As I prepair to grade for my black belt im taking advantage of the summer holidays to up my training and get into the best shape possible. The countdown timer on the right shows just how long I have to go before I grade. However my training regime will be in a later post as to be honest im not done getting up to what I want yet.
This post is in response to a thread on a martial arts forum ive stumbled across talking about the number of bullied children in their classes.
It got me thinking about the reason I start martial arts and how much the reason I train has changed over the years.
When I was younger ie a kid, I was the one that everyone picked on the little fat chubby geek who got some of the highest marks in the year but was always picked last in sports and never popular with the people in her year. The bullying in primary and early secondary school was always verble and never really upset me as far as im aware. I always had a solid group of friends so what other people thought of me was never really a concern, however by year 9 it had got a lot worse the school I went to at the time was split across two sites and break times were often spent unsupervised moving between the two sites.
On one day I was walking up to the upper site and this girl who had called me everything under the sun since year 7 was following my group of friends and me along with her gang. The name calling, throwing disgusting things such as banana skins, cigarettes etc was annoying but unfortuanly something I was used to. We eventually arrived at the upper site and thought that was the end of it for another few hours how wrong I was, afternoon break on that day is something I will never forget to this day.
One of the girls had a particular vendetta against me and it came to a head that day and ended with me getting a really good kicking before running home. After this was moved to a new school and my mam sent me to a taekwondo class she never thought id have the courage to stick it out or that I would want to.
6 years later im prepairing for my black belt (1st Dan) grade which I will hopefully sit in December, looking back im glad my mam sent me down to taekwondo as it is something that I would probably never have had the courage to start but is something I now love.
What im trying to say is that bullies don’t have to shape a victims life in a negative way and in away id like to say thank you to that girl who attacked me as without that I most likely wont be training today and would have meet some of the great people I have along the way.
On the other hand id also like to go against everything in the tenants and discipline of martial arts and take on that girl 1 on 1 unlike what happened back then where it was a gang on one. This is just me trying to prove to her that I aint the little soft girl any more.
Bullies don’t have to runin lives anyone can over come it, its just a personnel battle which must be won.
1 comment:
Best of luck with your grading.
I remember in Year 9, a guy who had been giving me a bit of stick for the past two years, put me in a headlock in the middle of class. I lost it, punched him in the face and left the room. I never felt happier. I served him last year at Sainsbury's. He couldn't even look me in the face :D
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