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Roleplay Boards => Archived Roleplays => Climax Control Archives => Topic started by: Andrea Hernandez on November 15, 2019, 06:04:24 PM
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“If I were to tell you that the last match doesn’t sting then I’d be the biggest liar in the world. It does sting and that’s as much as I am going to get into that. I certainly left Tucson a couple of weeks back with a lot of anger and disappointment and to a smaller extent, humiliation, flowing through me. It was definitely not the experience I was hoping for but all I can do is take what I can get from it, move on and qualify for the chamber. Obviously, it was easier said than done in the immediate aftermath of it all…”
Two weeks ago…
It was the day after the match against Alicia Lukas and I wasn’t feeling any better about it. A part of me was already regretting the defiant “delaying the inevitable” tweet I had done the day before knowing that it was a rare instance of me using social media so irresponsibly but while I was sitting on a bench with Clarissa Vega in this bright, Monday, Tucson morning I was feeling like a part of my pride was torn out of me. Losing sucks, that much is obvious. But losing THAT way? It’s humiliating. It just makes it a whole lot worse. All I can think about was feeling like a complete laughingstock, never mind the fact that it was my first instance of adversity in Sin City Wrestling. Clarissa, ever the caring friend, tried to break the ice to at least try to clear the clutter out of my head.
“You want to talk about it?” she asked me with concern.
“About what?”
“It bothers you, let’s not run away from that”
“I’m only going to focus on the chamber qualification match” I responded, still feeling cold and defiant. “The best thing for me to do is to just let it go and forget about it.”
“No” she responded. “You’re just running away from it if you do that. Of course, if that’s what you want to continue to do then be my guest but you and I both know that’s not going to help you. On top of that, I know you’re better than this. You usually don’t take losses so hard. I think the last time you took one so hard was back when you were still working with UWA.”
“Actually, it’d be THAT ladder match” I responded back with a snappy tone. This tone would catch Clarissa off guard as her eyebrow raise would indicate. “OCW felt so meaningless to me after that.”
“But it’s the world champion on top of her game right now” Clarissa tried to reason. “There’s no shame in that.”
“It is when you’re trying to prove your family wrong… when you’re trying to succeed without them having any sort of influence on your career.”
“Listen, blowing it off and forgetting about it isn’t going to help you. You’re lucky that OCW closed, Andrea.” Hearing this comment didn’t sit well with me. “You did the same thing after that ladder match and had OCW not closed, you’d be struggling to get back to that level right now because you’re so caught up in your own immature stubbornness. The reason why you’re still stuck on ‘star on the rise’ instead of being a star already is because you refuse to learn from your adversity.”
“Excuse me?” I snapped back. “Who’s the one that’s had to overcome so much crap just to get to this point in my career?”
“All I am saying is that there’s a huge difference between being a star on the rise and a star in this business. Those that get to the next level don’t do what you want to do with yesterday’s match. They have the maturity to grow from it. Yeah, you’ve grown a lot. You got to where you are because you kept fighting and you kept growing. You faced your demons. You faced your adversity. You think you’re too good to face it anymore?”
I didn’t respond to this at all.
“It never stops, Andrea. Even those that are already at that level have to deal with it just to stay there.” Clarissa takes a reflective sigh. “This is the part of you I don’t like. You used to be so vibrant and vivacious when you first started in GCW. I know you take your career seriously, but it’s too much sometimes.”
“What are you saying, exactly?”
“Are you just going to be a hermit for your entire run in SCW? Are you too good to have any friends?”
“I’m not listening to any more of this…”
I stood up and quickly walked away from Clarissa feeling attacked and discouraged by everything that was going on at the moment. I had that hard loss to swallow already but I felt like I didn’t need the lecture from Clarissa on top of that especially considering she hasn’t been involved in the business in years and wrestled fewer than five matches during her time in it. While I was walking away, I was completely unaware of what was going on behind me.
“Stubborn girl…” Clarissa said.
“I’m here!”
Clarissa turns to a blonde-haired woman that I have a lot of familiarity with.
“Chelsea?” Clarissa asked with confusion.
“Where’s Andrea?”
“She just bolted. She’s not in a good mood right now.”
“Tough loss?”
Clarissa nodded.
“I’ll catch up to her.”
“If I can’t get through to her, Chelsea… I don’t think anyone else will.”
While they had their conversation going on, I was walking further and further away having not heard anything they had said. The loss was still getting to me and in a sense it was still bringing me down. It was almost like a trigger that was bringing back some stupidly bad OCW memories, particularly some of the matches I had lost back there in the cruelest of ways. I had heard my phone notify me of a text message quite a few times as I walked toward the main campus of the University of Arizona but I ignored every single one of them figuring it was my father bombing me with “I told you so” text messages as a reminder of how I “couldn’t be successful without the family” or something along those lines. I found a wall and leaned against it just letting the anger go through me but knowing exactly what I had to do.
“Qualify for the chamber. Get my revenge. Win my first world championship. This isn’t over by a long shot and I’ll make damn sure to return the favor to that bitch…”
A wounded pride continued to eat away at my logical reasoning to the point where I didn’t notice that Chelsea was walking toward me.
“...it’ll be nice revenge to have and a fine way to finally stick it to everyone who ever doubted me once and for all!”
“Andi?”
Chelsea’s So-Cal toned, concerned voice pierced my ears causing me to react in surprise combined with annoyance once I realized my former tag team partner and former on-again, off-again enemy was standing in front of me.
“What?”
“You know… college is supposed to be a social time…”
I rolled my eyes at Chelsea’s wisecrack which only caused her to sigh.
“What has happened to you? Wait, don’t answer that. I already know”
“What DO you know Chelsea? You’re the fuck up that’s in rehab and therapy right now because you can’t even get your own career together. All you ever did was ride my Sedona Sky coat tails while I carried you to the tag team titles in GCW. You made one hell of a sidekick when you actually gave a fuck.”
“Andi, I get that you’re so pissed off about last night but that doesn’t give you the excuse to act like a bitch.” I rolled my eyes at this but this resulted in Chelsea asserting herself even more. “And it definitely doesn’t give you an excuse to treat me like that. Yeah, I know, I fucked up. Mind pouring salt in the wound? I get that our friendship is strained because of me but what gives you the right to act like I’m beneath you? Because you’ve done so much better than me since our tag team split? It’s ONE match! Jeez! What the hell happened to the Andrea that I grew up with? We used to have so much fun together. Do you even know what “fun” is anymore?”
I rolled my eyes again and didn’t respond.
“You can quit rolling your eyes at me while you’re at it. I understand that OCW was a massive wringer for you, especially toward the end. I understand that back in GCW, Myra Lynwood abused and used the hell out of us and stripped us of our dignity… literally in your case. I get it. What we’ve been through was harsh. Sure, it all made you stronger and it all made you better… but you know what else it did, Andi? It made you BITTER!”
“Bitter?” I scoffed at this notion. “Chelsea, I have nothing to be bitter about.”
“Yet, you wear this giant chip on your shoulder as if the world owes you everything. You? Not bitter? Right. And I’m a big television star! The past still bothers you, Andrea. It’s one thing to use it to make yourself better. It’s another thing to act like a total Miss Broodypants and keep to yourself. Have you even TRIED making friends in Sin City Wrestling?”
“Who needs them?” I countered. “They all betray you anyway which is something YOU know a lot about.”
“And you say you’re not bitter about anything… yet here you are STILL throwing my betrayal of you in my face. I get it. I fucked up. I’ve said sorry. Move on, okay? Get over it. You wrestle with all this anger and hate in your heart every single match. I understand all the bad experiences but at some point, you’ve got to move on and you’ve got to let it go.”
“I’m not bitter about anything”
“Uh… yes you are, Andi! I’ve known you longer than anyone in wrestling has ever known you. Remember when we were 9? When we’d have slumber parties and you’d get mad every time I beat you in a pillow fight? Okay STUPID example but you’re one of those people gets pissy over every little thing.” I was doing everything I could to hold my anger back at this point the longer Chelsea went on. “I bet you’re still mad about UWA and how that didn’t work out for you. For years, you’ve used that experience as a chip on your shoulder to prove everyone wrong.”
“Yeah, I have. And?”
“It’s not healthy, Andi. UWA was two, three years ago. You have nothing to prove to them anymore. All the shit with Myra and GCW? That’s long over. What you’re doing is collecting rocks at this point. I’m willing to bet my life savings that you’re not even close to being over OCW… all the sexist macho talk you heard, all the jackasses you dealt with, those times you were cheated out of matches, THAT ladder match. How is growing that chip on your shoulder and collecting all those rocks going to help you in the future? You’re doing nothing but holding yourself back, Andi. You’ll never be the star you know you can be while you’re doing this.”
“I’d take this seriously if this didn’t come from you…”
I said this in hopes that Chelsea would let it go, but she wouldn’t drop it. Instead, she shocked me by grabbing me by the caller and pinning me against the wall in a sudden rush of anger.
“Are you taking it seriously now?” she asked before she let me go. I was too stunned to reply as she continued. “The first thing you need to do is get the fuck over yourself. You’re damn great at what you do, you’ve proven that the last couple of years. But that doesn’t make you special and it doesn’t make you better than everybody else. I may not have the wrestling knowledge that you do… but take it from someone who has been on ‘revenge missions’ before… if you go into that chamber qualifier against whomever you’re going to face with revenge on your mind… if all that really matters to you is getting a chance at ‘revenge’ against Alicia Lukas… if that’s ALL you fucking care about… then you’re going to fail. If ALL you care about is proving people wrong then you’re only going to make yourself miserable and you’re going to sink your career… just like I did.”
Chelsea reminding me of her self-destructive behavior was what finally got me on the same page with her.
“I was so obsessed with being better than you, Andi.” Chelsea continued to show no qualms in reminding me of that. “In OCW, I was so obsessed with proving myself as not being a joke and yet… all I did was make myself the biggest joke in wrestling. I love you far too much to allow you to go down that same road. You’ve been straddling the line between “good and evil” so much longer than you realize, Andrea. I’m only making you aware of that because I care about you.”
Chelsea shakes her head with concern before she starts to walk away.
“What you’ve become as a wrestler is something I can admire” she said. “But what you’ve become as a person… this bitter, egomaniacal woman that doesn’t know how to have fun anymore… it’s something that I can’t stand to see. I want my best friend back, Andi. I want the person I used to have fun with all the time… who would at the very least smile every now and then. I miss the Andrea that I used to gossip with about boys during high school, the Andrea that treated wrestling like a dream that she wanted and not as this career that she has to be the best at everything at. What was wrong with her? The fact that she struggled as a rookie way more than you wanted her to? I loved that Andrea. It pains me to say it, but I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
Chelsea walks away further as I feel her words striking a chord with me.
“In fact…” she continued. “I don’t even think YOU know who you are anymore.”
Chelsea fully walked away at this point leaving me stunned at everything she just told me. I could feel my heart hurting just as it did the night before with that loss to Alicia Lukas except the pain was different. It wasn’t the pain of a shattered pride, but the pain of knowing that Chelsea was right. The pain of knowing that I had lost myself became a bit much to bear at that moment and it stuck with me so much that I wouldn’t forget it over the next two weeks. I couldn’t hate Chelsea by the time I got to Anaheim.
At this point, I was thinking that all I had to say to her was “thank you” for opening up my eyes to a truth that I had unwillingly ignored for so long.
November 15, 2019
“You hit the ground running and you think you’ve got it ALL figured out…”
I say this with a hint of regret in my voice as the cameras come on me. The conversation I had weeks prior with Chelsea was still in my mind knowing how right she had been for the most part. Being in Anaheim was a weird experience knowing that I wasn’t there to go to Disneyland but to take care of business.
“...and then something or someone comes along and you get blindsided by reality. I’m not the kind of wrestler that is going to bitch, moan and complain about a loss. That’s not the mentality that I have. Alicia Lukas won. She was the better wrestler. There’s nothing I can do about that match except to take what I can from it and make myself better and this opportunity that is in front of me is exactly what I need. I admit that in the wake of that loss, I was so hellbent on getting into that chamber and getting my revenge by taking the title from her and all this stupid, immature nonsense but with some help of some people that care about me, I realized that’s not the way to go. I admit it, when I hit the ground running the way I did in SCW, I got ahead of myself a little bit. I did let my guard down thinking that I already had it made and it takes a lot of pride swallowing to come out and admit that but that’s the truth. In fact, as hard as it may be to believe… and I can’t believe I am even saying this… but that loss was possibly the best thing that could have happened to me right now because it opened my eyes to a lot of things. I realize that I haven’t been the friendliest of people since I’ve been here. I know that some words that I’ve said have rubbed some people the wrong way. There was never any malicious intent behind those words at all. Much of it was my competitive nature. Those that actually know me know that I’m not that type of person at heart… though… I’ve had that person from this company. I’ve held myself back as a person. You’ve gotten to know the wrestler, but I haven’t allowed the locker room to know the woman. I’m a prideful bitch, I admit that.
That egotistical high from beating Mercedes Vargas blinded me to some truths that I was denying myself.
That high that I got from beating Bobbie only drove me deeper into a path that I had no idea I was on and in hindsight, I was pretty darn harsh with some of the things I said to Bella Madison leading up to our High Stakes match. So… over the last two weeks, I’ve done some soul searching and realized that I was at a crossroads. I had a decision to make.
I had to decide between continuing down the same path: shutting myself off from the locker room, acting like I’ve had it all figured out and being so defiant in the face of defeat to the point where a lot of the locker room hated me. Going down this path… I’d be breaking just like Bobbie has recently and seeing her behavior lately…
I paused and cringed a bit when I thought about it.
“That’s… not a path I want to go down. Then there’s the other path… a path defined by the likes of Roxi Johnson and Keira Fisher. The way they’re beloved by the fans, the way they carry themselves, the way they want to do right by this business… that’s what I want to be. That’s the path I want to take. I know I’ve been a hermit, being distant from others and perhaps closing myself off from making real friends in this business… but that’s not who I was before I broke into it and that’s not who I am. I guess, in a sense, it’s fitting that I’m facing you, Keira. You’re one of the examples that I strive to be. You and Roxi have been part of the definition of this division for a long time but that doesn’t mean I’m just going to allow you to beat me. You deserve to be in that chamber match with what you’ve got to your name. Hell, I’ll even admit that you deserve to be in that match more than I do. Once again, I’m going into a match with my opponent as the favorite to win but that didn’t stop me against Mercedes, it didn’t stop me against Bobbie and I’m not going to let that setback to Alicia stop me either. You’ve been on a tear, just like I have. You’re coming off a setback yourself, just like I have. But as you may know yourself, what defines a hero isn’t the victories… this… a lesson I learned harshly in my last match.
The victories, glorious as they may be, are just the destination.
You know what defines a hero, Keira?
The adversity. It’s the losses that you suffer… that you have to sit back and learn from that defines a hero. I thought I’d remind you of that before I beat you to advance to the chamber on Sunday because that’s not something that anyone remembers all the time. I spent so much time being bitter about my shortcomings and all the bad things that happened to me. It took that loss and that reality check from Alicia Lukas to realize it, but all I was doing when it came to that adversity was run as far away from possible. I didn’t want to let go of my old experiences. I didn’t want to let go of the brutal rookie year that I had in professional wrestling because I felt like I was above that when all along I know I wouldn’t be the woman that I am today without it. As much as I wanted to hit the ground running when I first started, I didn’t and seeing others around me do that… yeah, it did make me bitter. I didn’t want to let go of OCW. I only wanted to be proud of the good experiences I had there, I only wanted to show off the fact that I toppled some of their big names and silenced some big mouths but I didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that I suffered my most heartbreaking of the losses that I’ve had in my career there. I came here anything but a real hero, Keira. You, more than anyone, knows that a hero doesn’t run away. I know and see the truth.
I realize now that in order to get to that next level, I have to embrace the bad just as much as I’ve embraced the good. I know that I can… I did it to become the wrestler, the “phoenix” that I am. I’ve made a career out of it with how much I’ve bounced back from the worst of losses, rising from the ashes again and again to be stronger and better than ever. I have to lose, to suffer, to experience, to feel, to hurt… just like every other wrestler in this business. I hate to say it Keira, but you’re going to wish that I beat Alicia Lukas two weeks ago because had I done so, I wouldn’t have woken up and realized everything I’ve been telling you. Professional wrestling isn’t some comic book where the superhero saves the day all the time with little to no difficulty. This isn’t a world where super strength and laser vision are the superpowers no matter how much I once wanted those to be my powers at one point.
My real “superpowers”, Keira? It’s rising from the ashes and living with and learning from the adversity that I suffer. Before two weeks ago… I saw adversity as a pain. Adversity isn’t pain… adversity is growth. It won’t be overnight, hell it may not even be Sunday… but come hell or high water, even though I’m less experienced than you are, even though you’ve got the advantage of the wealth of knowledge you’ve absorbed from someone of the caliber of Roxi Johnson, even though I’m not a completed puzzle or a finished product yet… I’m going to find a way to win. I’m going to find a way to overcome the adversity in front of me because that’s what I do. This Sunday, you’ll see why I’m the phoenix that I am. I’ll prove what I’m capable of. I’ll beat you… all due respect… I’ll find myself in the chamber… and then the world will see the definition of a hero and every piece of what Andrea Hernandez is capable of and this company will know what my true identity is all about”