“You Shouldn’t Have Asked!”

In early 2000, I started to learn a martial art, and for a little while before this I had thought about doing something. What had a played part here was that I had been watching films with Jean-Claude Van Damme in.

And while I ended up learning a different marital art to the one I had in mind, I soon forgot about this. I would do this once a week and this would be a time when my father would watch from the side.

A New Beginning

What I found, after doing this for a little while, is that I became more confident, which meant that more of my personality started to appear. I think a lot of this came down to the fact that I was in a new environment.

There wasn’t anyone there who would take the limelight, and this allowed me to express myself. Whereas when I was around my mother and sister, it was often hard for me to do this.

One Purpose

This was then a by-product of being in another environment as opposed to something that I believed would happen. Still, deep down I wanted to be able to be me and to no longer be overshadowed.

So, learning a martial art was one way for me to fulfil a need that I was completely aware of, and I ended up fulfilling a number of other needs that were just under the surface, so to speak. Naturally, I was expected to be serious and to focus on what was taking place during a class.

Another Side

There were times when this took place and times when I ended up behaving in another way. My humorous side would often come out, and I got a real buzz from making some of the people laugh.

I wasn’t the only one though, as the trainer clearly liked to do the same thing. But while most people there would look up to the trainer and not saying anything, I was only too happy to stand my ground and answer back.

A Big Shock

And even though I was there to learn a certain martial art, but there were moments when we did other things. On one of these occasions, I asked the trainer where they had learnt about these techniques.
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I was simply curious, I asked because I wanted to know; it wasn’t due to me having an ulterior motive. Well, let’s just say that I didn’t get much of an answer, and after they had walked off, I soon had a few of their acolytes come over to me.

On The Spot

One of things that I was told was that “I shouldn’t have asked them that”, to which I said that I was only curious. The people who came and spoke to me were around half the age of the trainer.

So it was not as if the trainer was too young to stand up for themselves and not only this, the trainer was a very good martial artist, to say the least. Shorty after this happened; I got the impression that this was someone who wasn’t very secure in themselves.

Built On Sand

At the time, I felt that I had been treated unfairly, and my father found it hard to believe what had taken place. In many ways, this was another nail in the coffin, and I don’t think I went for much longer after that.

As time went by I started to think about how even though this person came across as strong and capable, perhaps that this was not how they truly felt on the inside. What this shows is that even though someone can come across as having it all together, it doesn’t mean that this is actually the case.