#karym

This isn't really related to anything on your blog, but it's something I want to get off my chest and this feels like a safe place. When I was in 8th grade, I did wrestling. I liked the idea of being a wrestler, and I felt needed to get more exercise. It was very hard and I was kinda good against the other people in my school, but we were one of the worst wrestling teams in the state. I always made it to tournaments, but I didn't win a single match. Most of my weight was fat, and the other people in my weight class were all muscle. The thing about wrestling is it is extremely high contact and violent, even when it doesn't hurt much. It's sweating and straining and getting squeezed and pushed and pulled and it's disorienting especially when you're bad at it. I was bad at it. I would get on the mat, try my absolute best, and get manhandled and thrown about for about a minute, unable to hear my coach's advice through the ringing in my ears. I knew I would probably lose, but I still felt horrible every time. I ended up quitting towards the end of the season. I liked to think I enjoyed being a wrestler, but a few years later I went to one of the gyms where I had been in a wrestling tournament to see my partner at the time play basketball, and I found myself getting sweaty and shaky and anxious and my heart beating fast and I didn't really realize why until afterwards so I stuck it through. It's something so minor so it feels silly to have trauma from it if that's even what it is, but I suppose being in fights and losing constantly in front of a couple hundred people is an intense experience for a 14 year old. I'm in college now but I still think about it sometimes. I get sad about how something I wanted to do so badly ended up doing that to me. I just wanted to tell someone about it.