I’ve been avoiding my jiujitsu gym for the past four months...if I’m honest I was afraid to hobble in there on crutches, legless, after years of fighting on the mats. If you don’t know, jiujitsu is an incredibly aggressive sport. It’s beautiful and gentle, but full of power and speed and agility. I loved being able to roll (essentially spar). It’s always felt like flying to me. I feel like I have an “on” switch with jiujitsu, once I shake hands with an opponent or teammate, the rest of the world melts away and nothing else exists for those five or six minutes. I was by no means great at it, but I’ve learned a lot over the past years.
To come back to a gym of athletic, fit, badass fighters, on crutches, broken, missing a leg, felt scary. The reality is I know I’m not broken at all. But some moments I see myself that way. I feared that going there would remind me of how different I am - and would other see me that way?
I bit the bullet today and went with Brian to open mat.
Guess what? It was wonderful.
I sat and chatted with amazing teammates and got to watch my friends work on their game. I’m not broken, I’m healing. It’ll be months before I’ll be back on the mats for real, but for today it was enough to sit and watch.