Lost Connection

Australian National Karate Championships, 2018

The crowd roars as my opponent’s fist hits home. My head jerks backwards, and my jaw explodes in pain. I taste blood in my mouth, bitter, tangy, coppery. I grit my teeth down, so hard I feel the mouth guard squeal in protest. I don’t have to look to know some blood has escaped, and is running down the corner of my mouth.

The referee throws up his hand, and the match is paused. My opponent eyes me, and then turns her back on the ring, lowering herself to one knee. It’s a sign of respect in this sport, giving a hurt fighter privacy to have their wounds inspected, but it reminds me that I’m injured, that I’m losing. That I’m being publicly thrown around like a rag-doll. I grind down harder on my mouth guard.

The referee strides into the ring, and roughly grabs my chin, forcing my face upwards. “Can you continue?” He demands.

I don’t trust myself to speak, to even open my mouth, so I nod ferociously. I can’t give up. You never just give up. The referee turns to my left, where the white chair in my corner stands empty. “Where is your Sensei?” He asks, this time a little less roughly.

I can’t speak without revealing the blood accumulating in my mouth, so I shrug. The referee regards me for a moment, and then steps out of the ring. “Hajime,” he calls, dropping his fist. My opponent and I streak across the arena, fists raised.

I’m knocked out less than a minute later, and as I fall to the mat the blood spills down my chin, staining my white gi a shameful crimson red. As the match is declared over and my opponent raises her fist victoriously, I steal another glimpse at the empty white chair. The chair in my corner. It sits bare, empty. How symbolic, poetic even. A dullness begins to steal through my belly, spreading through my entire body.

Alone, I walk off the mat. I busy myself with untying my competition red belt and unwrapping my red fighting gloves. I feel tears threaten and I bend my head further forwards. I will NOT cry.

Ten minutes later, I spot my Sensei, Sarah, one of my dad’s closest friends. She’s lounging up on the spectator stands, laughing with someone. I don't think she even realised I fought. She’s utterly oblivious to me, to my defeat.

A sick feeling, worse than the sensation of a public, humiliating defeat, settles deep into the pit of my belly. I pick up my sports bag, and I exit the competition hall. I ignore my team, I ignore the cries of the fighters, I ignore everything that used to fill me with excitement.

I travel home alone. In the shower, I watch the remaining crusted blood flow off me and down the drain. I rest my swollen face against the cool tiles, and close my eyes. Exhaustion, physical and emotional, overwhelm me.

How did I get here?

As the water flows over me, I let my mind wander backwards in time.

Born in South Africa, my parents were adamant that from an early age I knew how to fight, how to defend myself. As 4 I was enrolled in Judo, at 6 Aikido, and at 8 I started learning how to defend myself against knife attacks. As a child it was exciting, learning how to fight. I felt like an absolute badass, and insisted on wearing my white training gi everywhere. I was proud to be strong, proud to be a fighter. I frequently broke up fights when popular kids picked on the outcasts in the schoolyard.

Most of all, however, I was proud of how proud my dad was of me. He was the centre of my entire young world. He always had been. As an accomplished karate fighter and instructor, dad encouraged my participation in martial arts.

It became our special thing, a world that belonged to just the two of us. He would come home from work, always late, and I'd be waiting by the front door. I'd hide, and he would pretend not to see me. I would jump out, yelling bloody murder, and charge him with my latest judo manoeveur. We’d tussle, and when he’d inevitably win the fight, his briefcase would be cast aside, and a hilarious game of catch would ensue. They were moments of pure joy, a young child shrieking with excitement as her father, hero hero chased her down the passage way.

We even had our own saying. "Like father, like daughter" became our catchphrase; whispered when mom or my sister weren't looking. The two of us were a team, and we could take on anything together.

Melbourne, 2005

At age 11, dad made Partner at his consulting firm and we moved from South Africa to Australia. This is when things began to change. Slowly at first, then at all once.

I began to see my dad less and less, and when I did see him, he didn’t feel like he was all there. Not like he had been before. Our interactions became less frequent, and I began to run out of things to talk to him about. The connection I had treasured my entire life seemed to be straining, disintegrating before my very eyes. I didn't understand it.

A year later, I quit judo and enrolled in karate, as an attempt to reconnect with my father. To begin rebuilding those strained threads of the connection we’d had. Karate was so integral to him, to his entire life, and I wanted to be a part of it. I felt that if I was part of his karate world, then we’d close the widening gap between us.

Unsurprisingly, I loved karate. I was also good at it. I was very quickly progressed out of the teenagers class and allowed to train with the adults. With my dad.

During those four hours of training per week, he and I fell into our own rhythm. We punched, we kicked, we dodged, we ducked, we did push ups and sit ups and ran laps round the arena. After class he would throw an arm over my shoulders, and hug me into him. Those were some of the happiest hours of my teenage years. Sometimes, after a class where I fought especially well, he even used our phrase again. "Like father, like daughter," he'd tell me proudly. Like we were a team again.

But outside the training ring things continued falling apart. Dad grew more and more distant from me, and from our whole family. He worked ever later. I would hear him coming home at 11, or even 12 at night, and most mornings he was gone by 7am. On the weekends, when he was with us, I began to notice that there was always a bottle in front of him. Red wine, white wine, or a Japanese whiskey- his favourite. He began to get sick, taken down by a common cold, when previously I’d never even heard him sneeze.

2018

I open my eyes, and reach for the soap. I run it gently over my raw skin. A hiss escapes my lips as I find a particularly tender spot on my side. I peer down at it. A large, ugly bruise is beginning to blossom across my ribs, courtesy of a nasty roundhouse I failed to block in time.

2010

Despite my enrolment in karate, by the time I was 15, my relationship with my father had deteriorated so badly we barely spoke. If we did speak, it was in screaming matches that invariably ended up with me being grounded, having my phone confiscated, or told how difficult I was. I could do nothing right. No matter how many competitions I placed in, how many good grades I got at school, nothing brought back the light to my father’s eyes. Nothing made him look at me kindly.

Angry, frustrated, confused, at 16 I dropped out of fighting, and took a leaf out of another of my father’s books: drinking. As hard and as fast as he drank wine and whiskey at home, I began to secretly buy cheap bottles of vodka and drank them in rebellion.

The downwards spiral accelerated.

Friday and Saturday night training sessions were replaced with vodka mixers in abandoned playgrounds, and our Sunday morning training ritual transformed into yet another screaming match. Him demanding where I was the nightd before, and I, unable to express my bewilderment at who he had become, yelling back that I hated him. My mother tried her best to intervene, but I could sense she was equally confused by who my father had become.

2012

When I was 17, I moved out of home and across the country. I got as far away from him, and my entire family, as possible.

2015

When I 20 he came to visit me for my birthday, and on the eve of, he got blind drunk in a bar. He cornered two completely random men and began growing at them that they needed to protect me, his little girl. They were complete strangers. Then he bought us all shots. Then he put one in a headlock and yelled to never come close to me. His eyes were wild, crazed. I did not recognise the man in front of me.

I fled the bar in tears, and ran all the way home in the pouring rain.

Mom kicked him out the next day, on my 20th birthday, and I finally pieced together the truth. Dad was an alcoholic. Mom tearfully confirmed it. He had been struggling since he had made Partner, and he was losing the fight. He was so ill, and so damaged from his battle that he’d nearly lost his Partnership. Mom had given him one final chance to get sober, and he’d blown it drinking with me on my birthday.

A small part of me blamed myself. Maybe he wouldn’t have drunk that night, if I hadn’t suggested we go to a bar. Maybe if I hadn’t been so difficult, he wouldn’t have drunk.

Maybe I needed to be better.

I decided I would be better.

I re-enrolled in karate classes the next month, selecting to train at a dojo run by one of my dad’s closest friends and confidantes, Sensei Sarah. Sensei Sarah was ambitious, driven; she wanted to build up her dojo’s fighting reputation. She trained us hard, up to 15 hours a week, until sweat poured off our skin.

But for the first time in my life, my heart wasn't in it. Fighting didn't thrill me anymore. Stepping into an arena didn't fill me with anticipation. Somehow, over those years away, I lost my love of the fight. But I kept going.

I trained so I could talk to my father about it. I bled and sweated and came home with bruises blooming across my body, so I could call him. So I could draw him back into the world of karate, away from the world of alcohol. I called him every single day at one stage. I talked to him about techniques, about fighting stances, about different punches. I asked his advice on things I already knew; had known since I was a child. I kept him on the phone as late into the night as I could, trying to keep him out of bars.

But I failed.

Dad would hang up the phone, and dive into bottles and bottles of red wine. My younger sister, who still lived in the same city as my parents, began to call me in tears, devastated at his downwards spiral. My mother grew distant from all of us, protecting herself from the pain of watching her partner of 25 years harm himself.

I didn't realise it at the time, but I began to drink a lot more as well. I'd always had a touch and go relationship with the bottle, and now, at this pivotal moment in my young adulthood, it beckoned to me.

It became common for dad to lash out at all of us, angry, hurt, accusing us of abandoning him. He felt victimised, outcast by being told to move out.

My mother and my sister began to call me, daily, to unload their pain. I, in turn, took to unloading my pain into a bottle of vodka.

Like father, like daughter.

For three years I fought for my father. I swallowed my anger each time he had an episode. Every chance I got, I flew home to see him. I drew him into my life. I let him know I cared for him, deeply. Everything fell hollow, except karate. Karate became the one thread that kept our broken relationship together, and I held on to it as tightly as I could. But I could feel him slipping away. I began to push myself harder, train longer. I moved upwards into state competitions, and then nationals. I was even tipped to join the Australian team to fight at the World Champships in Germany. I just had to win my category at the Australian Nationals.

2018 - Pre competition

The night before my competition, on the eve of my final test before competing internationally, I try to call my father. This call isn't to buff him up, this call is for me. My nerves twist deep in my stomach, I feel sick with them. I had barely been able to eat for the four days leading up to the fight, and I could feel that I wasn't as strong as I should have been. I felt wrong.

The phone rings, and rings, and rings. I call him twice more, and each time, the same result. I hang up and try a fourth time, my breathe quickening. As I listen to the dial tone I know, deep down, that he is sitting in a bar somewhere. That he is drunk. That even though I am about to step on to an international fighting stage, the bottle's call was stronger than mine.

At that moment, in that milisecond, the clarity is so incredibly painful I lose my breath. The betrayal stings deep, deeper than anything he'd ever done before. Something within me begins to crack. When I walk into that arena the next day, I am but a shell.

2018 - Post Competition

I step out of the shower, and reach for a towel on the rack. I catch sight of my reflection, and I stop. I stare at the girl in the mirror. For the first time in my life, I don't recognise her. Her body is peppered with cuts and bruises. Her eyes are dull, expresionless, and ringed in deep black and purple. The knockout punch to my jaw is already developing into a nasty bruise. There's a cut above my eyebrow, I don't even know when I got it. I don't know that girl.

I sink to the floor, and I stare, and I stare. A hollow shell stares back at me. Numb, exhausted, utterly emotionally and physically spent. I watch the girl in the mirror, a mere fraction of who she used to be, as she begins to cry. I watch as tears run down her hollow, bruised cheeks. I watch as she finally accepts that she cannot save her father, no matter how hard she fights. That she has been living her life for someone else, dedicating over 20 hours every single week to train in a brutal sport she didn't care about anymore.

I know in that moment that I cannot continue. That I cannot push my body through 20 hours of training in the hopes of preserving some semblance of a relationship with my father. That I cannot dedicate my life to a sport that may or may not hold us together. It feels as though a chasm is ripped open within me. I cry, and I cry, and I cry. Grief, anger, anguish, guilt- everything bottled up deee inside me came flooding out that day.

I stumble into my bed, and I sleep for 16 hours that night. The next day I quit karate, and I throw every single bottle of alcohol in my apartment out.

2021

After three years of painful work, I have found a certain peace with my father. More importantly, I have found peace with myself, as the daughter of an alcoholic.

I no longer fight, and I have been sober for nearly three years now. Instead of karate, I've found that I love to hike, and to dance. I move my body because I love how it feels now.

My father still drinks, but I can see him trying. In many ways, my becoming sober has shown him that it can be done. That its not only strangers on bilboards or commercials that can be sober, that its his very family. When he falls down and reaches out, I extend a helping hand, but I no longer throw myself into the fire to save him from himself. I will not.

There is a lost connection between my father and myself. A gap that will never be bridged, a distance that will always exist. I know now that I cannot love him out of his addiction. I cannot blindly offer him support while he lives in denial. I love my father, he is a great, kind man, but I need to love him at a distance. I need to live my life on my own terms, and dance through my own battles.

I love him, and I forgive him. But most importantly, I forgive myself. I forgive the little girl who thought she could save him, I forgive the teenager who drank out of despair, and I forgive the young adult who pushed her body to the brink of destruction in an attempt to fix her father. We all do the best that we can with what we have.

I am so, so very excited to see what my future holds. I move towards it with hope, and wonder. I am not confined by my past, or my father's addiction. I am my own person.