Full Circle

When I started this sport in the fall of 2008, I entertained dreams of being a blocker and pivot, of being a hard hitter, a fast skater, a part of a cohesive, amazing team of tough and admirable women. Then, I got injured.

Everybody said we needed good kneepads from the start of the sport, but I figured I could wait it out. Not so much, as I found out from the grapefruit-sized bruises on my left knee and a sudden and very painful tingling sensation every time I tried to kneel. Couple that with terrible skates, rapidly weakening knees, and confidence that melted away every time I fell and needed ice for it, and I suddenly started to feel my dream of roller derby disappearing into the mist.

I won't say it was BCR's fault that I got so disillusioned with reffing, either. Yes, there was some tension between team and refs, and I think that's undeniable, but it's derby- it happens. It felt bigger in my head at the time because I was so unhappy having to watch the team and their skills pass me by. I wanted to be out there, but I felt like I wouldn't be welcomed because I was weak. I didn't feel like the team believed in me, but I think it's much more likely that I didn't believe in myself. Derby's psychological- if I felt that way, they could read it on me sure as the sun rises. And what do you do with a skater who's that uncertain of herself?

That's why I thought Belles 'n' Bombshells would be the smart answer. And when I walked in and found people who welcomed me with open arms, people who didn't snap at me when tempers got high during practice. I found people who saw that I already had some skating skill, and who were impressed. People who looked to me for advice, and asked me questions, people who helped me open myself up. I felt valued, important. And I finally began to believe again- if I start over with this team from the ground up, I told myself at the time, I'll finally get to live the dream, instead of constantly struggling to make up lost ground with BCR. Couple that with the amazing friends I made on the team (and still love today), and I was sold.

That was how I left my first team. No pomp, no circumstance, I just disappeared around Christmas and didn't come back to any more of their practices. I didn't regret that at the time, though I've since cleared the air.

The year since then has been an eye opener. A huge one. I improved by leaps and bounds as a skater through my first few months at it. I broke psychological boundaries that I had had since the first time I went to a derby practice. I was proud of myself. I was named captain of our team (not because of anything special skating-style wise- just that I knew the rules, having been a ref). I wasn't so sure about it myself until midway through the season when I realized the unexpected. Girls looked up to me. They believed in my leadership and respected me enough to vote me as MVP of a bout that I didn't play particularly well in.

I also gained a derby wife. I'd known her before- in fact, she'd left BCR to form BnB because of one reason or another (the waters are fairly murky there, and I don't feel like I'll ever get the full picture). I didn't know her very well when she'd skated for BCR because she was always injured or absent, but I sort of admired her from afar. She had the reckless courage, the fast speed, the smarts as a jammer, the same sort of rebellious who-gives-a-damn attitude that I wished I could have shown the team, because it was much closer to my real personality. I didn't know what I was getting into. I looked up to her immensely, starblind to the fact that there were obvious hints of what would happen later.

That one person was to become the source for some of the best and worst moments I had as BnB's captain (and later Vice President, and later President). This, of course, is my opinion on it, but I had her back constantly - when her (rather) abrasive personality pissed people off, I was there trying to find common ground and fix it. When she made a decision, I supported it- not blindly, but after a real attempt to understand her reasoning. I gave honest advice when she had problems, and, as Vice President, I helped her do everything she couldn't handle on her own because of one reason or another. I was the Matron of Honor in her wedding.

But even that wasn't enough. As I came to discover, when someone feels unconfident and unimportant (mind you, my own judgment is creeping in again here), they will often react very differently than I did towards BCR. And rather than drawing into herself (as I did), my derby wife lashed out at other people. It seemed like a new person was on her shitlist every week, and the best that I could do was avoid being that person if I could.

As people will, eventually, our team got tired of it. We fought more than we talked at meetings, and in text messages. My derby wife (who had a number of things on her back because no one else had wanted those responsibilities) began to jealously guard what power she had (again, opinion). I even began to feel like she was resentful towards me because the girls were more comfortable talking to me (I tend to be fairly even tempered) than risking pissing off my DW on one of her unpredictable days.

I tried to support it still, until things got to the breaking point. Short summary: trash talk on the track had girls feeling physically threatened and uncomfortable; skaters tired of the bad attitude and constant negativity; we skated three skaters short at a bout because of irreconcilable differences with those three skaters and the President; those three skaters eventually left and formed their own competing league in our small city. I pass no judgment on them for doing that as, had I been in the same situation, I probably would have quit to.

Life has a way of making you look at things you don't want to deal with, and this was one of those occasions. When the complaints about my derby wife started rolling in to me from all sides, I had to consider them carefully- especially given that close friends, people who were the opposite of overdramatic, were getting their feelings hurt, and dangerously close to leaving the team and the sport. I had to admit to them and myself that yes, my derby wife had also made me feel absolutely terrible sometimes, tearing down my self esteem seemingly only for the hell of it, or, more likely, because of a lack of confidence in herself. I don't know; perhaps I shouldn't psychoanalyze, but having dealt with an emotionally abusive parent kind of gives me an insight into this kind of behavior.

I won't go so far as to say what one girl did- that our then-President was a "cancer" on the league. I will go so far as to say that what happened next broke my heart and forever changed my perception of my derby wife. It was obvious that things were going downhill, and we needed to have new elections for our league quickly before things deteriorated any further. I offered to take over as president, and was elected so- and after that, everything between me and my derby wife changed. She all but stopped talking to me, and anything that I did get from her was passive-aggressive, nastily implying that we were trying to force her out of the league or that I had made a power grab.

That wasn't the worst part though- it went far beyond simple personal politics. The fact was, my derby wife had single-handedly allowed three skaters to walk off the team because of issues with her, hurt the feelings of FAR more skaters that had remained out of loyalty to the rest of the team, gotten our last THREE bouts canceled because of her inattention to important details (like making certain those bouts were scheduled in the first place before they were put on the schedule), plagiarized both our logo AND a bout poster... and through it all, refused to admit that she had done anything wrong. No apologies, no reparations, nothing but self-righteous, defiant anger. Anyone who said anything against her was "jumping on the bandwagon." No matter how sensibly they said it, my derby wife responded as though we'd cussed her out and run over her dog.

We voted to close our league on October 5. It was a long, messy emotional road for all of us to walk to, but we were at peace when we voted to do what we did. Or, I should say, those of us who showed up were at peace. My derby wife was the only remaining member of the league who chose not to attend that meeting, because, in her words, she "couldn't watch the league abandon what she'd worked for." Even until the end, she refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing, and showed a complete lack of respect for her teammates by making it abundantly clear that none of our opinions mattered- that, above all else, she would be right before she would be humble.

I wish I could say that ended it. I attended a BCR fresh meat night the very night after we shut down our league. I was nervous, worried about the reception, but found it fun, welcoming, difficult... and a welcome relief after an entire month of not skating. Throughout October, I continued to receive nasty, passive-aggressive texts and e-mails from my derby wife talking about how we had stabbed her in the back and abandoned her.

But I put it all on the track. She'd never believed in me, and for that reason, my performance plateaued. Because she never trusted me as captain, even though she'd picked me for the job, because she thought I was a shitty pivot, but had me play the position in every jam because she nor anyone else really wanted to, because she thought I had awful endurance and agility, but would never construct a practice based around anything but jammer skills (did I mention she was the coach too?)... for all those reasons, I went out to BCR's practices, and I skated like hell. I skated like I'd never known before.

It's been exhausting, it's been painful, and yes, I AM still behind. But the important part is that now I see: nobody's judging me for that. They're judging me for the fact that I'm interested in being here and being a part of the team, they're judging me for the fact that even if I'm finishing things slower than they do, I'm still finishing them, they're judging me for asking questions because I REALLY want to learn how to be better.

Almost a year to date after I left the Burn City Rollers last year, here I am again. To say that things have changed wildly in a year is a huge understatement. But I'll keep what I have now: I've still got my derby wife- in fact, I've got two, and both of them believe in me, which is something new. I'm a part of a cohesive, amazing team of tough and admirable women. I am a hard hitter, but not as hard as I could be. I am a stable skater, but not as agile or as fast as I could be. Now it's time to build, to reach that potential. For the first time in my two years of either reffing or skating in this sport, I have the full confidence that the framework for that is in place; it only remains to me to make what I will of myself.