When life and derby cross

When life and derby cross.

I love roller derby. I love many of the people in my league. I love my league. I love the sport. I love the athleticism, the strategy, the head games, the emotions, the passion and yes…even the pain. Players break records, bones and gear. League mates fight for bragging rights, awards, power and each other. It is on one level a very team oriented sport, but also a place where an individual can shine. Like baseball, soccer, football, basketball…any of the great games. Roller derby mirrors life with its lessons, heartache and unbridled happiness. You can meet amazingly wonderful people and some you would rather forget. If you have a closed mind, you won’t get very far but if your eyes are open…the track before you opens up to show you the way. Each day has 24 hours…a day and a night. When one day ends, another begins. Roller derby has 60 minutes…two halves and each jam is two minutes (and sometimes less depending). When one jam ends, another begins. Some days you start ahead and others behind. Some bouts you get lead jammer status, sometimes not. But you always live to fight another day…another jam…another bout…another season…and so on.Until that is, the time comes to retire or pass to the next life in whatever form that may take.

Life teaches us many things…who we can trust, who we can’t.Who to love, who is unworthy of our love. We learn that hot can burn and cold can freeze. We learn that not all strangers are friendly and sometimes our friends might as well be strangers. Along this journey we figure out that you can’t read a book by its cover, but sometimes the cover is the best part of the book. That shit is still shit even if you wrap it in a pretty bow and put sprinkles on it. And somewhere along the steps we take, we learn that no step is ever the same. No cloud ever the same, no drop of rain the same diameter or mass. Not one of us is the same as the next yet we unexpectedly share so many qualities. We all have hearts that beat, blood that flows, skin that senses touch, a brain with which to comprehend the words you are reading right now. We all seek to be unique but have a desire to fit in. We are all created with the ability to love and hate. To have and have not, to hurt and help, to accept and reject…to embrace and push away. Within each of us there is immense power to create or destroy…life, love…each other. We can hold another’s hand or a grudge. But only one has the potential to harm. We are in effect, natural contradictions.

I cannot imagine what my life would be like without roller derby. Without the friends who have become my family. The sport that has opened my mind and heart to more pain and happiness than I even knew could exist. A place where I can stand in the middle of a crowded track and feel alone yet stand in that very spot a minute later and feel more love and acceptance than any religion has ever offered me. Life says it will take you as you are, but it doesn’t. I know this, because we are all searching for acceptance…a place to belong, to feel loved and cherished. Since life doesn’t give it to us, we often end up searching religion for what we so badly desire. But for me, that didn’t go so well. In fact, that is where I learned to hate myself.We pray and pray for help…love and acceptance and sometimes our prayers can go unanswered for what feels like forever. And then one day, you turn around and your physical therapy assistant is a rollergirl. Not just any rollergirl I came to learn…but a derby goddess by the name of Carmen Getsome. It was then that life and derby crossed and my outlook on life has never been the same.

 

 Photo by Jules Doyle