I have wrote a couple of "Why I" pieces before, in fact, I have wrote a piece on the exact same subject I will be writing on today, only this time an effort has been made to really delve into the reason I do things through deep thought and reflection. Today's two questions I reluctantly asked myself (to answer truthfully) is why I do jiu-jitsu and why I compete. The reason why these questions have come up (again) is because I was forced to question myself after a conversation I had with my professor and thoughts of actually quitting jiu-jitsu scurried about my head.
Most of my life I never really had a choice in anything I wanted to do or how I wanted to do it. I went to a total of about 5-6 schools in 4 different states, and I never really made solid bonds with people. I barely played sports until high school and very rarely was I ever doing anything remotely outgoing (I had a very sheltered childhood). I was also bullied beyond belief for me and my mother's financial situation, a very debilitating stutter, and the fact that my father was not in the picture at the time. My mother was also very religious, which like i said kept me from doing anything remotely outgoing (except boy scouts, which was through the church...lol).
I joined the military after high school to try to shape my own path for a change and get away like I did so many times as a child. Packing up and leaving was very easy. But then my military career was cut short by a lot of bad decisions on my part, I completed 3 yrs. I kicked a few rocks around for a bit, trying to figure out what I wanted to do and how to go about doing it. I got married, had a kid but still had not accomplished anything in life worth noting. I had let anxiety and fear of being a failure control my life for so long that I was actually becoming a failure. That's when I dropped all the excuses, all my past mistakes, all the bullshiet I have gone through, all the tears, and pain...and I started jiu-jitsu.
It's so funny when my old friends (ones who remember me as a crybaby that used to get beat up and "punked" all the time) hear that I do jiu-jitsu. First thing they say is, I would've never thought you would do something like that. Not trying to make myself out to be a tough guy or anything, but just trying to prove the point that doing jiu-jitsu is so unlike me.
I hear a lot of people saying that jiu-jitsu saved their life, and I am honestly one of those people. There used to be a time (and there is still some of that old me left) that I would never put myself in a position where I could get hurt, talked about, laughed at, or fail. Which is why it took me 2 years from when I first heard about jiu-jitsu to even start it, even then I loved it. From the start I knew that jiu-jitsu would help me get over some of the issues that I was dealing with, in a way it was kind of like therapy. Most of the people who do it, know the feeling I am talking about, but they attribute it as some sort of addiction.
The way I did jiu-jitsu, you would think it was an addiction though. I showed up to every class I could and tried to soak up as much as I possibly could. I can guarantee a lot of people thought I was going to burn myself out, but the information they lacked was critical to knowing why exactly I train the way I do. You see, in my gym there are doctors, lawyers, IT's, programmers, you know people who have something else outside of BJJ that says...look I did something in life, I made good decisions. I don't. So I train like a madman and hope jiu-jitsu can take me somewhere.
I was talking to my professor the other day and I told him, I hate competing. He sort of laughed and said, " Then why do you do it so much?". I gave him the short and dirty and just said I want to get better and be high level. Nobody wants to hear the whole story, and the only reason I am talking about it on here is because its my blog and 10 yrs from now I am going to look at this and say, I did it. But in reality the reason I compete is because I am scared. The anxiety I feel before a competition cannot even be put into words. The pressure, the intimidation, the crowd scares the shiet out of me. Until those feelings go away, I won't stop competing.
Jiu-Jitsu will help lead me to reinvention.
