How getting my ass kicked made me a better artist

Let me tell you about the worst thing I've ever put myself through on purpose, and why I think it was necessary for me to finally come back to writing.

A while back I earned my third rank at my kickboxing gym. Third rank is considered the "rite of passage." It's a six-month training regimen that involves kicking a bag constantly for 30 minutes a day, but the hard part is the partner work. Every day you work with a coach for three-minute rounds, where you're supposed to kick them 60 times and knee them 35 times in the span of three minutes. It's the coaches job to stop you with all the tools at their disposal. They can kick you, punch you, shove you off balance, trip you...the sky's the limit, and all you have is kicks and knees.

And if you manage to get your numbers in within that three-minute timeframe, your next task is simple: survive. For the remainder of that time, your coach chases you down; you can evade them by ducking and weaving, but the best option is make them do most of the work by front-kicking them back over and over until the time runs out.

You start with three rounds per session. By the end of the six-month training process, you should be able to complete at least nine consecutive rounds.

It was brutal. I hated every second of it. I started my training in a cohort with three men, each with 5+ inches and 40 pounds on me. They all bailed out. The coaches were huge too; kicking Jason in particular was, and is, like kicking a tree trunk. I cried in the ring more than a few times. Towards the end, when I was training five days a week for 9-10 rounds a day, I'd suffer at least one panic attack per session.

I took this challenge, and started kickboxing, because I had a hunch:

Writing your way through depression is training for a fight with yourself.

Being an artist is...kind of about struggling, isn't it? As neurodivergent people, even more so.

"Doing hard things" as a neurotypical person in a salaried, corporate office job means something different to a neurodivergent, loosey-goosey creative type. Masking every day for hours is a hard thing. Being the only autistic Black woman in an environment is a hard thing.

But as soon as I did this one particular hard thing, I couldn't stop piling on more. It felt good to be acknowledged in the martial arts academy for something other than being weird as hell, and even better to know that I'd decided on doing that insane gauntlet of pain on purpose, and made it out in one piece.

Struggle can be a gift. Even when you're struggling with depression, the fact that you're still alive means you're winning.

When you do one cool thing, you get to feel like a badass for a little bit. You get to push past whatever you thought your limits were. A badass can't just do one cool thing; now you owe it to yourself to do it again — because you can.