Anyone who knows me knows that the best way to ensure I do something is to tell me that I can’t. That’s how I learned that dolls will surely melt in a microwave and domesticating a squirrel can be dangerous. And so my first few paychecks went to putting a down payment on wrestling school. The owner, though doubtful of my ability to actually survive the training, was kind enough to let me pay in installments. Every two weeks a portion of my check would go to putting myself through wrestling training, a fact that my mother wasn’t all too happy about. Upon seeing me come home covered in welts and bruises after my first two days of training, she let me know exactly how she felt.
“We have bills to pay here and you’re wasting money letting guys beat you up. Have you thought that maybe you’re too fragile for this?”
I moved out soon after. In choosing to start over, I had to reevaluate my relationship with my mother. For so long I had put her needs before my own. I had been the kind of kid to get slapped and thank her for the lesson. I had worried about her mental state while completely ignoring my own. I knew so much of her behavior was due to her disorder, but I couldn’t be sure how much. Had her bipolar caused her to hurt and doubt me? Had it been in control when she put her pain before my father’s and ended up in the hospital the week of Grandpa’s death? Was she secretly happy I was back under her control even if it meant going nowhere in life? I couldn’t help but resent the situation. I didn’t know what was appropriate to feel. Can you be mad at someone for being sick? All I knew was that I needed space. I didn’t want to resent my mother. It was bipolar disorder that became my greatest enemy, not her, I hoped. I would do my best to provide her with the help she needed, but what I needed was distance. I gave myself what I needed despite her wishes.
Erica needed a roommate, and I was making enough money to (at least try to) pay half of the rent. Having to still help my parents with their bills and pay for training meant that we were stretched a little thin. Sure, we didn’t have cable, I slept on a couch in the living room, and we ate plain rice for every meal, but hell, we were surviving on our own. After a lot of trial and error, Ma had found a particular regimen of medicine that controlled her disorder and wild mood swings, and for the first time I felt like it was okay to put my needs first. But after a week of training, I began to worry that she had been right about my chances for success.
LIFE
Every wrestler inevitably gets asked the question “Is wrestling real?” by some rude stranger, who is convinced they are being original, in a quiet, gravely serious tone of voice one might use when asking a CIA operative about the magic-bullet theory. They ready themselves for the inside scoop they have neither earned nor are prepared to handle. I always giggle at this. For one, this question comes off just as intrusive and indelicate as walking up to a woman and asking if she waxes her mustache. They know there is a level of magic and work that gives them a pleasing end result, but for some reason they can’t help but want to have their bubble popped. And they never actually desire the painful truth.
Wrestling requires a suspension of disbelief like any other scripted television show. It is planned and choreographed. It is a dance between two people skilled enough to appear like they are killing each other, while taking every precaution to keep the other safe. The outcome of every match is predetermined. The wrestlers who “win” or are prominent figures are the wrestlers a company has faith in to make it the most money through ticket sales, ratings, and merchandise.
It is an entertainment business like any other, but with the caveat of sometimes breaking bones. Just because something is planned doesn’t mean the physicality hurts any less. If someone tells me they are going to punch me in the mouth, does that make the punch hurt any less just because I know it’s coming? I’d argue it takes bigger balls to know that pain is coming your way and not run in the other direction. When done right, pro wrestling can and should be a work of art.
It combines the toughness and resiliency of stunt work with the improvisational skills of Saturday Night Live. There are no second takes. When performing in front of a live crowd, surrounded on all sides, there is no room for error, and sleight of hand must be perfectly imperceptible. Punches connect, falls hurt (no, the ring is not a bouncy, padded trampoline—it is made of metal, wood, and an inch of foam padding), and sometimes you need to improvise. A good wrestler doesn’t need every move rehearsed but reacts to the emotions and needs of the crowd and adjusts accordingly, slyly letting the opponent know the changes without anyone in the crowd hearing the conversation.
These skills are both perfected over time and innate in true performers. And that is exactly what wrestlers are: tough-ass performers. There has been and will probably always be an aura of traveling circus around the business, as many people find it to be the sideshow act of the entertainment industry. But it was an industry I took great pride in entering. I felt like a freak and an outcast, so naturally I would want to run away with the circus. And to this day, when anyone asks me if wrestling is real, I let them know that dislocating both my kneecaps, dislocating my elbow, breaking my foot, getting over seven concussions, displacing my hips, sciatica, shooting my tooth through my face, and the arthritis in my cervical spine certainly felt real.
But ten years ago, my bony little body had never experienced such pain and wasn’t used to physical exertion. I hadn’t so much as done one sit-up in my entire life. Clearly, I was not a natural athlete. I was clumsy and awkward, often just falling over during a strong gust of wind. Learning how to take my first bumps was a rude awakening. In wrestling, a bump is a way to fall flatly onto your back while keeping your spine, hips, and head safe. With proper technique, wrestlers learn how to distribute the impact of a bump evenly across the top of their back, so the fall looks devastating but they don’t actually break their neck.
That time my knee exploded and I just hid it underneath a kneepad and wrestled on a three-day tour of Mexico.
During a match, a wrestler takes dozens of bumps. It is a basic, fundamental move you need to learn before moving on to anything else. The first bump I took felt like how I assume a gunshot to the spinal cord must feel like. It knocked all the wind out of me in one sharp, blinding blow. It was so painful my body could not entirely process it and so it became white noise reverberating through my bones until it circled all the way back to painful.
After assuring myself I had not crapped my pants, I did two hundred more in a row. I only remember this number because one of my trainers counted out loud while laughing. That was Day One. Day Two was the exact same thing, except upon arriving home after my second training day, I spent forty-five minutes hugging the toilet and projectile vomiting. My body was not handling physical activity so well. Eventually the vomiting turned into dehydration, which was then followed by uncontrollable chills, which naturally led to full-blown pneumonia. As I spent the next few days laid up in bed, I wondered what the hell I had done to myself.
I basically paid someone to beat me up and make me sick for a week. Could I really handle this? Was I actually strong enough to be a wrestler?
But I went back the week after. And the week after that. I got my first concussion and first broken bone within six months of training—the concussion when a three-hundred-pound man accidentally slammed my head directly into the mat, and the broken foot when another guy threw me over his head into a backflip.
I was the only girl training at the school, but you wouldn’t know it by how the guys treated me. My classmates were accepting and encouraging, and just saw me as one of the boys. They were specifically instructed not to take it easy on me. Not only did they avoid babying me, but they took it upon themselves to see exactly how much damage I could absorb without exploding into dust. We would run through training drills and practice matches together. Sure, everyone was three times as big as I was, but I still had to try to lift their entire bodies to suplex each and every one of them, just the same.
It was an amazing experience. Actually being inside of a ring, though sma
ller and cheaper than a professional TV setup, was mind-blowing. The first time I tried to enter the sacred squared circle, I was told some people like to wipe their shoes on the edge of the mat before stepping through the ropes. It was a sign of respect to the ring. While staring at the puddles of sweat on the canvas the ninety-five-degree building refused to allow to dry up, and the smatters of blood covering almost every other inch, I laughed at the idea that my shoes would somehow make the mat dirtier.
But the small gesture, to show the sixteen-by-sixteen area I had long dreamed of entering that I would respect and cherish it, struck a chord in me. It was a long road to get to the simple moment of stepping between the ropes, and so for the next ten years, I would wipe my shoes each time I entered a wrestling ring.
Inside of those ropes, I felt invincible. I could get knocked down a million times but get up a million and one. I could fly off the top rope, suspended in air like a tried-and-true superhero in spandex. I was actually (finally) encouraged to take my aggression out through physical violence. Here, inside of these crudely taped together cable wires posing as ring ropes, I could fight back. Here, violence was an art form.
Over time my injuries became battle scars. I was proud of them. The bruises, cuts, concussions, and casts were all tangible proof I could truly be strong. I’m not sure if the exercise affected my serotonin levels, or if the physical activity provided me with steady endorphins, but for the first time in years I actually felt in control of my shaky brain. Even though I lay on a hand-me-down couch in a living room, I finally began to sleep soundly every night.
DEATH
Everything was falling into place. Which, I should have realized, is also how the first people to die in horror movies feel. I had a bank account and an apartment and was studying my craft. My mother seemed to have finally hit her stride in treatment and medication. There was a time, at her sickest, when I would answer her phone calls and realize she was already in the middle of an expletive-filled nonsensical sentence. But now, we were actually able to communicate. Phone calls were civil and sometimes even shockingly pleasant.
Erica and I had avoided visiting our parents’ apartment for a little over a month. When we moved out, we thought weaning them off their reliance on us would be exactly the tough love they needed. They had spent years using us as crutches, but ultimately they were adults. And we believed adults would be able to stand on their own feet. The first month on our own, we were too strapped for cash to be able to help them with bills. And we felt like shit about it. We thought we would be able to live on our own and take care of them, but it was harder than we naively expected. And so we tried to stuff our guilt down by simply avoiding being in the same room. It was the coward’s way out, and I tried to find a way to ease my guilty mind.
After cashing a check that was larger than usual due to putting in some overtime hours, I decided to call Ma and ask if she needed anything for her fridge. They lived only a bus stop away from our new place, so I didn’t have to lug the bag of groceries far. When I approached their building, a woman standing in its threshold greeted me. It took me almost five whole seconds to recognize my own mother.
My heart stopped. The woman before me was rail thin. Her cheeks were sunken in, emphasizing the sharpness of the bones above them. Her eyes seemed as if they had been sucked into the depth of the sockets. The warm smile she greeted me with was almost too big for her now withered face. On her brittle frame was a size 2 tank top I had left behind. It engulfed the diminutive woman, who only a short time before was a healthy size 8. In just over a month, my mother had wasted away. We embraced, and the feel of her hard bones drained the life from me.
The apartment I once called “home for now” felt foreign. Smaller somehow. Dirtier. Every surface was covered in dust. The glued-on plastic tile flooring stuck to my sneakers with each step. The scent of dog pee that permeated every room led me to believe Mugsy and Kagome had been relieving themselves indoors. The yellow-stained mop propped against the kitchen wall was a clear indicator that their messes were being hastily cleaned up, causing the sticky floors. When I opened the refrigerator to put away the groceries I had brought with me, it was empty. In just over a month, everything had gone to hell.
How could they implode so fast? My mind raced to try and understand what had happened. There were plenty of years when we were younger when the fridge was bare and cash was tight, but for the past few years it had felt like things were improving. Before Ma’s breakdown she was working full-time, and Dad had inherited a few thousand dollars after Grandpa’s passing. I believed they would be capable of supporting themselves. But they somehow had no money for food, and Ma had become a shell of herself because of it. Dad was also alarmingly thinner than he had been the last time I saw him. Not only were they not eating, they seemed to lack the desire to clean and look after themselves. I worried they were both in the grips of a depressive state after having to live on their own essentially for the first time in their adulthood.
I felt like I had entered a bizarro world and saw a glimpse of what my parents’ lives would look like without us. But I was only a bus stop away, and it had only been a few weeks. The realization that the tough love and push toward independence had swiftly broken them crashed down on me like a thousand-pound weight. What had I done? I felt like an ungrateful brat who had abandoned her parents after years of shared struggles. I was worried only about paying my bills and feeding myself and had let them wither away in the process. I handed the rest of my paycheck to Ma and searched my mind for a way to undo my mistake.
Robbie had been staying in Puerto Rico since our grandfather first became ill. Struggling with his PTSD, he had an episode there in which he believed his life was in danger and reactively flew to the States overnight. As he recovered in the apartment with Robert and Janet, he saw the condition they were living in and we all decided it would be best for them to start over in Puerto Rico. Admittedly, I was relieved. It would be easier to only have to pay my parents’ phone and grocery bills, now that they lived rent free in Robert’s family home. But I still felt like I failed them. Again, I was given a responsibility and I ended up a massive failure. It sent me into a tailspin.
My neurosis took over. Sleep eluded me once more. The dark cloud reclaimed its spot hovering over my head. I wondered if I should reenter therapy. It had been a while since I had gone, and maybe all I needed was to talk to someone about the heavy shame I was feeling.
And then I remembered the prescription I had been given almost a year earlier. I searched for the plastic container and found it hidden within a dresser drawer. It was almost as if I was too afraid to get rid of it but unable to look it in the proverbial eye. For months I argued with myself about the need for antidepressants. A part of me was unwilling to let go of my training, the constant message preached to me that mental health was something a strong person could control on their own. My pride had stopped me from accepting the help of medicine. But this sadness felt deeper, more intrinsic than before. Like its seeds were planted in the valves of my heart and its branches extended through my veins. I convinced myself my only options were to try the medication or be crushed beneath the wicked weight hanging over me.
I took one. The next day I took another. And after a few weeks I began to feel stranger than usual. Convincing myself this uneasy feeling was just the meds kicking in, I continued to take a pill every day, for months, refilling the prescription a few times over. I expected my body to have some sort of side effects to the introduction of a foreign substance to my system; my doctor had warned me that there was a transitional period to every medicine. But still, I was blindsided when one day I woke up completely and utterly shattered.
Upon opening my eyes, I realized my face was covered in tears, having apparently cried in my sleep throughout the night. I tried to eat breakfast but it had no taste, and so I returned to my room, closed the shades, and crawled back into bed. After Erica had left for work, I called in sick to my own job.
Sobs uncont
rollably escaped my body. Why am I crying? I wondered without worrying. I could feel something was wrong, but for some reason that did not scare me. I felt strangely objective and removed from myself. As if I were watching this blubbering mess hiding from the world under a TJ Maxx discounted quilt. I grabbed the orange bottle from my dresser drawer and took a pill earlier than usual. An hour later I woke up in tears again, but this time with a throbbing headache. Forcing myself out of the bed, I stumbled into the kitchen to find some Advil. Instead, I found a bottle of prescription painkillers I had received after breaking my foot, but remembered I had been too scared to take even one before. The side effects of such a potent pill intimidated me. If my body was in pain, I would find a way to tough through it. I could control that. Physical pain had never bothered me. I had taught myself to endure it, to numb myself from it. But this felt different. This consuming migraine didn’t feel like a pain coming from my body; it came from deep within my soul. Maybe I would need to try a painkiller for the first time to combat it.
And that’s the last thing I remembered for a while.
The next time I opened my eyes, Erica was speeding through red lights while I violently puked out the window of her car. I watched as a haze of chunks and bile splashed against the car door, until my eyes began to roll to the back of my skull. My vision blurred. My heart raced so fast and hard I could feel it pulse in my arms, behind my eyes, in my throat.
What the fuck was happening? What did I do to myself?
The next few days were a blur of vomit, lab tests, and panic. When I finally felt my brain settle with recognition of my surroundings, I shot up in the bed. I was not home. I was in a cold room on a hard hospital bed. One of my arms was attached to a bulky IV. The other was painfully extended with plastic tubes shooting out the center of it. Thick, black track marks replaced every single blue vein on the inside of my arms.
Crazy Is My Superpower: How I Triumphed by Breaking Bones, Breaking Hearts, and Breaking the Rules Page 13
