I was reading one of my favorite derby blogs today, having nothing much else to do now that work has ended for the summer. The esteemed Ms. Bunny Low-browski said the following: "Accept the things you can't change and let that be something that distracts other people, you have work to do. Don't give yourself any excuse to not succeed."
Her post was advice for skaters who are skating their first bout. I'm a long way from that now, as weird as it seems. By my count, I've skated 7 bouts and 3 mixed scrimmages, but I realized as I read her advice that I sometimes still feel like a brand new skater, going out on that floor for the very first time. You would think, at some point, that the "new" feeling would go away, that I would somehow feel less freaked out about this whole bouting thing.
One of my teammates got really irritated while we were scrimmaging last night. She put her hands on my hips, pushed me aside and told me to "get the fuck out of the way." Presumably, she felt like I wasn't doing what I needed to do in the pack, and that she would have to take care of my job for me.
The harshness of her words wasn't what stuck. It was the insinuation that I couldn't handle it. And immediately, I started criticizing myself. Well, you are really off tonight, Helley, I said to myself. Nevermind the fact that my grandmother died last week, I had to miss a whole week of practice post-Red Stick bout to go up to Birmingham and help plan the funeral... that was no excuse when it came to giving myself the opportunity to chew myself out. To agree with her frustrated criticism of me as though it was handed down straight from the gods on high.
Bunny's words gave me something of a different perspective on the incident. All this self-criticism that I do (a lifelong habit) is nothing but my excuse not to succeed. Of course I'll let my teammates down, of course I'll skate poorly, because this is the best I can do.
Only it's not.
Succeeding in derby has always been more of a mental struggle than a physical one for me. And the physical part has been no picnic - going from a sedentary college student who had never played a team sport to where I am now has been a long, hard journey, and it's one that isn't near done. But the hardest part of all has been telling my brain to shut the hell up long enough for me to do what I do out there.
Lately, I've just been mired in it. Stressed out over everything I've had to do at the end of the term, and further stressed out by the unexpected sadness of losing a family member. I've been a sea of negativity, firmly believing that every time I go out there, I'll perform poorly, and you know what? I've been an accurate predictor of that, because every time I've told myself something negative, I've believed it.
I know I can't turn it off like it's a lightswitch. But what I can do is stop giving myself excuses. Every step I take forward as a derby skater is another step towards defeating the crushing negativity that sometimes seems like an overwhelming black wave threatening to inundate me.
On Sunday, I have a lot at stake. I knew about the Tragic City Rollers for a long time before I ever met any of them. I read about roller derby on the internet, and I wanted so desperately to be a part of it that I could hardly stand it. But while I lived in Birmingham, I never went out for their team for one reason only: I was scared.
I was determined to stop hesitating and take the opportunity when a fellow MA student (later to become Paina Skully) invited me to the interest meeting for BCR in fall of 2008. On that day, I fell in love with this sport and the people who do it for real, for keeps.
Since then, I've fallen and gotten up, literally and figuratively about a million times. I tore a meniscus, sprained an ankle, and came up with more creative bruise shapes than I ever thought possible. I believed in myself, stopped doing it, then struggled to do it again. I have cried over derby, laughed myself sick in the stomach over derby, made friends and lost them over derby.
It's my third season of roller derby. For the past three years, roller derby has been a part of my life, whether on the sideline or encompassing every moment. It seems like so long ago that I first stuttered my way onto a skate floor, sweating and burning through derby position exercises that felt, at the time, like they were going to kill me.
Our team founder, Cho Cold, wrote a post on her blog recently discussing how even since the beginning of her derby career, she has had a hunger for knowledge, and a desire to be better that has kept her going, no matter the situation, no matter how much she wanted to quit. When I read that, it reminded me of something. Or rather, someone.
It reminded me of me. I remembered how for years before BCR was ever even an idea, I wanted to skate on a roller derby team. I remembered how even after I probably shouldn't have been skating that first season, I kept putting myself through it because I wanted it so badly. It was incredibly foolish to keep skating on a torn meniscus, but I just couldn't get roller derby out of my head. I wanted it.
It's the very same reason I went to Montgomery. When I realized that these girls wanted me, well, I wanted them too. They wanted me to skate for them, not ref for them, and I thought I would burst with joy. I felt like someone in roller derby wanted me around as much as I wanted to be there.
And this season, with BCR, I've felt like much more of a beast than I ever could have with BnB. The weekly practices we have are practices that, last September, I could not have handled. I would have quit less than half an hour in. No matter how ridiculous I feel out there with the amazing athletes on my team sometimes, I know I'm better than I was.
And I remember how much I wanted it when I first started. How much I wanted it before I first started. How much I still want it.
The real truth I've learned in the past week is that roller derby doesn't throw you out at the first screwup. Or the fifth. Or the fiftieth. Roller derby opens its arms to take you back every time you are willing to get up and keep going. Or, more specifically, roller derby players do all this.
Because one thing that's become increasingly clear is that it's not my team that expects me to fail. It's been me. When my team gets frustrated with how I play, it's because they are expressing a faith and a belief that I can do better. It's because they've seen the progress I've made since I came back to BCR. They don't over-analyze every mistake I make (sometimes they may not even notice them). I think I've been harder on myself than my team could ever be.
I'm not the star player on the team, the one that everyone is awed by. I doubt I ever will be, and to be honest, I don't really think I want to be. But what's more important to me than any of that is making sure that I get that negative bitch inside me to shut the hell up so that my teammates never have a reason to doubt me again.
I'll be taping her mouth shut Sunday when we play TCR. I've got something to prove.
