Foam Fighting and the Fight Within

Journeying To The Dojo

There has been a distinct lack of foam fighting in my life this year. I’ve gone to several events, but I couldn’t do any fighting, I had pulled a hamstring. I’d spent the winter without a car and was unable to go to fighter practice. Then I managed to pull my muscle shortly after I got my car back.

I spent all of spring and summer doing physical therapy. It felt like it took forever! I blame getting older, It can be harder to recover than when you’re young, I don’t recommend it. It wasn’t till a few weeks ago that my muscle was doing well enough that I no longer needed physical therapy. This last Friday saw my first day back at fighter practice.

Arriving At the Dojo

I wasn’t sure how it would go. My leg muscle wasn’t and still isn’t 100 percent. but the range of motion is like it was before the injury, even if it feels a little sore at the extremes. Then on top of not being sure how I would physically manage, I was, surprisingly, anxious. When I arrived at the dojo I actually sat in the car for a few minutes telling myself, “I haven’t gone in yet, I could just leave, no one would know I was there.”

In retrospect, as I sit here thinking about it, I can understand where the anxiety came from. I’ve had some internal struggles this year about the state of my relationships with a lot of people in Amtgard and I think this anxiety was a manifestation of that. I hadn’t expected that issue to manifest as anxiety. However, I didn’t stay in the car and I did go into the dojo.

First Foam Fights Of The Year

I felt awkward as hell walking in, part of me feared there would be a whole new group of people I didn’t know. There wasn’t, but I still felt disconnected from everyone, a feeling I couldn’t fully shake that night. I didn’t have a sword, so I had to borrow one from Critias, but I got right into the foam fighting.

I took it easy at first, not pushing myself and making sure to test my leg before trying to move overly energetically. I started with fighting Valruin. We’ve fought each other a lot and I was able to get back into the groove pretty easily. We fell into our usual flow and it felt very familiar.

After a few fights with Valruin, a game of Winners and Losers started up. During this short game I fought a person from Obsidian Grove (Vancouver, WA), Leon. They killed me every time we fought during the game. After the game broke apart I ended up fighting one on one with Valruin some more.

At this point my leg wasn’t hurting, not even a little, but I could tell it was still weak. I started pushing myself, being more active in the fight and I started to do much better, but it wasn’t long till I thought that I should take a break. I wanted to give my leg a little rest.

Scouting Out The Competition

During my break I took the advice of Dalos (you can see this advice for yourself in his class COMBAT COMPUTER) and took some time to study Leon’s fighting. They liked to bounce around and keep moving and they had a particular fighting style. I noticed they often fought leaning forward and extending their sword arm. They would swing a few times in that position and then reset if they could.

I did not notice this while I was fighting them. Either because I’m bad at analyzing fights while fighting or I wasn’t wearing my glasses so I missed some details. Honestly I think it has more to do with having an out of fight perspective and the time to think about it. There are certainly times when not wearing my glasses has caused me to miss something, but I don’t think this was one of those times.

I thought about it for a bit and came up with a plan of how I’d approach the fight if I was to face them again. My goal would be to get them to strike for my right side. I knew they would extend their arm and their body would be slightly off balance, causing them to be unable to have their feet react as fast as they otherwise would be able to.

My goal would be to let them be the aggressor and give myself a chance to block their attack first, While blocking I would change my feet position, stepping forward and at an angle with my left leg and then light up their right side with my sword, killing them. Doing this would put me in the position to better block any of their follow up shots. If I managed to step in far enough, the fact I was so close and they were out of position, could make it harder for them to do their return attacks or move out of my range.

Putting It Into Practice

After my break I picked up my sword and joined back into the fighting. I did eventually get to fight Leon again. In fact we fought for several minutes. I was able to put my plan into practice and found that, if I got that block, I almost always got the kill. It was really fun fighting them and they were communicative about shots, which is always nice. We traded kills often, but my plan worked and it worked several times.

After fighting for only thirty minutes that night, I found I had to stop. I got my heart rate up, my breathing increased and in that regard I wasn’t that tired and could have pushed harder, but I found that my leg was getting sore and I didn’t want to push it beyond its limits.

I gave Critias back his sword and took off back home. On the drive home I was feeling pretty good about the evening. Despite my anxiety, I had fun and I found I hadn’t completely lost my edge. The only thing holding me back right now is my leg still healing and my lack of endurance, both of which will improve in time.

I look forward to being able to go back to fighter practice on Friday.

From Foam Fighting To The Fight Within

This blog was originally only about my return to foam fighting. On the drive home, I had decided I would write a blog about the night. I wrote sections of the article in my head, trying to figure out what I’d like to write. Eventually I realized I needed to write about something more than foam fighting, I needed to talk about another fight, a fight with my own mental health.

I’ve made no secret that I struggle with depression. It’s been a life long malady that has, sadly, shaped my reality as an adult. In fact, I think it’s important that I be honest and up front with my struggles. I hope by being honest and open I will help raise awareness of mental health. Talking about it isn’t easy but it has gotten easier over the years. Still, the guilt and shame of suffering from depression have not completely gone away.

This year has brought me a whole new sense of shame, one I haven’t talked much about. I am doing better than I was two years ago. My suicidal ideation is rare, my sleep is more regular (I still swing from nights of insomnia to being extra tired, but the swings are much less dramatic) and doing basic housework is less of a struggle. Yet, despite this, I have to admit, I am still not well, far from it and it’s this state of being that has filled me with a new measure of shame and some sense of guilt.

Vital Perspective

Andrew Solomon once said that “the opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s vitality” and nothing about depression has ever rang so true to me. Many years ago, probably over a decade now, I watched a Ted Talk by Andrew Solomon (this one right HERE, I highly recommend it, you’ll better understand my own struggles) and a big portion of my life experience started to make more sense.

I had not heard anyone talk about depression like he did. It was less about the idea of being sad and morose and more about the feelings associated with being unable to do anything. That recontextualization helped me feel acknowledged in my struggles.

His talk showed me a truth about depression that had eluded me. That truth was that it’s not all about dark thoughts and strong negative emotions. It can also be about the lack of vitality, the state of apathy, an aspect of depression that people always seemed to downplay. It’s this aspect that has been the most prominent issue of my depression this last year.

Content, Guilt and Shame

You have probably noticed my YouTube schedule has gotten more erratic this year. I went from nearly two years of weekly uploads to slowly spreading out my releases so much that this last one came after a month break. I thought maybe this was due to burnout but halfway through the year I realized it wasn’t.

I slowly began to lose interest in other areas of my life as well. My writing suffered, my blogs were less frequent to nonexistent, my stories languished (although not completely, read about that HERE), even my love of world building and running Dungeons and Dragons has been taken from me. It has gotten to the point where there are weeks of nothing, no work, no fun, no games. I’m just…existing.

There have been several times this year where everything seems like it was pointless. This pointlessness strikes me to my core and I just stop doing everything. There have been points in my life where this would have led me to depression napping, a coping measure to not kill myself, but thankfully my mind has rarely gone in that direction this year. I don’t yearn for the void like I have in the past. In fact, I have on several occasions found myself pacing in the apartment for tens of minutes, so full of apathy that I couldn’t even get dressed to go walking outside.

I am ashamed of my own inability to do anything productive and I feel guilty because a lot of the scary baggage that goes with depression isn’t present. I am in a place where I no longer worry about taking my own life or that I’ll lay in bed all day, trying to be unconscious as often as I can to avoid existing. Yet despite that rather big improvement, I’m living a life void of vitality.

Where Do I Go From Here

I wish I saw some end in sight, but I don’t. I don’t know when or if this will ever go away, but I hold on to the hope that I will one day improve. I have been better in the past, but when you’re deep in it, like I have been, for as long as I have been, it’s hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. So where does this leave me?

It leaves me struggling, but not hopeless. I have some ideas about how I can try and move forward but I’m not very confident in them. One idea is to start to build up some form of structure in my life. I don’t know where I will start, I’m still trying to figure that out. I think if I set aside some regular, dedicated, time, even just half an hour once a week, to work on something, anything, then I might be able to jump start myself.

Additionally I will make more of an effort to go back to therapy. The therapist I had been seeing for the last few years left the clinic I use and it’s taken months for them to find a new therapist. When I checked in recently I was told I have to come in and do a whole new intake process to get a new therapist. It’s rough, but I think it’s a good idea to put as much extra effort into solving this issue as I can muster. Hopefully a new therapist will be able to give me some guidance.

The Wrap Up

That was another long blog. I rarely sit down thinking I’ll write one this long but I shouldn’t be surprised anymore with as often as I do it. If you read both parts, the foam fighting and the mental struggles section, I appreciate it. With wanting to talk about my experience with fighter practice on Friday I thought it was important to take the time to communicate this year’s struggles too.

My drive to fight and improve isn’t as strong as it was last year but with this experience I am tentatively excited to see how I will take to being able to fight again. Exercise is important and finding some that is enjoyable has always been a struggle. I hope foam fighting will be my outlet again.

I’m in a very frustrating place, mentally and I hope I will be able to take some steps to help improve my mental state. I would please ask for your patience as I try to work through my struggles. I will do my best to try to communicate with everyone about my content creation.

Sharing this was important to me, as this community has always been supportive through all kinds of battles. I’m curious to hear your own reflections. Have you had to fight your own battles with apathy? What strategies have helped you, or is it an ongoing struggle?