Every time I face myself on the mirror, I can be so sad.
Those moments always hang on my mind, when I start to move my foot and kicking
in front of mirror. I miss those moments and I tend to cry whenever I remember
them. Now I realize, I really love those moments. I find myself on that way, and I don’t know, when the God will allow me to go back.
When I was sixteen years old, I came to a stadium for
watching my friend’s competition. When I stepped my feet on the floor, I could
feel the spirit, even though the people seemed scary at there, my heart felt so
happy. I was so energized.
My friend seemed so tired. Whenever we chatted, she tended
to complain about her injuries and her crazy exercise times. But I could felt
the exciting experiences on her stories. I felt motivated and I tend to push
myself to be drawn at the same way. Finally, at the end of July 2006, I decided
to join the same Tae Kwon Do club.
For making up my mind was easy at that time. For me who was a
coward, Joining Tae Kwon Do was a big issue. The Dojo held the exercises mostly
in the night. Going to Dojo from my house was so scary. The rare public
transportation and I had to walk through the street alone. Besides that, the
objection from my mom was the biggest obstacle ever! She always said something
that made my braveness gone. She really disliked my idea. Even she refused to
fund my activities in Tae Kwon Do. However at the end, she gave me the money,
it always came with angers. I felt under pressure and stress. I didn’t even buy
new training clothes. I used the old one from my older sister.
I was really happy whenever I learned to kick. Even though
Tae Kwon Do colleagues always said something discouraging, I felt happy when I
mastered some types of kicking.
My Tae Kwon Do colleagues could be said as “not good” for
being partners. Because they who joined earlier than me, always told scary
stories about practice. For me, who was a teenager, it was very easy to be
influenced. Without realizing, those stories were a barrier for my mind and the
effect was being difficult to master new types of movement.
One of the biggest distractions was love. I really hate to
remember this. It’s very common for teenagers to have a crush. Yup! This
phenomenon, slow but sure, brought my feminine side out. Whenever my friends
warned me that my appearance could be ugly because doing many exercises could
make my body muscular, I was afraid. I worried that I could turn to be muscular
and to be ugly. So, it prevented me to make the best effort for improvement. I
really regret that.
However, the competition spirit helped me much to improve my
ability. I was very curious to follow the competition and I envied one of my
friends’ achievements whom she had been a junior athlete for the province at
that time. I followed the training camp. I was very diligent to come. Even
thought my body was injured much, I kept trying my best. My feet were bleeding
and bruised. Every day, I felt tired. Sometime, I couldn’t walk correctly to my
school, because the pain from my muscles. I lost my weight and even I’ve never
gain my weight before anymore hahahaha.
My first competition was a big disaster. I prayed too much
because I was afraid to much for being injured. At that time, it wasn’t a
secret anymore that injuries due to fighting in competitions were so bad. In my
place, the committee didn’t follow the standard correctly so, the safety equipment
was not really good. I didn’t use teeth protector and losing teeth was the
biggest enemy for a girl. So, I prayed much for my safety but I wanted to be
the champion.
The funniest thing
was my pray. Besides for safety, I prayed to be the third champion hahahaha. It
was so stupid! Because, I realized my ability was so far compared to the
experience one like my friend, so I thought being the third was good for the
beginning of my career. Once again, it was so stupid! I worked hard in training
time for the sake of my safety not for being number one. It was so ridiculous. My
fear appeared due to my friend’s exaggerative story. If I had a change to go
back, I would work so hard for being number one. I would not listen to what
others said.
