This can’t be right, I think. Sure, I’ve swung swords around at home, but this…this is awkward.



It’s my first-ever longsword class, on a humid July evening, and Tristan is teaching us the basics of the Zwerchau. The horizontal strike baffles me, because it’s almost—but not entirely—like swinging a bat. My background, after all, is in baseball—watching it, writing it, even analyzing stats about it—so I can understand the mechanics of a baseball swing, but this makes no sense.

I’m supposed to strike with the back edge? What?

****

A year is weird in that it can both feel like a very long time, and also feel like no time at all.

Some days I feel like I’ve been doing this for a considerable amount of time (at least in HEMA speak), and others I feel like I just started sparring yesterday. Some days I feel like the most advanced student in the class, other days I feel like the least.

It shouldn’t be that remarkable really; there are people who’ve been training martial arts for twenty or thirty years, and I’ve just been training for one.

Then again, a lot can change in a year.



****

Take, for instance, the Fear.

If you’ve never done any contact sports or combat activities, fighting people is scary. When the people you are fighting have a steel weapon in their hand, it gets even more terrifying. Forget thunderstorms (so I watched the Wizard of Oz a lot as a kid, okay?!); there is nothing that is not terrifying about fighting someone who is considerably bigger, quicker, more proficient, and more experienced than you are.

The first time I spar with steel, I get my butt handed to me. I’m debatably ready for steel at this point; I don’t have my own feder yet, I’m mostly using synthetics in class, and I’ve never even really worn full kit yet. All of this - not to say that I am also terrified out of my mind. After that, it takes me weeks to feel comfortable enough again to start using steel, and even then it’s still pretty clear that I’m scared.

The Fear never goes away completely; after all, you are training to use a deadly weapon (and to have one used against you), and the fear is a natural, human reaction. Maybe you don’t conquer it, but you find a way to live with it, side-by-side, like a couple who learns to live with each other after a rocky start to their marriage.

So, little by little, I force myself to spar more and more. We have an intraschool tournament in February; I am terrified most of the time I fight, but I force myself to compete anyway. As the spring progresses, I challenge myself to start sparring the people I don’t normally fight, the people I’ve avoided thus far because I know that they are good and I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

In April, Jay* joins our group. He’s a special ops veteran, and he looks like it. When we drill, his reflexes are fast and relentless. He is built for the type of endurance I am not; he has the power that I might never have. In short, he’s exactly the type of fencer that earlier in the year would have had me cowering and flinching every minute, but at the beginning of the month, I asked him to spar with me.

Even though he is fencing while hurt, it’s still a challenge for me, but instead of being terrified, I revel in it. I will not let the Fear own me. Not any more.



(*he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll meet in HEMA).

****

After the Fear, the next thing that changes is the Body.

It’s strange, but the physical change is harder to describe than the mental one. How do I put into words the change from a skinny girl who could barely manage to finish a moderate hike or a thirty minute workout to a woman who can spend ninety minutes in the gym and still do practice cuts after? How do I put into words the change from a woman who got sore after a few too many cuts with a Rawlings to one who can use a steel weapon for a three hour session and be perfectly okay to fence again the next day?

I’ve never been a fitness nut; years of being picked last in gym class can sap any latent belief in your ability to be healthy. When you mix in an adult-onset chronic illness, well, the gym starts to become your enemy. It taunts you, saying betcha can’t do this! betcha can’t do that! as you go from machine to machine, just praying that no one else will see you struggle to bench just the bar.

When I start fencing, though, all of this changes. If I want to be a good fencer, then I need to be in better conditioned shape. I don’t have time to be scared or embarrassed by the gym, I just have to go. If it’s not the gym, then it’s got to be practice cuts (or, many times, both). If it’s not practice cuts, then it’s got to be something else.

As a woman, I am especially bombarded with advertisements for losing weight, for being thin, and with instructions for eating-this-not-that. No one ever seems to consider that for some of us the goal is to gain muscle, and that sometimes there’s more joy in seeing a defined bicep than a thigh gap.

It’s a statement some struggle to say, but finally—I am happy with my body. My healthy body.



****

Last, comes the Belief.

When I start longsword classes, my goal isn’t winning at a tournament; it’s not even competing at one. No, my goal is just to stick it out long enough to start sparring. At the time, I remember thinking, if I ever win a match, I will probably slink off into a corner and cry, because I’ve never won anything athletic on my own merits before. Twenty-eight is late in the world of sports to begin your career, but fortunately this is one of the areas where sports and martial arts diverge.

Self-confidence has eluded me for much of my life, and nowhere has it been harder to grasp than in the world of athletic pursuits. It’s hard to tell someone that can’t make their school team that all hope is not lost, and that what you need to do to get better is simply to practice.

When I start, the excuses are flying left and right. Ah, well, there’s this reason, and there’s that reason, and that’s why I’m not doing as well as I should be. I’m not a world-class athlete or ex-military or even, really, all that in-shape so of course I’m not going to be any good…

As the year progresses, I start to get tired of the excuses. I start to realize that if I want to get better, I have to work at it—but if I do work at it, well, who knows how far I can take it? The more I work, the better I fence, and the better I fence, the easier it becomes to cast the excuses aside, and to believe in my own abilities.

At first, I am someone who plays with swords; then I start to feel like an athlete.

Now, I feel like a fencer.

****

One year later, the zwerchau feels almost natural. I’ve done it so often now that when I try to swing a baseball bat, it’s the bat that feels weird. It’s amazing, really, that my first year in HEMA should have such clear bookends.

This isn’t the end of the book, though, just the end of the first chapter. There’s so much more I want to do, so much further I want to take my sword skills (heck, last Tuesday was just the first time I cut a successful left oberhau, but there are eight more cuts to figure out), and that — the knowledge that the journey is only just beginning—is the best part.