Crazy Is My Superpower: How I Triumphed by Breaking Bones, Breaking Hearts, and Breaking the Rules

by A. J. Mendez Brooks

  Most of my coworkers assumed I reproduced asexually, like a plant. The majority of the female roster—in their finest professional wear of skintight minidresses, crop tops, and sky-high heels, leading one to believe the enforced dress code was “high-end escort who caters exclusively to politicians”—was a stark contrast to my Virgin Queen style. With my workwear of a cardigan sweater, dark framed glasses, twenty-dollar jeans, and shin-high combat boots, my aesthetic was clearly “smooth like a Barbie down there” or at the very least “late-in-life lesbian.”

  But it returned the result of enforced personal space I was looking for. Unfortunately, there is a bit of misguided expectation that comes along with joining a male-dominated business. If you’re not going to put out in your first few months on the job, at the very least, a lot of men expect you to stroke their ego and flirt. Giggling at unfunny jokes, having boob-to-chest contact on hugs, and laughing off blatant workplace sexual harassment are considered prerequisites of women in the minds of many ignorant men. Knowing this going in, I made an extra effort to make it clear no one had even a remote chance of getting into my jean shorts. I can’t help but feel a distinguished pride in being a certified boner killer.

  Quickly adjusting to my boundaries, the guys were pretty cool, embracing me as a type of little sister rather than potential one-night stand. I was the girl they could talk to about whether Hugh Jackman would make a suitable Solid Snake. I was the one they felt safe asking to do recon, sniffing out if they had a chance to hook up with one of the “hot ones.” They would ask me if whoever I was dating was being good to me, and if there was any guy I wanted them to beat up.

  One wrestler, “The World’s Strongest Man,” Mark Henry, actually lifted a local crew guy off his feet and pinned him against a wall after he caught him ogling me as I stretched backstage. I swooned. Another one of the guys, after witnessing a male fan propose to me at an autograph signing, shared, “I sometimes forget that guys think you’re pretty.”

  But I enjoy being one of the guys. I’ve always been more comfortable in the company of like-minded dudes who don’t make me worry about what my hair looks like. I made a choice to avoid dating until much later in life because I relished the lack of drama caused by relationships. Life was trying enough already. I was a determined kid who grew into a focused adult, and I didn’t want anything to distract me. For what purpose? For love? It wasn’t something I entirely believed in.

  Putting it lightly, I was not a hopeless romantic. In fact, I hate love stories—romcoms being a particular bane of my existence. Listening to friends complain or gush about who they are dating makes me want to go full Sylvia Plath on a kitchen appliance. When it came to romance, I was less a giggling schoolgirl and more a jaded divorcée in grade school. My general approach to dating was always Meh. No thanks.

  While my sister, Erica, made scrapbooks of her dream wedding growing up, cutting out pictures of poufy wedding dresses and listing romantic honeymoon locales, I doubted if I even believed in marriage. I had written it off in kindergarten somewhere around the time Billy Cook decided leaving his dirty tissues in my cubby and successfully rubbing his chicken-pocked arm on mine meant, Now you’re mine and we have to get married! When we played The Game of Life and a tile required me to stop and pop a blue peg husband in the plastic car, I would often just spin the wheel again, ignoring the rules. Though occasionally I would concede—only if we all agreed my blue peg could be David Boreanaz.

  Looking at the heartache my parents had caused each other, I didn’t think I wanted any part of what I knew marriage to be. And so for as long as I can remember I loudly declared that I would never get married. I couldn’t understand receiving that kind of unconditional love from someone who did not walk on all fours. I had been taught love and tenderness was dependent on my behavior and on what I could provide. I just didn’t trust in the idea that anyone would love me forever. That sounded like a hell of a long time. If I didn’t know what to make of my own mother’s love, if it came and went with the tide, how would I ever trust a stranger’s?

  I had been so scared of physical contact by the insane parenting approach of my mother that I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle dating while living at home. I would’ve had to hide a relationship and constantly worry about her finding out and drowning me in a bathtub. And besides that, I loved school. All I wanted to do was focus on it and get into a good college and then worry about having a life. Guys in school knew not to try anything, because (a) they wouldn’t get very far and (b) they had heard I had a tendency to crack skulls. Basically, I was every dad’s dream daughter.

  Though, in high school, I did have a major crush that my best friend, Sophie, would patiently listen to me talk about every day for a year. When, at the end of that year, that guy was found by police having sex with another guy in a porta-potty in a public park, I figured it was a sign I was meant to be alone.

  Technically, my first kiss was at nineteen. I say “technically” because when I was fourteen, my gay friend Chad asked to borrow some ChapStick, and when I took too long finding the tube, he just pressed his lips against mine. I was genuinely terrified somehow my mother would be able to tell just by looking at me.

  When I was nineteen, I went on my first official date. A cute guy walked into my workplace and I asked him out. But at the end of the night, when he dropped me off at my front door and leaned in, I jumped back, shouted, “Ummm, no thank you,” and ran into my apartment. I was clearly a natural at romance. I wanted my first (official) kiss to mean something more. I had waited this long and I wasn’t going to waste it on a guy who hadn’t asked me a single question the whole night. My first kiss ended up being with a longtime friend who would spend hours, amounting to months, asking me about myself, being genuinely interested in the answers, and simply enjoying my company. He even wrote me a poem once. And not even he could get in my pants.

  When I was told by a superior that no one wanted to have sex with me, ironically enough, no one had. Though not even my closest friends knew it, I was a virgin well into my twenties. Because I had a varied dating history—that included a white guy, a black guy, and a girl—friends assumed I was a bit experimental. But I wasn’t wild; I just didn’t have a specific taste. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew no one had made me feel safe enough to get my V-card punched.

  My first year on the main roster I started dating another wrestler. Greg was my first real adult relationship and my first love. He was my first everything. He was kind, called me beautiful every day, made me birthday gifts by hand, and was close to my family. I felt safe and loved and did not regret it. Waiting until I was mature enough to handle the emotional baggage that comes with sex was worth it.

  I wish that all girls could fight the peer pressure to grow up fast and sleep around young, because odds are guys that age just aren’t worth giving that precious piece of yourself to them. It’s only been about ten years since I was in high school, but the canvas of childhood has changed completely. The mainstream media of my generation idolized Britney Spears, a proud virgin who was considered a scandalous blasphemer for baring her midriff. My favorite young adult television shows, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson’s Creek, and Gilmore Girls (WB 4eva), would devote entire seasons to the trepidation leading up to and the consequences after their main characters lost their virginity. Somewhere along the line, through the advent of social media and the popularization of reality TV ditzes, the pop culture compendium targeted toward those not old enough to have a learner’s permit has become increasingly, uncomfortably mature and overtly sexualized. Kids now enjoy TV shows where every main character shares an HPV strain before the first commercial break.

  Soon I would be traveling the world and rocketing toward the limelight. My career became my main focus, and being young and incapable of focusing on two things at once, I started to let my relationship fall to the wayside. I was finally succeeding in the job of my dreams, and to get where I wanted to go, I had to give it my undivided at
tention. Even though I was being a shitty partner, it still knocked me on my ass when I got dumped.

  I made a ton of mistakes in the years after. And by mistakes I mean one of the guys I dated actually wore leather bracelets. If you judge me for one thing in this book, I won’t argue if it’s that. I almost got wrapped up with another wrestler. While he aggressively courted me, I ignorantly giggled, enjoying the affirming attention. What I didn’t realize was that he was secretly dating another woman in the company, and she would understandably hate me forever. Since he had way more stroke than I did, I worried that he would try to have me fired after I told him to back off. But he ended up taking it like a champ, and we just awkwardly passed each other in the halls from there on out. After that I spent almost a year dating someone who ended up sleeping with one of my best friends. He was then very surprised that it bothered me. Wait, were we supposed to be exclusive this whole time? They weren’t all winners.

  What I should’ve done while trying to recover from romantic trials and tribulations was lock myself in a room with my dog and cry into a tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream. When trying to reenter the dating world, I wish I had had a strong female role model to cry to and to help remind me I was worth more. But like most things, I was just going to have to learn that the hard way. I guess as humans our judgment isn’t entirely trustworthy during and after heartbreak. But luckily for me, after getting dumped for the first time, live television made for great free therapy.

  When Bryan ended up winning the World Heavyweight Championship in December of 2011, his character was turned into a villain. And thus, growing cocky and power hungry, he began to mistreat his dutiful lady. When he dumped me on-screen for inadvertently costing him his championship, I laughed at the ironic timing. I was sure my run in the story line was over, but it was amazing while it lasted.

  Two underdogs had won the hearts of the crowd, dominated ratings, and made an impact no one expected. People really cared about what was going to happen to these characters next. And so the suits in charge were forced to take notice. Though they didn’t understand our appeal, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed when they began thinking of ideas to bring us back together and further the story line. It was a bold move to use two characters who didn’t abide by the proven formulas in such a prominent way. The writers and decision makers took a brave risk with us. And we would prove that we were worth it.

  It was easy to play the heartbroken mess with an unrequited love when I spent each night crying into my hair over being dumped. What astonished me was how therapeutic it was to show my raw emotions on-screen under the guise of performance. I twisted my real-life heartache into the broken character, and it was thrilling to blur the line between the two. I knew exactly how hurt and pathetic the character on-screen should be feeling. And being so accidentally open about it made the healing process fly by.

  Not swallowing my pain like a bag of razors but instead allowing myself to be vulnerable and work through it actually made me feel better. Who would’ve thought taking a healthy approach, however alternatively, would help? Using my personal life as fuel, I was accidentally oversharing myself with the audience. I was a raw, honest, bleeding heart and was being cheered for it instead of mocked.

  This was fascinating to me. In life we try our hardest to save face, to seem tough and unfazed, and to never let our exes know they affected us. But in the world of make-believe and escapism, people want to vicariously express themselves through you. They want to see someone expose all the emotions they are too proud to share. They want assurance that there are others out there who feel their pain, and so when a character on TV openly shares this experience and vulnerability, they connect to it. Watching me cause havoc, stalk my ex, fuck up his life, and act out in rage was like therapy for everyone watching who had ever been dumped.

  What I learned was that the key to success was going to be showing my genuine emotion, being open and honest. When you can accept and be proud of your flaws, they will become your greatest strengths.

  Then I was faced with a moral dilemma. It blew my mind that only months after being told no one wanted to take me behind the school and get me pregnant, I was given this opportunity to enter a main event story line. To seem ungrateful in any way would be shooting myself in the foot. But when I found out what was planned for the character next, I couldn’t help but speak up.

  Some writers had pitched my character would become “the crazy ex-girlfriend.” At first that sounded intriguing, as I was having fun being the “vengeful ex-girlfriend,” until I found out what that entailed. The plan was for my “crazy” to be a point of levity in the show. A series of goofy skits in which this nutter revenge-kissed a leprechaun and danced with dinosaurs from outer space. I am not exaggerating—that was an actual plan.

  We were going to make a joke out of mental illness. Sure, WWE wasn’t an after-school special, but after everything I had gone through with not only my mother but myself, mocking an affliction that deeply affected me was not something I was interested in.

  There are those who stand by their code, and those who just talk about it real loud. So many people think they are capable of making just and moral decisions in life, but when actually confronted with an opportunity to gain something out of bending their beliefs, they fold. That is not who I am. I knew speaking against these plans might be the end of my career. Not only was I a newbie on the roster, but I was a woman. Everyone assumed I should just be grateful to be used in something other than a thirty-second ten-woman tag match.

  But did being grateful mean compromising what I believed in? Not only from a moral standpoint but also from a business one? Being relatable and true to myself was quickly turning me into a fan favorite. I didn’t want to ruin that by doing something disingenuous, something I couldn’t put my heart behind.

  I’ve agreed to do countless, ridiculous things on-screen. I’ve worn fat suits, muscle suits, comically large boobs, and comically small cowboy hats. I’ve danced, done limbo competitions, ridden a mechanical bull, thrown temper tantrums, and had the sky rain poop on me. I am down for almost anything. If I think something is funny, I don’t have a problem looking like an ass. There are few things more fun than making a fool of yourself and not giving a damn. But this pitch was unlike those things. I didn’t think it was funny, and I thought it would hurt my mother’s feelings. And so I said no.

  Two months into my first and only real story line, I turned my bosses down. As a rule of thumb, I’ll never say no to something without suggesting an alternative option; it’s just a smart thing to do if you want to healthily collaborate with people. So I pitched we take things a darker route. I suggested instead of making the character a caricature of a mentally ill person, why not explore how dangerous that illness could make her. I wanted her to truly be broken, vulnerable, clingy, and downright unsettling. If simply being heartbroken on camera had garnered so much support, embracing the even more extreme flaws humans keep hidden away inside of themselves would be the ultimate catharsis for the audience.

  Instead I was taken off television for two months as punishment.

  But after those two months, my old friend—Convenient Circumstance—showed up again. Bryan was going to be wrestling for another heavyweight title and the writers wanted to throw a red herring into the mix. Suddenly using my idea worked in the grand scheme the writers were putting together. My character was reintroduced, integrating my wishes to play her dark and unpredictable. So now I had an opportunity. If I didn’t want her to be a joke, then what did I want her to be?

  Embracing the side effects of a broken relationship had initially been the catalyst for my connection to the audience. So I knew I had to continue exploring the depths of emotion within me. If I wanted to play “crazy” more truthfully, I only needed to look in a mirror.

  I knew what kind of darkness could exist inside of me. Years of living unmedicated had shown me the altered reality my eyes were capable of seeing. I knew exactly how twisted and torn my thou
ghts could become. Those feelings, though at bay, were only a short trip away. But facing them wasn’t easy. I had spent so long ignoring my bipolar disorder, I was still used to being in denial about it, and sometimes untrained in controlling it. Would reaching deep down and pulling it to the surface only serve in helping it to consume me? Or would it be the perfect way to hide in plain sight?

  I had asked to be the face of proper “crazy,” and now it was my responsibility to do it right. I got in touch with the deep, dark corners of my mind I had tried to never look at for too long. Even in people who don’t have bipolar disorder, there are warped desires and perverse instincts they fight to keep hidden. Having bipolar disorder means those instincts jump to the surface without worry of repercussions. I decided that was exactly who I needed to be on-screen—an amalgamation of rash, selfish, frightening behavior.

  I picked the worst qualities I knew I was capable of and my character proudly shouted them from the rooftops. When an ex hurt my feelings, I took it out on the friend trying to console me. If a girl looked at me wrong, I swung until she bled. I stalked my ex’s every move from the shadows and played every childish game to make him jealous. I knew how to play these appalling actions because somewhere inside of me they existed.

  When my character had to have several emotional breakdowns, I could feel my heart beat with trepidation. Giving in to crying fits and losing myself in animalistic screaming was the most raw and truthful I could be about my disorder while still under the guise of make-believe. “You’re really good at playing crazy,” Vince McMahon, the owner of the company, told me after I returned backstage from an in-ring temper tantrum. But to me, I wasn’t playing crazy. I was discovering my superpower.

  The writers wanted to make the audience wonder if our breakup had been a ruse designed to curry favor with Bryan’s opponent, only to help him win the title. I was back in the game and I learned my lesson to never speak up again. Wait, no…that part didn’t happen. I was snarkier than ever. Initially the plan was to tease this reconciliation for a month and ultimately have Bryan win the title, making us a heel couple. But as more players entered the story, it became too much fun for the writers to cut short.