No self hating

You know what? I am done, I am done with being my own worst critic and being constantly setting myself up for failure. I am done telling myself I suck, I am done telling myself how I am a big screw up and I am done on blaming myself for things that happened in the past. The psycho sister that helped me today said it loud and clear: I am not allowed to say that I suck. I have decided I am not allowed to hate myself anymore. It is self destructive behavior that needs to be corrected. I am not perfect but no one is. I am good enough to have friends, and even people that don't know me very well care about me and worry about me so suck it depression, and self doubt I am kicking your ass out of my life.


A couple of days ago I posted this as a Facebook status. Honestly is easier said than done. It is very hard to correct a destructive behavior that you have been dealing with for most of your life. It is so easy to go back to beating yourself up and just completely ignoring the fact that you are not as awful as you somehow made yourself believe. 


I haven't updated in a while and mainly due to the fact that it has been rough. There was a week when I just didn't want to deal with anything and I felt really sick. I missed my testing and it's just ugh. The other girls have gotten so much better and I can't even begin to even string my thoughts together to decide whether or not I have done a lot of progress. I think it is mainly due to the fact this is my second recruitment. I mean, it makes things harder on me and it makes me be so self conscious. I feel that when I see how far the other girls have gone compared to how I am doing is just bad. I still get exhausted when we're doing laps, I still can't do most of my falls properly and I still feel like a giant dork every time that I skate. 

My roommate took a video of me skating. 

After looking at that video I can see what I am doing wrong, and I have been trying to correct it but honestly is so many things I have to keep track of it. I think I am doing better but there was a big moment that almost knocked me completely out. I fell....

Now if you read this blog you are aware that I fall a lot. However this time I was practicing crossovers with one of the psycho sisters and somehow I fell in such a way that my shoulder landed straight up in the ground. At first I decided I could stand up and shake it off. A sharp pain shot through my shoulder and I started laughing because I couldn't believe what had just happened. I don't remember anything at all of what happened next just getting a bag of ice and a bunch of people talking to me. Honestly I just remember it being the next day and me seating at the doctors. I got some x-rays done and the doctor then informed me that I had a bone bruise. She said it could be about as painful as a fracture and that it is the step right before a fracture. She told me I could still skate but to be careful. 

I hardly was able to function properly during that practice. 

It took me a couple of days but finally at last practice I felt myself coming back again. I think it was the fact that my roommate was able to get back on skates and she had a very tough conversation with me in which I saw that other people are also insecure about how they skate and to her I have gotten better. I still do not see it, and even when the coach asked me who was that girl that she just saw doing some of the exercises I still can not see myself actually improving. However, I trust other people's judgement about it a lot more since they have not always tried to sabotage me unlike myself. 

With that being said I am so proud of Heather. After being off skates for a month she was skating so much better on the last practice that I have ever seen there. The other Lunachics have gotten so much better too and I am so impressed that most of them are still in. I am even so impressed with Ashley who didn't give up on backwards skating, and I am so proud of who I was paired up with who didn't hate me after I completely landed on her due to my own clumsiness. I wanted to kick myself so hard due to me making someone else fall over. 

See what I told you? This whole process of not hating myself is a very hard one but I think I am making some progress. 

Little me

My biological father has always been into sports. My memories of him always involve him with a basketball, playing, or doing some sort of sport. He was so good that he even was a professional basketball player and that was his main source of income for the longest time. He once even competed in some sort of Interamerican game or something like that my memory is fuzzy and the main thing I remember was that the mascot was a seal and he brought me a plush version of it. My point is that if you look at my father you would expect me to be a bit athletic. If you talk to me, I am the opposite of an athletic person. I am nerdy, I wear glasses, I have no eye and feet coordination, and I'm extremely clumsy. As such, most of my time as a teenager I had drifted more into performing arts than sports. However, when I was younger I tried a couple of times to play sports. Volleyball left much to be desired, but the hardest thing was getting told I could not play basketball.

I am tall, obnoxiously tall. When I was younger the most usual question I would get asked was if I played any sports. This got really annoying, really fast for an eleven to early teen who is just trying to figure out where she could fit in. Add to that the fact that my father was a basketball player and the awkwardness never ended. I wanted to try a sport, more importantly I wanted to play basketball. I wanted to have something that I could connect with my father. I wanted him to come to my games and cheer for me!

My PE class at school was awful. I wanted to try and play basketball but usually the boys were the ones playing and they didn't want to play with me while the girls just usually sat in a corner talking or pretending to exercise. I shouldn't blame the guys for this one too much though because peer pressure made me not ask to play as much as I should have probably asked. On the other hand every time I tried my PE instructor told me to just play with the girls (Meaning just hang out with the girls in a corner) even though our school had a female team so... yeah.

I remember vividly that they had these little things at school called basketball seminars or something like that. It consisted of bringing kids that wanted to play basketball (the only properly handled sport in my school asides from cheerleading) and just have them practice and learn the basics of the game. It wasn't something made so the kids would be part of the team at all it was just something for them to do as an extracurricular activity for a couple of weeks. I had decided I wanted to do it. I talked my parents into taking me to them and picking me up which due to the fact we lived far away from the school was a feature on itself so needles to say I was excited.

It wasn't so bad in the beginning, and I don't remember exactly what I did wrong at all. I remember practicing, and being able to kinda put some hoops in. I was the only girl in the group and the guys would still not want to play with me. Well some of them did, since I was good friends with some of them but they also quickly succumbed to peer pressure and stopped playing with me.

I must have done something very bad, or didn't seem to be catching up as much as they wanted me too because they had me doing things like walking on the lines to try and improve my balance and kept telling me I was doing it wrong. Mind you I was around 11 to 12 years old, telling a kid to do exercises like these and not explaining it to her while the other kids are playing basketball made me feel like such a freak and idiot. I even remember once the coach actually telling me that I wasn't ever going to be able to play basketball because I had no balance and I was too clumsy. She said that I couldn't coordinate myself well enough to play and that I was just making the guys look bad and not want to play. Mind you I knew these boys and they were always asking her and myself why I wasn't playing with them. Slowly I realized that it might have been that some of the boys didn't want to play with me but that the coach just didn't want me playing with them.

I told my mom and dad that I didn't want to play anymore. After that I wasn't able to get into any other sports. I did cheerleading for a little while but I didn't really want to do it that much. I really just wanted to play basketball but after that whole experience and how horrible cheerleading girls and the whole atmosphere can be I decided not to do any more sports.

At some point I wanted rollerblades, I don't even know why I wanted rollerblades. I don't know if it was a movie I watched, or a cartoon, or just saw someone rollerblading but I wanted them. I saved up all my allowances to buy this kit that I saw at a sports place. It included a rollerblade bag, knee pads, wrist guards, and skates. I put those things on and started rollerblading in my house. I'm from Puerto Rico, so there weren't many parks at all so rollerblading was confined to my house and in the front street.

I was obsessed, but I never really got the hang of rollerblading. I mainly spend most of my time waving my arms in the air, falling, and just looking like an idiot. I remember watching rollerblading movies on tv so I could find out how to skate. Every time that we got a chance to go to a park I would bring my rollerblades. One day we were at a park and I was allowed to skate around. I have to point out that in Puerto Rico there's not really any well kept park (at least when I lived there) so by skating in a park I mean skating in pure concrete. Cars will also drive in the same place we were allowed to skate so there were potholes and a whole bunch of other horrible stuff in it. This particular day I was trying to go over a speed bump...it didn't work out well.

I felt like I was going to fall so I desperately tried to maintain my balance and went around in a circle I tried to fall back on my butt (I didn't know what I do now I was only around thirteen) but somehow managed to go around again and fell. My forehead was the first thing that came in contact with the ground. I wasn't wearing a helmet. I felt a bump forming on my forehead and a headache starting. I got up and skated back to my father who laughed at me and asked if I was ok. He called me cyclops for weeks to come and so did the rest of my family. I laughed too because it was pretty darn funny.

Eventually, my roller blades fell in disuse. I guess after that fall I didn't think I was actually meant for skating. I then went into theater performing, computer, video games, and just became the complete opposite of what an athletic person is. I was just so convinced that I would never be able to play sports that I gave up the idea of it or of being any type of active person. The closest I ever came to being active was having a job at Disneyworld in which I was close friends with the characters.

I once read in a derby blog to imagine your little young self watching you on the floor and how cool and awesome she thought you were. If old me had the chance to go back in time and tell little awkward thirteen year old me that one day I would be able to put on skates, and would join a sport were people are supportive and don't give up on you I am sure she would have scoffed.

Then I would look at her and say: No really... you're going to be all right. 

I'm abusive.

I am a bad blogger. I knew that going into this but hey... at least I'm updating.

First off I was supposed to post about this a while back. My awesome friend Shae is also doing roller derby and got me this adorable sticker for my helmet. Is the first sticker I ever had and it says Freshmeat. I've decided that when I get to take it off I will hold a party on its honor:

Ha, ha I am so girly with my pink helmet and purple...stuff

Why will I make  party in its honor? Because I have a long way to go, but more on that later. I have to write about how much of an abusive person I am. I seem to have a habit of biting and abusing my gear. At first I didn't want to show any empathy for my gear because...it's gear its supposed to do that but now I kind of feel bad. First off lets start with my mouthguard...my poor mouthguard seems to be holding on with everything it can, but it doesn't think it'll make it through. 

                            

You can't see it so well in these pictures but the left side of my mouthguard is torn in half. Yes, I am planning on getting a new one soon. 

I have no idea how I managed to destroy my mouthguard but the most shocking things that I seem to have abused are my skates. Don't get me wrong, I was expecting them to have scrapes, and be as badly bruised as I was but after less than two months of skating ....

The boots seem to be coming off! I have never let them in my car during extreme heats or anything like that so I am baffled as to why they seem to be so worn down after a considerable short period of time. Plus adding to the fact that I suck skating they are probably not getting as much tear as some of the other girls. It's strange, I wonder if my height has anything to do with it. The worst part is how I noticed them. 

In the time that I haven't been updating some of the recruits that are actually acceptable have been able to scrimmage, and do other fun stuff. I have just been cheerleader and memorizing the roles of the positions, but I assure you if I ever get to scrimmage I will promptly forget everything. Anyways, last Thursday was our final test which I didn't past but I was expecting that. However, the best part was doing 5 laps in 1 minute. 

I was battling a cold, and pushing myself hard and at the beginning of my second lap something felt weird...odd. I thought my laces were just not tied properly and ignored it, but at one point it felt like my right skate was about to fold completely under me. Ignoring it, I continued to push myself forward and managed a time of 1minute and 17 seconds. 

I'm kind of angry at myself because perhaps if I wasn't sick I would have been able to make it, but on the other hand two months ago I would have never imagined that I was going to be able to do that much. So, I just have to keep practicing and pushing myself and I'll be able to master them! 

Speaking of practice on Sunday was when I actually inspected my skates and noticed the glue coming undone so I think that might be the reason why my right skate was so unstable, which sucks but hey...gives me an excuse to save up for skates! 

See those awesome girls in that video? I train with them and one day in the future I will be joining them and be as awesome as they are! Now I just have to keep focusing and pushing myself! Because two months ago I would have scoffed at the idea of being able to do anything in skates and now I can actually... stand on them? Not very impressive but... I'll get there! 

The reason why I am so motivated? Mainly because I went to a derby game on Saturday and saw two tall girls playing that became my heroes...their blocking was amazing and plus seeing all the scrimmaging going on during practice makes me want to push harder! I can do this! I know I can and even more important I WANT TO DO THIS! 

For once not a depressing post.

Practice was today! Honestly today I was kind of sad and thinking about how much of a failure I was going to look like again. Also, I have been fighting a cold since yesterday so me being unable to breathe properly wasn't helping the situation.

My friend, another skater, and me (I have been obsessing over this sentence a lot sorry if it's badly written but my brain is kind of tired and I always had problem with I and me use) were pulled aside to get some one on one attention with some of the league sisters. A part of me felt bad, but then I told myself you know this is what I need. I need help, and they are willing to offer it to me. I have a hard time accepting some times that they are nice people that want to help and don't have any other interest other than wanting to help.

The one on one attention is awesome,  and they were able to point out the things I was doing wrong which helped a lot in improving myself. I was able to properly do a superman fall because I realized that my belly was supposed to touch the floor completely. Some stuff is still messy but I think I overall did better mainly because I came to accept something that my friend Heather has pointed out to me.

Today was around my 5th time on these type of skates, and it was my 3rd time on my own pair. It's a miracle that I can even stand on it let alone do some of the stuff I am doing. Mind you, this by no means I am allowing myself to slack off. I want to be able to catch up to the other recruitment girls as hard as that seems and as unlikely as it is. However, I need to see how much better am doing than when I put on the rental skates that first night of training. This is extremely hard to do specially with how amazing some of the skaters are, but hey they probably have been on skates more than 5 times and if they haven't then... they probably don't trip on their own feet while going down the stairs.

One of the things I was most proud of today was the fact that I was able to do crossovers. Let me point out how I felt the first time I tried to do crossovers. When I tried to put my foot in front of the other my whole body seemed to scream out at me saying "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? YOUR FEET ARE HUGE AND YOU HAVE THEM ON SKATES WE ARE GOING TO DIE!". I know this sounds like I'm exaggerating but honestly my body tends to talk to me a lot when I'm trying something new ... it tends to scream and shout when I'm trying to do something new while I'm on skates. 

The Psycho Sisters were able to show me step by step how to do crossovers and I wasn't sure how to do them and I can't pinpoint the moment when I actually started to just do them as I was getting to turns but when I realized how fast I was going I started laughing, when I realized I was actually doing crossovers I started yelling and feeling so incredibly happy and proud of myself that I didn't know how to deal with it.

I know it sounds strange since I haven't mentioned almost dying yet and I assure I did almost die or felt like I was going to at some points. There was this one moment where something happened (which was probably me not bending my knees) and I fell completely on my side in such a way that my thigh collided with my groin area and I had swore I had broken the anatomical part of my body that makes me a female. However, I stood up and didn't freak out and just kept going and hell yeah I tried crossovers at my next turn.

Also, you know what? I have no idea what the hell I was doing before hand to do turns? I have no fuckin clue what I was doing but it was horrible. Turns are so much better with crossovers! Beforehand I swear my freaking foot that was on the outside felt like that cart at walmart that you accidentally pick that has the bad wheel! Odd thing is though, I can't think about doing crossovers too much while I'm doing it or that I'm going faster... because I freak out and mess up.

Finally after our special class we were able to join the rest of recruitment. They started playing music and we were able to dance a bit. We tried doing the electric slide but I have no idea how to do that. Mainly, because I'm Puerto Rican and had no idea what the electric slide even was before I moved here. We also did that stupid cupid shuffle...that I still have no idea how to do because I'm special but I tried!  They also played the chacha slide which was awesome except... you can't really do the Charlie Brown on skates. I am not even entirely sure I know what Charlie Brown is.

After that we also did a game of green light, red light. I had been telling Heather before how great that would be to practice stops! And it was! I was only sent back once! This all reminded me that I have to push myself hard, and that I need to focus on things but most importantly this is also supposed to be fun. I mean, I really want to make it and be one of those cool derby girls but the whole process is also supposed to be fun and amazing especially since I had never put one these type of skates before and because my rollerblading days before hand were a joke since I usually just flailed my arms like an idiot and ate pavement. 


... I just realized I didn't post any pictures today well... I referenced tripping over my own feet and falling on the stairs in my apartment. Here's a picture to commemorate that:

This isn't even as bad as it originally was...