I had quite a conversation this afternoon/evening. I met this man a few weeks ago. He is the friend of a friend. Today we talked about martial arts, self defense, and my future plans. He is a martial arts teacher/personal trainer and when I told him I just signed a 6 month contract he said, “Come over for some free classes for now and when your contract is up we can discuss payment.”

His background: he’s been doing martial arts since childhood. He was in the marines for 18 years with 9 of them spent as a weapons instructor. He worked with the Israeli military as they developed Krav Maga. He’s taught some fantastic number of different art forms.

He specifically teaches womens self defense classes that combine a few disciplines to maximize the strength of the female body. He… was kinda judgey about Impact. But that’s fine. What he’s doing isn’t what Impact is doing.

He’s very local. He is a friend of one of my very favorite moms and she’s known him forever. So he’s incredibly well vouched for.

I told him I have about a five year window before I need to be where I ought to be because I’m going to be more like launching my research in about ten years and I can’t be just getting to physical fitness as I’m doing the interviews. I need to be ready and it just needs to be an ingrained part of my life.

He smiled at me in a way that worries me. And makes me very hopeful at the same time.

People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I kind of needed to have someone show up and say, “Let me teach you how to be incredibly devastatingly physically effective.”

Sometimes the universe smiles on me in ways I truly don’t deserve. I’m grateful. Thank you.

I have no idea if this will go anywhere. But I’m very happy that this opportunity is falling into my lap.

Also: both of my chiropractors have commented this week that my body seems to have made a huge leap of progress. I’m less inflamed. I have more range of motion. My neck vertebrae has been in actual alignment for more than a week and this is the first time since I’ve seen this doctor that I’ve managed that. Even though this weekend was a brutal physical skills class.

There is emotional healing and physical healing and they tie together. I store my trauma in my body. Even though some people don’t approve of the degree of blood thirst I feel… oh come on. I have legitimate reasons for needing to work through my big feelings towards men. I’m not picking fights with strangers just to be a dick. I’m fighting instructors in class and enjoying it. I am enjoying the process of learning how to keep myself safe for hopefully the first time in my life.

The last time I was raped I fought and I lost. That was very useful when it happened. In many ways it let me stop feeling so god damn guilty about my failure to prevent every other rape.

I can’t lose again.

That is so complicated.

I’m having a lot of complex thoughts about rape right now. I’m looking at my five year old and thinking, “Do I believe this person to be emotionally, spiritually, or intellectually capable of rape?”

No. But that kid sure can walk all the hell over your boundaries unless you enforce them.

Oh wow.

Boundary violations, trauma, consent, rape. I don’t know about you but I sure as fuck didn’t know how to ask for consent when I was five. But I was told I was supposed to put my mouth on as many dicks as I could.

Today my five year old fell asleep on me. So her mouth fell open wide as she drooled on me. I felt nauseated, repulsed, and disgusted by the fact that someone, anyone could look at a child like that and have sexual thoughts.

Then I thought, Oh my god I already had a body count.

Ok. I think I finally believe it is different when a five year old does it than when an adult does it.

I didn’t until today.

Today I looked at my child and saw absolutely no ability to be culpable for such an act.

But a child that age can be trained to do anything. That’s not the same thing as culpability.

I don’t think this change of opinion changes my overall status as a monster. It’s all so complicated.

Why am I a monster? Because I was trained to be a rapist before I knew better? No. Because monsters aren’t really just creatures who have done specific things. Monsters are scary. Monsters don’t have to do anything bad to be monsters. They are just monsters.

I’m a monster because I have absolutely zero desire to be charming. Charming people are god damn dangerous.

Monsters are just ugly and rude and tell you that things have to be the way they expect things to be and that’s how life is, right? DEMANDING ASSHOLE IN THE HOUSE!

Monsters are monsters because they are creepy and they make people uncomfortable.

I need to go to bed.