Session 17: Ending the mutual toxicity
”So, if he didn’t leave after what happened with Kaden, how did you break the cycle?”
Well. Right into it. Alicia could hear her own heartbeat in her ears. She hated going over this, she hated being confronted with it. Being forced to relive and revisit memories that she had buried deep down. But, the only way to heal, the only way to grow as a person and be happy within herself and her own skin was to face all of this. It was to hold up a mirror and do the one thing she never really had been able to do.
Be honest with herself.
She closed her bright blue eyes and swallowed hard, pushing all the fear, hatred and trepidation down. But it wasn’t fear of what Travis did. It wasn’t hatred of who he was. It was fear of remembering how much she let her own anger take over. Hatred of her attitude and herself. ”I guess you could say…I was honest with him.”
There was a pause, Dr Whitlow raised an eyebrow, scribbling notes down on her notepad. Alicia had been coming here long enough now to watch that notepad go from thick as an old history book to only a few pages. And the fill on her Doctors desk instead become thick and heavy with the weight of everything Alicia had said and just what her Doctor thought.
She fumbled her hands together and looked down, Dr Whitlow raised her pencil up to her lips, tapping the end a few times on her chin before nodding. ”Honest….how?” Alicia let out an audible sigh. Her shoulders slumping as she was growing sick and tired of all of this. She rolled her eyes, an action that seemed to anger the Doctor as she shifted her weight in the chair. But Alicia to was growing angry, her own frustrations boiling up inside from the pit of her stomach as she put her hands on her knees and rose up from the leather couch. ”Sit down.”
”No…”
She took a deep breath, she straightened her back and puffed out her chest, putting bass in her voice trying to add an air of authority. ”I’m tired of this. For almost a year I have come here, sat on that couch and unburdened myself to you, and what has it got me?...where am I in my life?..” The question hung in the air for what seemed to be an eternity. Dr Whitlow failed to answer, her lips pursing together. ”Months ago, I felt good about my life, about the place I was in. But you kept pushing, you kept digging over and over with your fucking questions. And now where am I Doc?...”
She turned on her heels, staring right at the older woman. Her eyes locked on Alicia who was now shaking, her hands, nher arms, her entire body shaking with anger, fear and sadness. All of it mixing and turning and churning deep inside her as the heartbeat got louder and more rapid with each passing second. It was deafening.Dr Whitlow gripped the pencil harder, it bent in her hand as Alicia shook her head and threw her hands in the air. She could feel it, the tears welling up in her eyes.
She felt the words raising up, she swallowed hard trying to push them back down, but she was powerless to stop it, the tears felt hot on her cheek and rolled down from her eyes and fell to the floor right beside her feet. ”I have lost everything. My career is in pieces, I feel disconnected and lost from my sons and my husband, my husband is gone. Unable to deal with my insistence on having a career instead of having another child with him….and through it all…ALL OF IT…you have just pushed me into my memories in some vain hope that it would fix me….FIX ME….” Her hands moves, shaking even more up top her head running through her wavy blond hair. Her voice lowering and the bass she inserted to add authority melted away to a whimper.
”Why am I like this?”
There was nothing there, no answer, no quick fix. Dr Whitlow just stayed silent, her hand relaxed around the pencil and Alicia looked up at the ceiling. Her mind flashed back to her and Travis. No matter how hard she tried to fight it. It was there. That night she ended it. She came home from the gym, before wolfslair she trained by herself. She would do weights, cardio, her in ring training was every single match. Her life was in tatters.
She only had visitation for her sons, her mother still treated her lick shit, she was building her career, but when she walked in the door of her small two bedroom apartment. She was angry.
Not for any other reason than he was there.
Travis Blake. He barely worked, barely talked to her and when he did it was usually a crude comment about sex. Thats all they had now. There was no emotion on her part. She didn’t even like spending time with him. Always making excuses to go out, She needed to train, she needed to buy groceries. She needed to see her mother, her sister, her brother. It was all lies, she didn’t need to do anything. But, it was her own fault. She had cheated on Travis, broken his heart. And even though he didn’t leave, he used Alicia's transgressions, her mistakes to treat her like shit.
She had her reasons, her justifications. But the fact she pushed Travis away and he stayed made her feel like she owed him, that he was a better person than her and she was lucky he was there. They would fight, he would bring up Kaden and she would apologize. They’d have unsatisfying make up sex and Alicia would cry herself to sleep. Wash. Rinse. And repeat.
Tonight felt…different
”You’re always late coming home…it’s like you’re fucking curing cancer and staying late at the hospital or some shit Lic…” She stayed silent, rolling her eyes and moving passed him, she didn’t want to fight, but there was that feeling in the air. That unmistakable thick tension. ”Nothing to say huh? typical..I don’t know why I stay I really do-”
”Why do you stay?”
He raised an eyebrow ”What?”
Alicia swallowed hard, her hand letting go of her bag letting it drop to the floor as she shook her head and turned around. ”If you’re so miserable, if you hate me that much, then the door is right fucking there Travis.”
”You’d like that wouldn’t you? So you can go back to Kaden right?” There it was.
Alicia laughed and shook her head. ”You know, I didn’t really see anything in Kaden Kessler either. He was a womanising manslut who sleeps with anything and changed women like most people change their underwear.” She paused and laughed to herself ”He was a means to an end. You were suffocating me and I wasn’t honest with you so I tried to push you away. But…I’m starting to see that was a mistake and I owe you the respect of honesty..” She stepped forward, anger etched on her face as she snarled and got right up to Travis face, his long hair and scraggly beard flowing down as Alicia tilted her head.
Travis stuttered ”Hey look..I get it..I pushed you to far..I’m sorry.”
Her reached out, his hand touching her shoulder, her arm shot up slapping his hand away. ”Don’t fucking touch me Travis…” She shook her head and her nostrils flared. She had enough. ”I’m a fucking teain wreck. And I was desperate and in many ways still am, for the longest time I have let men walk all over me. You, Kessler, Chris Cane. You all wanted something from me and all you have done is take. All you have done is use me up and spit me out like I’m some kind of fucking toy….I’m done….get out..”
”What?”
Her chest heaved, her eyes burned as she held back tears refusing to give him the satisfaction of letting him see her cry and vulnerable. ”Get out…..come back and get your shit tomorrow when I’m not here….I don’t want you, I don’t need you and I’m done feeling like a piece of shit….”
And that was it…
”I got home the next day after signing my contract for Honor wrestling, and he was gone. His clothes, his workout gear, DVD’s all that shit…”
Dr Whitlow sat silently, listening to it all as tears had kept falling this entire time. Alicia shook her head looking over at the doctor with a scoff.”No inspiring words of wisdom? No gtelling me that I did the right thing and I was strong?..cause I have to be honest here Doc, I’m starting to believe that I’m broken and there’s no way to fucking fix me…”
Her bottom lip quivered, her eyes were read and ached under the pressure. All she wanted to do was crawl into a ball and forget. To become nothing. Nobody. It would be easier for everyone.
”Sit down….”
#BANTHEGLITTER
”December the fifth. Twenty twenty one.. The last time you all saw me in an SCW ring. The last time you have seen me in any ring. A night where I had the chance to beat three women to get into a match for the internet championship. The bombshells internet title that is the only one not to be held by a member of Wolfslair.”
The familiar voice of Alicia Lukas. Soft spoken yet powerful. A southern twang that is stil evident yet faded with time since leaving Atlanta Georgia full time ten years ago.
”I faced three women who are, quite frankly, beneath me. And no, that isn’t me being arrogant, that is a fact. Dani Weston,m the ultamate flake with one foot in and one foot out of the wrestling business who has serious commitment issues. Seleana Zdunich, the little engine that could that hasn’t been able to chug her lame duck ass over her own wife let alone a title hunt. And Jesse Salco. The ultimate opportunist who is always jumping up and down waving her fucking arms while screaming “Look at me, notice me”. The woman who won that match and is going to be at Inception computing for that Internet title.”
“Do you guys want a little preview for that match? Or better yet, I’ll spoil the whole damn thing. Jessie, will make all sorts of wild promises that she can’t keep, she’ll promise to win the internet title and promise to be the best while never addressing any evidence to the contrary while also tearing down her much more talented opponent, she will lose to Andrea and then completely ignore it like she does with every single loss and never learn from it. And Andrea, well, Andrea will laugh at Jessie before the match, remind us all that Jessie is a giant pain in the ass while giving her a small shred of legitimacy in fluking out a win in a fourway match, and she’ll do it by cutting a three hour long promo that gets repeated on Inception itself in a pre match pre tape…am I in the ballpark here?..there you go fans I just bought you twenty minutes to heat up some pizza rolls and make sure you have enough soda or beer while watching the show…”
“You’re fucking welcome..”
“Now, with that being said let me be perfectly clear here. That fourway was total bullshit and while those three women are beneath me so is my opponent for Inception.”
“However. I feel the need to clarify a few things. Some injustices done in this goddamn company. I believe things should be earned. I ran my mouth about people who, apparently I’m not allowed to name or talk anymore because I’ll get a strongly worded DM on twitter begging me not to be “so mean”, I ran my mouth about them all because I had a problem with the way they conducted themselves in pursuit of championships and fame. But it has become abundantly clear to me that aside from Johanna, Amber, Kat, Bella, Tempest and Krystal Wolfe every single one of you bitches is shameless in your attempts at trying to get noticed and handed things. Even women I once had respect for have shown their true colors.”
Alicia scoffs and shakes her head, her light blonde curls bouncing as she pushes her ruby red lips together and tuts under her breath.
”But one woman I have never really had respect for is one I’m facing as we head into Inception. And the main question I have been asked is, what exactly is my problem with Candy? Why do I seem to have such anger, hatred and disdain for her? Do you people all get together and smoke crack behind a walmart in Florida or something? Candy is one of those women that is a throwback to a time when womens wrestling was joked about. She is the type of woman who belongs with Keira and Roxi and all those women that never really took this sport seriously. She is here to be something to look at and laugh at. A woman who is all about glitter, and the color pink and puppies and kittens and mittens….”
She shakes her head and grunts as she gets to her feet. Alicia paces back and forth, her black and white converse tapping on the floor below, a leather biker jacket hanging over a black Motley Crue shirt.
”For the longest time I have tried to take the high road. Cause, I was busy. I was at the top of the card in main event. I was holding or chasing the World championship and being the shining goddamn light of this company and a womens division that had become a broken, cluttered mess. I picked it up, I dusted that shit off and I remade it in my own image. I am the reason why you have people like Amber Ryan, Andrea Hernandez and Kat Jones in this company. I am the reason why people care about it and I am the reason why women have a chance to main event huge shows. I pushed all of this…and women like Candy…tear it down and make us all take a collective step back.”
“Do I look like a woman who steps back? I have never been that type of girl. And I refuse to now. So, now that I have some free time, now that I am not tied to the pressure of success and I an just go about, slumming it down here with the talentless ones, I can spare the five minutes it will take to hear my music hit, walk down to that ring and beat Candy like a glitter filled pinata….”
“And it’s not going to just be for me Candy, because really, aside from some morbid enjoyment what is it that I get out of beating you?”
“Is it that sweet sweet bragging right to say I beat a former Roulette champion who held the title two years ago? In her only moment of relevance? Is that it? Cause lets be honest here Candyfloss, after the names I have on my list, yours won’t really set the world on fire will it? Especially after you were gone for six months and played around in management forcing real competitors into stupid ass gimmick matches.”
Alicia shrugs and folds her arms over her chest.
”Could it be some revenge for a slight that isn’t related to who you are? Like some personal vengeance? No, because your career has never touched mine and never will. What about a win streak? No, not that either, you’ve been back to two matches and you’ve gone one and one the only win against Char fucking Kwan who is one of the only women on the roster more pathetic than you and your lone win being against Crystal Zdumbass. So really…what does a win over you get me Candy?”
“Nothing…”
“I personally gain nothing from getting in that ring and beating you down. “
“Except for being able to prove a point. Being able to take a stand against you and people like you who would make a mockery of what we all do in that ring. Now, some people may believe that I take all this to seriously. And I can see how that would be a misconception. They say things like “Oh Candy is harmless” or “Candy is a sweetheart” and thats the problem. You are harmless, you are a sweetheart. And you can go and do that candy coated frosted fucking bullshit anywhere. Go home and be a wife to Marcus, be a goddamn weather girl on channel six news at 2 in the morning in regional markets in oklahoma…go host a bad children's TV show…I don’t care…”
“But get your ass the fuck out of wrestling. Cause your future looks bleak Candy, it really does. And while you sit there smiling like a freshly ice picked lobotomy patient while pee wees playhouse flickers in the tiny tv inside your head, I want you to TRY and focus on the fact you are facing one of the most decorated women in this company and wrestling as a whole…and then I want you to try and conjure up enough IQ points to actually be intimidated…cause fear is a great motivator…and you need every chance you can get…at Inception…I ban the glitter…”