allow me to illustrate my process of stenciling an Arabic tattoo:

1. If translating from English to Arabic, which thank God I’m not doing this time, contact at least three of my native-speaking friends to confirm that my translation is correct.

2. Send script to friend of mine in Palestine (when I was in Palestine, this step was obviously not necessary) and have him get in touch with his friends and get them to draw up a calligraphy version of the script, which he then sends back to me.

3. I then check again with a native-speaking friend that the script is accurate, before waiting to go to Phil’s studio in my hometown, where I draw and apply the stencil myself using his lightboard, making sure that I know what every mark means and where it should go and making sure that everything is there throughout the process of drawing up the tattoo.

I am incredibly neurotic about screwing up languages I haven’t mastered in tattoos – with the exception of cuneiform. That, I got off of an online dictionary, after deciding that if it was so impossible for me to find the contact info of a cuneiform expert to fact check with then, really, I think I’ll live. But Arabic is a living language, and one that, as I said, I’m very passionate about and think is absolutely amazing, so I want it to be done right. In fact, I want it better than right, since grammatically correct tattoos in Arabic can still look like total shit. Point is, there is nerve-wracking effort between “hey, that’s cool” and “hey, that’s marked into my flesh for the rest of time”.

Not so for most, apparently. According to a brilliant and scathing post I stumbled upon last night regarding bad Arabic tattoos, things like this upcoming gem happen when people copy/paste Arabic into a word document that doesn’t support Arabic font.

According to the Josh dude who runs that blog, this is a backwards, disconnected attempt to say: Beloved wife, princess protects, this is me soft (transliterated from English) I will protect. No, dude. Just no. I don’t know which poor wife suffered a mention in this monstrosity, but if I was her, I would consider that grounds for divorce. Gross. During my quest to see what other people were doing with Arabic in tattoos, I even found a photo of someone’s tattoo (that has since been removed, not a bad move on behalf of the tattoo owner) that looked exactly like the spewed Microsoft Word vomit above, and that was apparently supposed to be an Arabic translation of a Tupac quote. Here’s the kicker: the thing ran the entire way down the idiot’s arm. Why the hell would you try to translate a Tupac quote out of English into a language you don’t speak, read, or know anything about and get that permanently inked onto your flesh?

Can you even imagine what would happen if you asked Google Translate to give you the Arabic Equivalent to “Tha track hits ya eardrum like a slug to ya chest, pack a vest for your jimmy in the city of sex”? (O.O)

So, when I get the calligraphy back from my friend’s friend and have a few friends who are all native speakers of Arabic check it out, I will incorporate it into my lotus and post the design here.

I’m also tempted to put “I can live without you”, a quote from Tina Turner’s When The Heartbreak is Over and a final word to my dead, abusive, bastard father, and a testament to my own freedom, somewhere. Not sure where yet, though… It might wind up being a leg deal – though right now it’s definitely tentative.