My Biggest Accomplishment is a Failed Black Belt Test

I haven't been looking for a martial arts school.

That's embarrassing for me to admit, but it's true. And because of all the help and encouragement various people have offered me through my martial arts journey, I feel the need to explain why. (I could write a list of all the people I want to thank, but it would be too long. Suffice it to say I noticed, I appreciate it, and will forever be thankful.)

It seemed like I had given up on ever getting my fourth degree, I'm sure. I had a chance right before I got married, to test again. But I turned it down. I've had chances while living here to find a school and start training again. But I haven't.

And because of all the support and help that I've been given on the road to that fourth degree, I feel that those of you who offered that help deserve an explanation.

The truth is, I've felt like a failure as a martial artist, and as if I wasn't worthy of training anymore. That may seem strange, but it's true, and I didn't even realize it myself until recently.

In fact, I didn't realize it until I asked myself, in a fit of randomness while I was working out, what my greatest accomplishment was.

My failed black belt tests.

Those are my greatest accomplishments.

Which surprised me, and probably surprises you, too. Especially if you saw what a wreck I was after failing the first time. (And I was a wreck.)

A lot of people didn't understand my story. A lot of people don't know why that test was so important to me, and why that failure hit me so hard.

I had ended my first relationship less than a year before. No big deal, right? People do it all the time. But what most people didn't know was that I was abused in that relationship.

When my first boyfriend showed up at Burke and Betancourt TaeKwonDo, I was mediocre at best. I didn't compete, didn't stand out in either negative or positive ways. I wanted to be really good at it, I wanted to succeed, and be a instructor, be on the demo team. But I'd spent years watching other people get those chances, because I just wasn't objectively good enough. I stopped believing I could do it - that I could ever be more than I already was.

And then he showed up and started pushing me. Perhaps ironically, that was what I needed to be able to believe in myself. To have someone else, from the outside, telling me to get up and go do these things. Not waiting for me to grab attention for something flashy, not letting me sit quietly. He pushed my buttons. And, to me, that said he believed I could do it - and not only that, expected me to be good enough to do it, and to actually get it done.

I started to succeed. I became an instructor, and I loved it. I was able to join the demo team. I started competing, and I took medals home. I had finally managed to do some of the things I had dreamed of for so long.

And then we started dating. I'm not sure when the abuse started. It wasn't physical abuse; he knew better than to lay a hand on me. Maybe it started right at the very beginning, but I don't know. It was subtle, insidious, like a poison you don't realize is there until it's suddenly gone.

He manipulated me. He used my desire to trust him to devious advantage, and used my dislike of confrontation to intimidate me into letting things slide that I should not have. He didn't respect my boundaries, instead pushing them, pushing them, and getting angry when I began to enforce them. I started acting out in classes in ways that ordinarily would have mortified me. Because it was the only place I could strike back, and he couldn't punish me. There were too many witnesses.

I learned the name for it after he was arrested.

Abuse. Emotional blackmail, to be specific.

If I ever questioned him, what he did, where he had been, he would get angry and guilt me into silence, or threaten to kick me out of the school. If I made him angry, he would express that anger by kicking a desk, stabbing a pen through a wall, breaking a stack of boards in one go.

He tried to isolate me from my family. He couldn't get me away from them physically, but he said all my physical problems were their fault. My headaches were caused by them. I was anxious because of them.

When I broke up with him and he was arrested, I had to recover from the idea that I couldn't protect our students from him. It didn't surprise me that he had "cheated" on me. During the relationship, the one thing that was driven home consistently was that I wasn't good enough. I didn't trust him enough, didn't work hard enough, wasn't dressing provocatively enough, didn't spend enough time alone with him. So the idea of him cheating wasn't the part that hurt.

I knew, the instant I heard that he'd been arrested, and for what, that he had done it. I don't want to go into how I knew here, but if you really want to know you can message me.

Anyway, my worth ended up tied to how he treated me, in more ways than one. I thought I was a terrible girlfriend, because of how he had treated me. And I hadn't really thrived as a martial arts student until he came.

What did that mean, now that he was gone? I'd never been a successful martial artist without his presence in my life. In my head, which, admittedly, was really messed up at the time, that meant that my success was because of him, and had nothing to do with me. If it was me the whole time, then why hadn't it happened before he'd shown up?

That first black belt test was a way for me to prove that I could still do it. That I was strong enough, skilled enough, to do it without him. That I didn't need a pedophile or rapist pushing my buttons to do this. That it had been me all along, and his presence was just coincidental.

I needed to prove that to myself. I wanted to, desperately.

But then I failed, and my world kept falling apart.

After that failure, I found out the school was going to close. I felt like that was my fault, too. I couldn't protect the students, I couldn't save the school, I couldn't pass a test. And now, I wouldn't even have a place to train or teach.

But the boards gave me hope.

The boards I couldn't break? They gave me hope. I believed that if I had "normal" boards, I could do it the second time. That it was a fluke that I'd failed at first. I'd gotten psyched out because the boards looked thicker, and that threw me off mentally. That's why I hadn't passed.

So I went home - and moved my training sessions to the living room of my parents' house when the school closed. I would get home from work, rearrange the entire room so there was space, and train. By myself. Almost every night.

I arranged to go a week before the next test and train, too. I would be ready. I had realized that it wasn't the boards that had failed me, it was because I wasn't properly prepared. But the hope lingered. Maybe I could pass this time anyway. So I went up and trained with my cousin and our friend a week early. They were so helpful, and so generous. I broke I don't even know how many boards that week in preparation for the testing. They had so much patience with me, and encouraged me every day.

As the testing date approached, I prayed. I prayed to pass, but I also prayed that if God didn't want me to pass, that His will would be done, and that if He didn't want me to pass, that He would help me handle it better than the last time.

It gave me a measure of peace, to know that even if I didn't get what I wanted, I would still have the strength to face it.

I failed.

The final board didn't break. Some people were worried that my hand did. I had hit the wood hard enough to crater the surface with my bones, but not hard enough to break it.

I went home, found another school to train at for a while, and then, not long after, got married and moved out of state.

I didn't completely fall apart that time, but what I did do was perhaps worse.

It's been over a year now, since I moved east, and I still haven't found a school.

What did I do instead of falling apart? Why have I not found a school yet?

I hadn't proved what I set out to prove. I had been as ready as I could have been for that second testing, and I had still failed. I had no right, anymore, to train, even if it made me happy. If I couldn't get that belt, no matter how hard I trained, then I couldn't do it without him. In my mind, his presence was connected to my success. And if I needed the help of a pedophile and a rapist to get that belt, then I didn't want to try anymore. If I needed that kind of help, then I wasn't worthy of it.

So I didn't train. I punished myself for my own shortcomings by not training, not seeking a school, believing that I was a failure and would never accomplish my goals now. I hadn't just failed twice. I was a failure, and I didn't deserve that happiness.

But when I asked myself what my greatest accomplishment was last week, it wasn't earning a belt. It wasn't high scores on my GED. It wasn't even publishing my first book.

It was that second test.

I had been emotionally abused, cheated on, betrayed, by the first man I ever loved. I hadn't even begun to recover from the abuse at that point. The first man I ever dated was in prison for sexually molesting minors - while he was engaged to marry me. I had failed a test for the first time in my life. I had, also for the first time in my life, not been able to break boards when it counted. The school that had been like a second home for me was closing. I blamed myself for the harm that had come to my students, for the school closing, and for my own pain. Everything was going wrong.

But I still went back.

In spite of all of that, all of the terrible pain and obstacles in my path, despite my previous failure, I had gone back and tried again.

And I had done it without him. I had done more on my own, in that brief period of time when I was most vulnerable, than I had ever done with his "help."

It didn't matter that I hadn't gotten the belt, because it was never the belt that proved it. What proved it was that I had taken the hardest knocks of my life, and I still hadn't given up. Even when I thought I was no longer worthy of even trying anymore, I still hadn't been able to set that dream aside. It still hung in the back of my mind, waiting. I still dreamed of it, and wished. I felt like I was in limbo, tormented by the idea of it - unable to pursue it, unable to give it up.

But I did accomplish what I set out to do, even if it took me years to realize it. I proved that I could still do it. And, depending on how you look at it, it took God Himself to stop me. And if He did, then He did it in dramatic fashion - a way that literally put me out of commission for weeks, because nothing less would have stopped me.

For the first time, I can think about my failed testings with pride rather than shame and tears. I shouldn't be ashamed of those failures. I should be able to point to them and say that those were some of my proudest moments. The moments where I was faced with some of the hardest emotional circumstances of my whole life, and refused to give up and go home.

I'm not a failure anymore. I guess I never was.

And that means that belt is mine.

(I'll be looking for a school, by the way. If anyone knows of a good one in the Toledo area and can point me in the right direction, I will love you forever.)