Like many queer guys, my burgeoning sexuality conflicted with those of my peers. The intertwining of sexuality and the body began at this point. I saw others going to the gym and working on their bodies with the clear and expressed goal of being more appealing to girls. At the time, I arrogantly wrote it off as immature behaviour. Why would anybody find something so basic to be appealing or worth pursuing? It’s hard to understand where this feeling came from. Were these feelings genuine? Or was I jealous of what the path that lay before them? Perhaps I wanted a similar path to be laid before me — but one which ended at my goals and desires. I don’t think I will ever quite know, but I know this is where an unhealthy resentment and loathing was spawned.
I began to slip away from my life and my friends over the next few years. Piece by piece my world became smaller. People on the edges of my experience began to blur and fade out of existence. Simultaneously, I foolishly attempted to define myself as different, and above others, by focusing on supposedly ‘intellectual’ pursuits. I took a deep interest in politics, particularly socialism. I watched art house films and began to broaden my tastes in music. I became dedicated to study and my degree. Graduating in 2011, I decided I wanted to pursue a Master’s and would then look towards a PhD. I thought a life of expanding and pursuing knowledge was all I ever wanted.
“When a boy…discovers that he is more given into introspection and consciousness of self than other boys his age, he easily falls into the error of believing it is because he is more mature than they. This was certainly a mistake in my case. Rather, it was because the other boys had no such need of understanding themselves as I had: they could be their natural selves, whereas I was to play a part, a fact that would require considerable understanding and study. So it was not my maturity but my sense of uneasiness, my uncertainty that was forcing me to gain control over my consciousness. Because such consciousness was simply a steppingstone to aberration and my present thinking was nothing but uncertain and haphazard guesswork.”
Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask
Academia destroyed my body and wreaked havoc on my mental wellbeing. Stress, and what in retrospect was likely a period of depression, had led to rapid weight loss and exhaustion. I had little energy. I was always fatigued. I looked like shit. At some point, I had stopped looking in the mirror — not realizing how strange this behaviour was. Periods returning home to my family became more frequent, and each visit was accompanied by a ‘crash’ — days and days of trying to recover any motivation to do anything. It took weeks before I felt anything like relaxation. I think it took two months before I could take myself outside and go for a walk in the forest with my dogs one summer’s evening.
“All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.”
-Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters, based on Sun & Steel by Yukio Mishima
Based on the recommendations of a few friends online, I began to read the work of Yukio Mishima. I sat down one evening to read Confessions of a Mask and finished it at sunrise. I read Sun & Steel, his essay on abandoning his literary career to take up bodybuilding and martial training, over a few hours too.
Reading Mishima awakened something that had been dormant — or perhaps semi-consciously repressed. For the first time ever, the idea of strength — its malleableness, its physical and mental qualities, its flexibility — became attractive to pursue. I didn’t want to get “big”, to get abs, or to pursue any form of aesthetic ideal. I wanted to instigate a relationship with my body where I would push it to its limits, and discover its frontiers. And in turn, I wanted my body — the act of utilising it and exercising it — to become a form of expression. Suddenly, I saw a path by which I could stand as testament to the person I wanted to be. I could become living proof of my desires. I didn’t need to find a form of representation in an artistic or intellectual medium I could relate to — I could become whatever I wanted to be.
I severed myself from academia. For all intents and purposes, I dialled in my Master’s thesis. I drove to the university, handed it in at the office, and never returned. I didn’t even think of attending my graduation. I just didn’t care anymore. I gathered up all the paperwork I’d gathered over four or five years and burnt it all. I sold and gave away all but a handful of the books I had bought to accompany my studies. I rejected everything I’d once aspired to be. I would see images of myself had I stuck to my purely intellectual pursuits in my mind; a man couped up in an office at a university, writing academic essays that perhaps touched on aspects of queer theory that nobody would ever read. I was sickened by them. I instigated a purging of the self with the sole purpose of destroying it.
For all the elation this initially brought, it wasn’t all glorious. It left a void which I could not initially fill or temporarily overwrite. While I had begun to rebuild myself and took the first few steps to becoming who I wanted to be by lifting weights and running — the realities of being a graduate living back with his parents who needed to find a job sank in quickly. An autumn and winter of isolation followed.
Spring brought a job, but also two of the most important milestones of my life; I came out to my family and began Jiu Jitsu. The latter of the two was more surprising to them. It was something so out of character and at odds with who they thought I was, where as my queer desires had been something more like an unspoken truth for a long time. These two events are entwined and where the knot cannot be undone. I know now that I had always wanted to be able to come out on my own terms. I didn’t want to come out and try to describe my experiences through any narrative or utilising a language that I had seen. I felt as if any attempt to come out sooner would have been wrapped up in many other insecurities and fallacies — the idea of going to university and being free from my upbringing, and so on. It would have been a masquerade in its own right. I wasn’t just declaring myself to be a queer — to have desires for men. I was declaring who I wanted to be and what I wanted to become.
Jiu Jitsu soon destroyed my ego — but in a way that was much needed and would be rewarding. Getting on the mat for the first time, I realised that all the lies I had told myself about my physical and mental capacities were just that — lies. My body was weak, rigid, and pathetic. I could barely stand on my own two feet. My training over the previous few months had meant little. I realised how mentally soft and fragile I was too. Every attempt at a basic move lacked any confidence. I kept apologising — even before I’d tried anything. In a room of 20 to 30 hardened men who had decades of experience, my inadequacy stood out. I had never felt so exposed.
They say entering the dojo and getting on the mat is the hardest part of any martial art. It’s not. It’s pulling yourself back there again and again after each humiliation. It’s picking yourself up when you fail. There were many ego destroying sessions. But overtime, I grew. I became better. I advanced and gained belts. I wasn’t a natural — what I initially gained had come through a mixture of grit and pride. I had taken more steps on my journey.
Around this time I began boxing at the same place. This combination of martial arts and combat sports have begun to dominate my life. Intellectually, I was fascinated by the puzzle it presented. There was no perfect fighter. Each person was a different shape and size and each had their strengths and weaknesses. There were black belts and great boxers who were all shapes, sizes, and ages. Each had developed their relationship with their body to achieve that success. The aesthetic form in itself meant little.
For the first time in my life, I was fit, strong and had developed a mental fortitude that was beginning to push me past the barriers of my physical body. I began running twenty kilometres twice a week in the forest and wanted to go further. I was boxing and never wanted it to stop. It was around this time, in 2015 and 2016, that I first began to experience what I can only describe as a sense of transcending my body. Both in jiu jitsu and boxing, my trainers had always tried to break me — they wanted to find my physical and mental limits and leave me there in pieces. They wanted me to crash into the wall and crumble afterwards. It had happened in my gradings. I would be surrounded by each member of the club who would in turn come at me with a basic strike which I would have to respond to. This would go on for five, ten or even fifteen minutes. I’d leave bloody and exhausted — just as everyone else had before me.
Something new was happening. My body was indeed breaking in these conditions — but I wouldn’t stop. I would keep going. I’d get back up again and again when I had no right to be standing. I would box for rounds and rounds, and still throw punches when my lungs and muscles had given up long ago. I felt like I could carry on forever. I would lose sense of time, space, and self in these moments. I had no idea how long I’d be going for. I would begin hitting some pads with my trainer with the gym still lit by the sun and find myself still going in the shadows. Nothing really seemed to matter bar this moment I found myself in. It felt natural and primal — something which sat deep within me that had just needed to be unearthed. It was the moment I had always been seeking. I had taken my body and mind to this place. I remember coming home after experiencing one of these moments and laying in a warm bath. The wounds and bruises I had picked up began to split and ache as they were submerged in the hot water. It was an exhilarating feeling. It was proof of what I had become. It was beautiful.
I have not been able to deliver myself to that moment. My attempts have proven futile despite the physical destruction I have sought and brought upon myself. The desire to return there never goes away — it cannot be buried again. It comes to the surface of my consciousness every few days. Crucially, it remains a place I am able to remember in moments of hardship and doubt. When I experience physical or mental stress, emotional pain, heartbreak, or other challenging feelings, I think back to those moments of transcendence. I can at least situate part of me there. When all else falls apart, I know I have this strength to pull upon on. It’s a moment in which I see myself, victorious.
A lot of things have changed since then. Illness and other factors forced the closure of the jiu jitsu club. I began something akin to a new life in Cardiff — meeting new friends, rediscovering others, and developing bonds I had never thought I would have. I realise the old me is dead. To those I meet for the first time, there is little to nothing of who I was left. Not even a trace. I don’t think many people could imagine the boy who could barely stand on his own two feet a few years ago.
With all this, I find myself inevitably reflecting on my place within the queer community. I do feel something somewhat alien to it — that I don’t quite belong or exist on the fringes. We have all had to navigate the profound moments of doubt that come with our desires in our ways. When the ground keeps crumbling beneath you and everything feels uncertain, you have to discover and establish your own forms of agency. I know that my path — and the forms of expression that I have claimed as my own — are different. I can be written off as hyper-masculine, macho, or straight acting all too easily. It can be amusing and fun in its own way, but I don’t think these words begin to capture how I feel or who I am. I don’t think I want my emotions to be captured or necessarily understood in this community. I don’t want to fit.
I’m also aware of the weaknesses and ugliness this form produces. My methods of coping with hardships can lead me to shutting down, isolating myself, and becoming cold to others. I dig deep within myself and can get lost there. I inevitably push away those who love me. I can mistakenly find the notion of isolation and cutting off to be bountiful. I know I have to be more comfortable talking to others about my feelings, insecurities, and vulnerabilities. I’ve learned that some things can only be solved by letting the warmth and love of others smother you — and I’m so grateful to have people in my life who can give that to me. I also recognise a distorted sense of empathy I can have for those closest to me too. I find myself able to bear the most difficult thoughts and experiences of others well — and I think I offer support and clarity. But I know I struggle to offer the right words and energy for other things — what I all too often write off as trivialities.
But ultimately, this is who I am now. I began this process of becoming just over eight years ago. My drive, desires, esteem, and sense of agency are closer now to what I’ve always wanted to be.
I’ve started boxing regularly again. This week I thought I was doing well. I grew confident and lowered my guard for a split second. A light punch rattled my temple and reverberated around my skull. I’d made a fundamental mistake. It was a surprise. It was an important reminder that there’s still so much more to learn.
