Hilary Mantel is the fantastic author of Wolf Hall and Bringing Up the Bodies. If you’re into historical fiction and good writing, pick these up.
She’s also the author of a memoir I’ve not read, Giving Up the Ghost. It includes a quote called out by the Times, one that struck me and I’m not yet sure why:
“I used to think that autobiography was a form of weakness, and perhaps I still do. But I also think that, if you’re weak, it’s childish to pretend to be strong.”
If you’re weak, it’s childish to pretend to be strong.
The greatest power, is in not needing it. There’s a quite confidence one can effect when you’ve got nothing to prove.
But there’s a difference between believing unfailingly in one’s competencies, and using them as a cover for what is an existential weakness. Am I being childish by closing off my weakness to my local world?
I don’t mind telling you. Here’s my weakness: Part of me is eternally six. Easily hurt. Prideful. Resilient, never not sad, but could make people laugh even then. Here’s the key: little me is in control a lot and I feel like I can’t help it. It might be childish to pretend otherwise. But is this something you can say out loud in America?
Hours and hours
I work out for hours at a time. It’s contemplative, meditative, painful. I can’t imagine working out for a normal amount of time; it wouldn’t seem enough. Today’s workout made me realize that this is another cover, and it’s not just for my vanity. The pain feels familiar. It feels like weakness. It is weakness. Nobody works out for hours if they don’t have to.
What am I covering for? Am I taking myself back to my young painful life? Am I desperately trying to give my six-year-old the muscle she needs? I don’t know. I’m open to your thoughts.
We’ll be back after these messages
There’s a lot in Mantel’s quote to unpack. It deserves more than one post; it deserves a conversation. Please leave your thoughts in the comments. We’ll talk again soon.
An ex of mine, whose default position was flat on the couch, was an MMA fan. For someone so lazy he could not have chosen a more physically demanding sport to follow. It requires strength and smarts to solve each puzzle of an opponent, whose skills may complement or conquer the other’s. For this the sport is admirable. There’s an opening for almost everyone.
Now gyms that smell like sweat and toilets are all over the country, in strip malls and old warehouses, and my ex went to one, at least for a while, to learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu – one of MMA’s primary martial arts. I don’t know what color belt he left with, or why he stopped going. But I can’t imagine a man who ran out of breath a minute into missionary making it five minutes on the mat. With anyone.
Hey, Conor. How ’bout some pants? Photo: The Sun
It was through him that I was introduced to the sport at all. I’d not seen much of it. just enough to find it so much more brutal than boxing. It was often much more boring than boxing, too, with 10, sometimes 20 minutes of two people rolling around in shorts like underwear preceded by five minutes of pat-a-cake. I didn’t get it. Constant commentary would come from the couch. Ah, that’s where all his breath went. I was nice about it. It wasn’t until watching Conor MacGregor, as much an entertainer as a fighter, that I stopped pretending to listen.
It was Friday Night Fights or something like that. MacGregor was wiry and little. Too short for me to date, to be honest. He’s a ginger. Of course, I thought, and there’s the Irish flag. The Irish usually box, I’d said out loud, but was told that wasn’t true anymore because Conor MacGregor.
“Does he have more of a stand-up game?”
“You mean, is he a striker? He does everything right, you’ll see. He’s really fast.”
MacGregor’s got a neck tattoo, a crown declaring his collarbone king, and I thought this career had better work out for him. He would fight in those tiny shorts, the kind sold in the ladies’ department. I felt awkward watching MacGregor go on about his business in such little leprechaun shorts.
My ex was right, though. MacGregor was fast. He was powerful, maybe fighting a weight class lower than what was natural for him. He was flash and not without flaws – he grated. And yet he was thrilling in a sport that silenced its audience because so often there was nothing to cheer for.
Yeah, and fast. Or rather, his decisions were fast. And in the long five-minute rounds of MMA, fast decisions look like lightning.
It must be said that fast in MMA is slow in boxing. Witness the difference between MacGregor’s speed, future opponent Floyd Mayweather, and some children boxing in the dirt:
This is important because Conor MacGregor is set to box Floyd Mayweather (49-0) on Aug. 26. No kicking, no striking, no grappling, no choking. No fighting. Boxing.
MacGregor, as seen in the video, is working on a different bag and different skill set than Mayweather. He’s not on a speed bag. He’s on a heavy bag. OK.
But look more closely. Look at MacGregor, punching in a way that made me understand, finally, that punching isn’t striking and he’s trying desperately not to strike. He punches with forethought, solving the puzzle of an opponent who’s long gone while his legs plant heavy, stalking the octagon in his head.
Note: MacGregor, this is how you punch. Photo: Tom Hogan.
But look more closely. Look at MacGregor, punching in a way that made me understand, finally, that punching isn’t striking and he’s trying desperately not to. He punches with forethought, solving the puzzle of an opponent who’s long gone while his legs plant heavy, stalking the octagon in his head.
Look at Mayweather Look at MacGregor. Look at the kids.
MacGregor could be publishing dummy footage to stack the odds. The Irish love to gamble and win or lose, he could get paid twice. He would not be the first Irish to gamble on his own fight. But is he in league, then, with his sparring partner to publish the same damning evidence? No. Or maybe. I don’t know. MacGregor’s a great fighter but he’s annoying. It’s the tale of his tape. And anything could happen anyway. If Mayweather’s not ready for Irish gamesmanship after 20 years, then shame on him.
I could say the same. My ex, who like MacGregor wore his Irish ancestry like cape and would also not shut up about anything, was exactly who he was, always. This didn’t happen to me when I was 20. This happened when I was 40. I knew his game somehow but like a paying crowd he gave me what I was looking for until I would always seek it. Like sugar. Like booze. Did he leave some in the couch cushions? He didn’t even shower on Sundays, but I was high enough until the next fight. Anticipating, replaying knockout in a sport I merely tolerated for too long.
Until I didn’t. I drew him in then tiptoed away. A fight’s a fight and I won.
To Ron Livingston, Richie Woodhall, and my hero, Claressa Shields (pictured above). Shields fights for the WBC Super Middleweight World Championship at 10 p.m. Aug. 4 on Showtime.
I subscribe to a website written by a couple of kids who call themselves soul-workers. There’s stuff about chakras and Solfeggio frequencies and twin flames. At first blush the grownup in you might think you’ve landed at the wrong place; you were looking up “how to stop crying all the time.” But the site has a great deal of good, practical advice and information, crystals notwithstanding.
This includes types of muscle tension, or which emotions get stuck in which parts of the body. I don’t know how true it is that guilt, shame and unworthiness congregate only in the lower back, but I’d believe it because my lower back hurts and I feel all those things.
And I have headaches. I get them all the time.
I wake up with them. If I don’t wake up with them I get them by the middle of the day, end of the day at the latest. I work with them, although I’m not as good at working with a headache as I used to be. I’ve been getting them for nearly 20 years. There’s not much choice in the matter. And it doesn’t matter what kind of headache it is. They all hurt.
I take a cocktail of anticonvulsants and muscle relaxants at night to control – or try to – one source of the daily trauma: TMJ. I have my ex-husband and a car accident to thank for the TMJ. (Thank you!) Some days I don’t know what’s worse: The fear of waking up, painfully, or the struggle to forgive the man and what was a true accident.
I work at mitigating the symptoms. Feverfew, heat, trigger-pointing knots across my back until I’m tearful, sweaty, and nauseous. I’m impatient. I meditate at night. It’s not helping yet. It’s supposed to but it’s not. Is five months enough?
I frequently swallow too many triptans, too many days in a row. These are migraine abortives, in case you didn’t know, and you’re only supposed to take them twice a week, tops. But you try having a migraine every day and see how long you last. They’re expensive and I’ll pay anything to have enough.
The worse part? It’s not the physical pain. It’s missing.
I miss work. Calling in yet again is heartbreaking in its normal abnormality. A frequently deformed workweek, the stress of failure. Talent wasted. No one is as sick as I am.
I miss people. There is an encompassing fear of making a friend then revealing that in fact, there’s something she should know so she can decide if she wants to be friends with someone who, when asked How are you? will probably lie. I’m OK.
I miss love. See above, making friends. Then multiply it times infinity: How could someone ever love a woman who can’t get her head on straight? Who takes a senior citizen-sized handful of pills each night? You can only hide that for so long.
I miss days. Sunshine hurts my eyes. Rain swells my sinuses. My shades are drawn and I wish the days to pass with a singular purpose, like a line of worker ants with their one job. Then like time they’re gone.
This website, with its talk of shamanism and spiritual teachers, would advise me to attack the root and symptoms by being kind to myself in practical ways. It’s in a book I bought from them: Do some yoga, wear bright colors, discuss every day with myself what is good about myself.
But I don’t know what that is anymore.
Many thanks to lonerwolf, a truly lovely site written and run by truly lovely people. It’s full of free and affordable advice anyone can use. Check them out if you’re stuck. Note: I have no affiliation with the site.
I work out for hours at a time. It’s contemplative, meditative, painful. I can’t imagine working out for a normal amount of time; it wouldn’t seem enough. Today’s workout made me realize that this is another cover, and it’s not just for my vanity. The pain feels familiar. It feels like weakness. It is weakness. Nobody works out for hours if they don’t have to.
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