I was nursing nasty bruises, skinned surfaces and scabbed-over cuts for more than a week.
I took a self-defense class at one of the local Krav Maga studios a couple of weeks ago, which is where I acquired my wounds. One big cut on my elbow, bruises up and down my arms, big string of bruises on my left leg, some scratches. Oh, yeah--I also had a big scab on the heel of my right hand, which I got tripping on the sidewalk in front of my work three days earlier. It got opened up pretty nicely again at the class. I looked like I had joined a fight club.
This class was a three-hour session that worked my every muscle. We learned how to break a chokehold and bend back an attacker's wrist; how to protect your face while throwing a palm or elbow at your attacker's nose; how to grab your attacker on the meaty part of his tricep and shoulder, dig your nails in, and pull him toward you to knee his groin; how to take advantage of the mere milliseconds a man needs to unzip his pants, before raping you, to scoot back and kick his face. We practiced these moves with our partners and with bags typically used for martial arts and boxing training. Then we had to fight off attackers in staged scenarios.
I didn't get cut or bruised because these men were unusually rough, or because the class was conducted recklessly or irresponsibly. I got cut because I went to town on my pretend attackers.
If we had to hit a practice bag with the heels of our hands, I hit the bag until one of my hands was bleeding and needed to be wrapped up. I elbowed the bag until my skin was raw. I banged my attacker's head into the ground (again, the bag) violently, my whole body straddling the bag, hair flying, until I dripped sweat into the pretend attacker's pretend eyes (if, of course, by some miracle they would still have been open). On my three staged attacks, not one of the men took me down to the ground.
Rape survivors are encouraged to take these classes to regain a feeling of power over their own bodies. Many were there that day, sometimes having to turn, shaking and in tears, to counselors in attendance from the Rape Crisis Center after a drill.
I am lucky enough to say I have never been raped. But Lord knows I have felt powerless.
It has been too long since I have felt powerful. I wouldn't even to try to recall it--the last time I felt, frankly, like a bad-ass. Maybe never. And it wasn't an isolated feeling--it was mixed with fear, and hypervigilance, and adrenalin, and anger, and fatigue, and sadness for the women around me who had survived unspeakable violations. The combination of those feelings actually concocted my power. I have experienced these feelings, in various combinations, more than my share of times over the past couple of years. But never did I feel empowered.
This time was different, because self-defense is based on the idea that if you just keep fighting, you can change the outcome. That's what creates the power--influence over the outcome. That is what made those bruises such badges of honor, what had me so ramped up with excitement after the class. Over the last couple of years, power had been drained from my body because all that I did was useless to change the outcome.
The class restored me. And it opened me up, much like my tiny injuries.
When you have survived something tragic, like the loss of your son, you kinda want everyone to see those bruises and know that you're still walking around.
