Last January, I signed up for fresh meat – a training course that covers the essential skills required to participate in roller derby, which is a contact sport now gaining a strong presence in Ireland and elsewhere.
Originally, I never planned to participate in roller derby; I wanted to get better at skating for its own sake. I wanted to have fun and skating brought me boundless happiness. I felt free whenever I zoomed around on eight wheels and that was a rare feeling for me.
Skating also gave me a chance to spend more time with people that I liked. It was one avenue out of a small selection of interests and activities that took me out of the house and into the presence of kind people that welcomed me and encouraged me – an attitude that I often find lacking at home.
I never planned on joining a team or participating in contact sports. But as I mentioned in a previous post about skating, Ellen Page and her adorable character in Whip It have a lot to answer for. I’ve wanted nothing, but to join a team and play, ever since I watched that film last winter.
I started messaging friends that participated in roller derby, and was directed to the Firebirds’ Facebook page before long. I saw that the team planned to host an open day, and would soon begin recruiting new members through a fresh meat training course.
The name of that training course made it sound like I’d get tenderised.
I wasn’t wrong.
I attended the first training session last Sunday, and I died. Actually, I died several times and in rapid succession. But I walked out of the hall at the end of the session feeling happy, and proud that I’d decided to sign up for fresh meat despite the nerves and doubts bubbling within me.
The first session was hard.
The techniques I was supposed to learn seemed impossible.
A large part of me rebelled against the notion of showing weakness and inability, no doubt a result of two decades of being put down and told that what I want is out of reach: a dream best forgotten.
No matter how much effort I put in to succeeding in whatever I wanted to do.
I didn’t want to prove that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to prove that I wasn’t good enough to be in that hall with the other prospective members of the team. But what I wanted to show and what happened during the training session are as far from each other as the north and south poles.
I couldn’t get up from the floor without help. I couldn’t draw lemons on the floor with the skates I wore. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even fall correctly; I was supposed to slide across the wooden floor like a guitarist doing an impressive riff and all I could manage was an inelegant flop that seemed to shake the earth beneath me.
It was clear that I was one of the weakest noodles in the entire hall.
It didn’t seem to matter that I’d been working out for the last month or so in preparation for fresh meat training, hoping to improve general fitness and endurance enough to avoid suffering from an asthma attack in the middle of training. I was still rubbish. I still failed to do what I was instructed to do and that fact stung deeply, injecting me with frustration and disappointment and even a glimmer of self-loathing.
Tears started welling.
Just when I was starting to think I’d made a mistake in coming, in thinking that I could learn the skills required for roller derby, one of the more experienced skaters rolled up to me and informed me that I was doing well. A warm wave of relief rushed through me in an instant and I wanted to cry, but from happiness instead of frustrated disappointment. I started to feel like success was in the cards again: I just needed to keep practicing the movements until I improved and to keep ignoring the soft voice whispering inside me.
The voice that tells me that I’ll never be a good skater. The voice that tells me I can’t succeed as a novelist. The voice that tells me I’m too stupid for college. The voice that tells me no one will ever hire me. The voice that tells me I won’t survive when I move out.
The voice that started festering when I was a child and now refuses to leave.
This pattern of frustrated disappointment and encouraging praise repeated several times in the span of two hours. I managed to survive the training session without giving up and giving in to the well of tears that threatened to spill over and over. I was shaking and in pain and I thought I’d buckle. But I was happy, so happy, and I wanted to hug someone and squeal about the fact that I survived two hours of intense exercise and looked forward to more.
I’m grateful for what happened.
Undoubtedly, I wouldn’t have survived the training session without the encouragement I received from the experienced skaters zipping around the hall and giving pointers to prospective members on an individual basis. I’d have given up on skating and participating in roller derby, but not because I wanted to. The skaters that encouraged me and gave me pointers prevented me from making a mistake that I’d later regret.
I can’t give up on something I want to do just because it gets hard. I can’t give up just because I feel the urge to cry, to sit down and curl up and forget that I ever dreamed of accomplishing something when that voice inside me said I couldn’t. But I can take a moment to rest and take a breath and then keep going, because giving up on what I want to do isn’t an option.
I can’t give up.
I must move forward.
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