Not everybody in derby can be a star player. I think we all know that when we start. After we watch some derby, after we get involved in the community, we know that not all of us can be Suzy Hotrod. Not all of us can even be the best player on our team.
The truth is, though, that a lot of us feel like there is such a very large gap between us and people who are derby stars that we can never make it up. I know I can't be the best player on the team, but I've always told myself that I could at least be good at doing me. The problem is, I don't really know what I'm good at when I'm doing that.
I'm intensely frustrated right now. I spend a lot of time thinking about, reading about, watching derby. Absorbing strategy. Researching the teams we're playing. I devote time to off-skates practices; hell, I run off-skates practices, when a year ago, you wouldn't have caught me dead making a consistent commitment to go to them. In other words, I'm working my ass off. I'm trying to understand my strengths so that I can play to them, and understand my weaknesses so that I can correct them.
I think the problem is in not being able to find the strengths. If you asked me what I was good at, I'd tell you this: I'm pretty decent at positional blocking. I can take a hit like a boss, and most of the time, it doesn't move me. I'm aware of the jammers most of the time. If I can line up a hit and time it right, I hit hard, and I can do it effectively. I try to listen well in the pack and stick with my team. I try to communicate effectively. This season, I have worked harder than ever before at being a good offense player, the person who can help dig my jammer out of sticky situations.
But then there's the doubt. Sometimes, it seems like all those positives are just in my head. I've gotten complimented during practice recently for helping jammers when they're stuck - so maybe I can check that one off the list. But in spite of the fact that I know that I hit well, I'm never considered one of the team's hardest hitters, never one of the best blockers. And I want to be, oh gods, I do. But how do I get from point A to B? I positional block and set up set & spikes well, too. But I feel like the only thing that is valued is the spike, not necessarily the fact that I'm holding them back to set up a partner to take that hit. I feel like I'm considered slow - and I am slow, compared to our jammers.
I've started to wonder about a lot of things. How hard do I need to hit before I've done a good job? How fast do I need to skate before I have enough endurance?
I don't know whether it's necessarily that I don't understand what the coaches want out of me, or whether I am too critical of myself. I don't feel like I get enough feedback. Some people tell me I do a great job - like the captain of the Southern Misfits, who told me after the bout that I was a phenomenal blocker. NO ONE has EVER told me that before. But the truth is, just the way I am, I'm inclined not to believe it. Not to listen. To always find a reason why she might have been saying it just to be nice.
It breaks my heart that this is the one thing in derby that I can't get over. In the four years since I've started this sport, I've become tougher, stronger, smarter, more assertive. I am healthier. I am faster. I hit harder. And still, none of it gives me the results that I want. None of it makes me feel like I know where I stand, or even that I know what to work on. What I haven't been able to do is to get my inner doubter to shut up and let me become that blocker that does me.
At the beginning of this season, I made a list of goals. Some of those have really been worked on, while others have fallen by the wayside. I feel like it's difficult to set goals when you're not sure what your team needs of you. If you're tempted to think that your team doesn't need you, then it's hard to want to set goals. And I don't feel like that all the time, but there's certainly days where it's easy to give in to the temptation - well, I'm not one of their stronger players, so what the hell do they need me for? I'm just a warm body out there.
Self-talk like that hurts. It hurts when you believe in yourself so little. It hurts when you know that the fact that you don't believe in yourself makes your teammates more likely to see that lack of confidence, and when you know that your lack of confidence affects your ability to make plays.
I think maybe what makes it the hardest is that I don't know where to start working on the problem. Is it something that I need to talk out with my coaches? Is it something that I need to work on myself?
It's so easy to feel lost sometimes in a sport like this. When you're not the hitter that everyone dreads seeing in the pack, when you're not the jammer who can squeeze through the tiniest hole... where do you really stand?
I don't know. And I think a lot of us don't. So what is the solution? How do we keep reminding ourselves that it's okay to "do you" when "doing you" doesn't really give you what you want? If "doing you" isn't enough, are YOU wrong for wanting to "do" someone else? Or are you setting unrealistic goals? Or are you just unsure how to get from point A to point B?
I still don't know. I wish I did. I wish I had a magic button I could use to tell myself to shut the hell up because it's not like I'm just NOT WORKING ON IT. Life doesn't have many magic buttons, though.
One thing I do know... it's a puzzle that has some kind of solution. And if I look hard enough, I do believe that I'll find it. It's just that the looking is sometimes a really uncomfortable thing. I hope that, somehow, I can differentiate between my own ridiculous expectations and what my coaches want out of me. I hope I can begin to differentiate between my own negative self-talk, and interpreting every time they don't say anything as an affirmation of my uselessness.
It's really strange, sometimes, the way that derby can magnify problems that you're experiencing in your own life. In this case, the worst of derby brings my anxiety disorder to the forefront, writes it large on a screen, and forces me to confront it. Derby has that tendency: to make us face things that we don't like about ourselves. Things that are actually preventing us from getting where we want to go. Physical, mental, emotional, all of it.
There are really only two options: bitch about it, or change it. We all need to bitch sometimes, and this is my moment to do so. Bitching about it is recognition, and recognition can turn into a plan for change.
If there's one thing that I do think is positive about myself as a blocker, that I know no one, not even me, can take away, it's this: I'm always evolving. I'm always getting up after a fall. I'm always refusing to let the last game be the best ever, because then there's nothing else to live up to. The trick is in turning that into a sword to first take down this beast of negativity that is blocking the path to becoming a better Helley. Then, the real work starts.
