August 2, 2020 - Before Summer XXXtreme
“So you knew the whole time?” I asked someone on the phone while I was on the cruise ship, hours before the event was going to begin. “You knew that my dad used steroids during his wrestling career and you did nothing about it?”
“I didn’t know how you were going to take the news, Andrea…” my other said on the other line. “Of course, I didn’t want you to know that growing up. I was always against the idea of them… but he would never listen to me. I’m sorry that you had to know about this when you did, but I thought you were better off not knowing.
“I’ve been an adult for almost 8 years now…” I reminded my mother. “I’m 26. I can take it. I’m not some delicate little flower anymore… and of all days to just drop something like this on me, you chose to do it TODAY? When I’m trying to win back a world championship in his honor? I was really hoping that the toxicology reports were wrong or that they had mistaken his tests for someone else… but to know that this is the truth… that my own father was a drug cheat and used steroids to get by… it’s bad enough that for generations, my dad’s side of the family was full of extremely conservative, sexist bastards in the first place…”
My mother doesn’t say anything on the phone while I continued to process news that I had not wanted to know about.
“How am I supposed to feel about this? How am I supposed to see my own father now? Is there anything else about him that I may want to know about, mother? Is there something else that you’re hiding from me? I’ve heard things… you know… from the grapevine… from even my own brothers… that… there’s so many things about this family that I don’t know about… and they’re not exactly good things at ALL… and NOBODY elaborates because they all think I’m ‘precious, delicate Andrea’ that can’t handle the truth! Have I not proven that I’m beyond that now? Gosh! Why does this family have to be full of IDIOTS?”
“Andrea…”
“My brother is a convicted felon that is in jail for thirty years for armed robbery, my father is a steroid user, I’ve heard rumors that my grandfather came up to the United States because he was trying to get away from drug lords in Mexico because that’s how he funded the family business down there… I HOPE that’s not true… but I wouldn’t be shocked if it was… and that’s without mentioning the fact that Dad told me about how he was a violent, drunken wife beater and a sexist piece of shit in general and I KNOW he wasn’t lying about that…
My mother didn’t have a damn thing to say over the phone after that…
“I need to go… I’ve got such a different view of things now and you have no idea how to feel anymore. I was so proud to take on the family mantle and to carry the tradition forward… but I don’t even know WHAT tradition I am carrying anymore…”
I sighed and I immediately hung up my phone. As I had mentioned before, the timing of this revelation that my father really was a steroid abuser AND that my mother knew about it the whole time and kept it hidden from me really drilled me right in the conscience. I was beginning to question the faith that I had in my family from the moment I ever learned about the tradition that had gone back five generations. By the time I fought in the main event that night, my head was just far too clouded with discouragement with everything seemingly being one thing after another…
Two weeks later…
It was during the latter stages of Climax Control that night. I had defeated Candy not even an hour prior and I was in an interview regarding my hatchet burial with Christina Rose when I was interrupted by the security guard that was accompanying me to the entrance of the building. Someone wanted to talk to me and I was running through my head the possibilities of who it could be. Deep down, I was really hoping that it wasn’t someone from my family. It wasn’t long before I reached the parking lot and I saw a familiar face. It wasn’t a family face, but it was definitely someone I had been avoiding for a while.
“Clarissa?” I asked one of my longest tenured friends.
“Hey…” she told me, looking concerned.
“You came all the way up here…” I paused, turning back toward the security guard. “...it’s fine… I’ve got this…” I sighed as he left. “...why? If I’m not answering your phone calls, you know that I have a reason for it.”
“And you realize why I’ve been trying to reach you, right?”
“You’re concerned for me. Yeah. I think I’d rather be saved the speech and the lecture. I’m so damn sorry that I fucking blew it on that god damn cruise… AGAIN! You think beating Candy tonight makes me happy? Spoiler alert. It doesn’t. I’m not happy. I haven’t been happy in a while and you think that coming all the way up here to check on me is going to make me feel better? My mother sent you here didn’t she? That… and or… you came here to try to get me to see them. I don’t want to face them, Clarissa. I don’t even want to THINK about them right now. How can I face them knowing that I’ve let them down? AGAIN!”
“I came here on my own merit…” Clarissa told me. “...your family is your family. I don’t plan on getting involved in that and to be honest with you, I only care about you. I could give a crap about your family’s ridiculous soap opera and how fucked up they are. You and I both know that’s the truth. I don’t even know why you even WANT to carry on the family tradition after everything you had to deal with growing up. You revere your dad and all, but let’s not forget that before you even won the world championship, the relationship you two had was strained. It’s like… you completely forgot about the fact that he never wanted you to be a professional wrestler in the first place. Yeah, I came here to check on you because you’re one of my best friends and everything and it’s been a joy and a pleasure to watch you grow into the wrestler that you’ve become. But I also came here to know the truth. WHY do you even WANT to carry forward a tradition of… well… you know what your father was… you know what your grandfather was… WHY?”
“Because I KNOW I can change all that…” I told her, but she merely narrowed her eyes at me, not believing a word I just said.
“...don’t lie to me. You know that’s bullshit.”
“WHY are you invested into this?”
“Because I CARE about you, that’s why.” Clarissa reminded me. “If there’s anything that I can do to get you back on the right path, I’m going to do that and you know it.”
“I don’t remember you being my manager again…”
“Tell me the truth, Andrea. Why are you carrying this tradition that’s full of… well… God only knows what other secrets your family has hidden from you and they’re probably not even good secrets. Why do you even want to be the standard bearer of the family?”
“You want to know the truth, Clarissa? You want to know why I want to be the standard bearer of the family? Well… here’s a hidden truth for you… and you better NOT tell anyone…”
“I swear on my daughter that I won’t…”
“The truth is… when it comes to being the torch bearer of the family? When it comes to holding the family together? Why I WANT to be all that? The truth is….”
Inside, I was feeling completely conflicted about how I felt on the inside.
“...I don’t…”
“Thank you for being honest with me.”
“I want to be the best wrestler that I am for my own sake… because I went out there and I earned it. I don’t want to be the best because of my name. I know it sounds like a horrible thing to say but…”
“Not wanting to carry on a tradition of steroid abuse, armed robbery, sexism, and domestic violence is a horrible thing to say, Andrea?”
I sighed, my way of saying “touche” to Clarissa.
“It’s a burden…” I admitted to her. “...I was stupid to carry that burden with me going into Summer XXXtreme. I thought that by taking on that burden, that it’d inspire me to win the title back but I was plainly wrong about that.”
“So if it’s such a burden for you, then why the fuck did you carry it to begin with?”
“Because… I felt like I was expected to… because I felt like it was the right thing to do. Then my mom pretty much confessed that my dad used steroids during his career and that just… broke me. She did it on the night of the show too which… wow… talk about the worst timing ever…”
“Andrea, there’s something that you need to hear from me and you’re not going to like it…”
“I would rather hear a truth that I’m not going to like than a lie that’s going to make me feel better. At this point, what do I care? What do I even have to lose. So… just say whatever it is that you need to say to me.”
“You’d been struggling since you lost the world title. You know that part. But what you really don’t know is why. Yeah, tough competition. I can buy that. But you’re not making it easier when you’re pressuring yourself so damn hard to carry on a family legacy that you don’t even want to carry in the first place. You’re struggling because you have way too much of an emotional investment in your family, your father, the tradition… all of that. You always did and I was never for that because you deserve to be your own woman, doing your own thing, for you and for you alone. If you don’t want to carry on the family tradition, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to be the standard bearer to your own family, then you don’t have to. Andrea Hernandez needs to look out for Andrea Hernandez and that’s that. Andrea Hernandez wrestles for Andrea Hernandez… not her father, not her mother, not her family… for Andrea Hernandez! I think the time is now for you to leave that whole tradition in the past and just focus on being you. I respect the fact that you wanted to at least make your family proud on the cruise… but seeing the way you wrestled? All you did was put more pressure on yourself. You’re only going to be right psychologically again when you move on from ‘tradition’ and focus on being you.”
“You know… maybe you got a point…”
“You know I got a point. There’s no maybe here. It’s time for you to move on and let it go… and you already have… burying the hatchet with Christina and all…”
“What does Christina have to do with any of this?”
“Your dad hated her and didn’t like her father very much… but now suddenly, you might be best buddies? You don’t think that part of that hatchet burial was subconsciously to stick it to a burden that you’ve just admitted you don’t want to carry?”
“I never looked at it like that.”
“Maybe it’s about time you saw the whole big picture. You don’t want to carry the burden… so don’t. You’re a star now. You became a bigger star than the four generations before you all put together. That’s without mentioning that there may even be more deep, dark secrets about your family that you don’t even know about…”
“I’d rather not think about it. Knowing my dad was a roid abuser was enough. I’m… not comfortable with the idea of… you know… leaving behind that tradition. At the same time though… you’re not wrong. I shouldn’t have to carry a burden that I don’t want… and I exceeded everyone in my family before me. I loved my dad and all and I still do… it’s just… I don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t know where to go from here just yet. I’ve been going through a lot, I’ve felt the pressure cooker from SCW lately and it’s just… there’s way too much for me to think about…”
“Don’t you worry about it, Andrea…” Clarissa told me with encouragement. “I promise you that you’re going to figure it all out and I’m going to do everything in my power to be there to help you figure it all out whenever you need me. You’re smart. I know you’re going to figure out the big picture really soon.”
Clarissa began to turn and walk away, but I wasn’t ready to see her leave just yet.
“Thank you for being honest with me, Clarissa…” I said, causing her to stop. “...it’s a breath of fresh air to know that at least SOMEONE close to me is lately…”
“I’m not a Hernandez… honesty comes easy for me…” Clarissa retorted without remorse. “...the truth will set you free…”
With those words making a final impression on me, I watched one of my best friends leave. She certainly gave me plenty to think about.
“This burden that’s on my shoulders greatly pains me…” I thought to myself. “...what other dark secrets does my family have that I don’t even know about? I shudder to think that there’s something else about my own dad that I would never want to know. It’s crazy to admit that I took on a burden that I never really wanted. But what do I do now? Where do I go from here? What direction do I want to go in as a professional wrestler? I don’t exactly know that right now… but I definitely know that the direction I DON’T want to go in right now is the direction I’ve been going in lately. I don’t want the burden… but it just feels selfish and wrong for me to just abandon it too…”
The only thing I knew at this point was that the coming weeks were definitely going to be quite interesting…
August 28, 2020
“I’m going to be really honest here… I have strong doubts as to whether I actually deserve this…”
I wasn’t going to hold back when the cameras came on me and it came time to discuss the battle royal at hand.
“I’m not saying this to be modest or anything like that. I guess I’m just saying this to be a realist. It’s not necessarily a secret that I’ve been through a lot and that the last thing I need right now is to be put in a pressure situation like this, but at the end of the day, it is what it is. It’s another chapter of the story. I know what I need to focus on here and that’s making the most out of this opportunity. I hate to concede one to the ‘haters’, you all know me on this, but I know what I feel and I feel what I know and that’s the fact that I don’t deserve to be in this match. There are a couple of other names in this match that can say the same thing, but it is what it is. Just because I may not deserve it doesn’t mean that I won’t do my best. Some would say that because of all the shit that I’ve been through from the pressure cooker that I’ve lived under that it’s probably best that I don’t focus on trying to become world champion again right now. I won’t outright say that they’re right, but I’m also not going to deny that they may have a point. In any case, it is what it is and I’m sure as hell going to take a different approach to this. This isn’t about carrying on a tradition or being the standard bearer of my family. I’m putting that aside because everyone knows where that got me at Summer Xtreme. Everyone knows that moping about my dad for so long has just made everything worse for me and I’m not going to do that anymore.
I’m done living in this fantasy that I’m this beloved heroine that should be a role model for everyone to admire because the truth of the matter is, I’m not because I sure as hell don’t act like it. My fans and my friends and my family are all behind me, but the fact of the matter is that whether I want to admit it or not, I’m one of the most hated bombshells in the locker room and I’m not mad about that, I understand why. It’s because of the way I carried myself earlier this year when I shunned Christina Rose and grew a big ego during my world title reign thinking that everything came easy for me. I admit my fault in that. I’m not going to waste your time running down every single opponent in this match and talking about why I’m better than them or why I deserve something more than them because I REALLY don’t want to bore anyone… what I AM going to talk about though… is where my head is at as far as this match is concerned.
Sure, there’s a world championship match at stake here but at the end of the day, this is about doing what I have to do. It’s about eliminating who I have to eliminate to get to where I want to be. It’s about doing whatever it takes to make sure I get back to the top. It’s about discarding the idea of carrying this weight on my shoulders that I never even wanted to begin with and it’s about reminding everyone what Andrea Hernandez is all about. I’m not coming into this match for the same old shit. The fact of the matter is, I’m on my last nerve with the attitude of this locker room toward me. I’m on my last nerve with other people trying to define who I am with their empty words and after Summer XXXtreme, I feel like I am hanging on by a thread. Beating Candy two weeks ago didn’t make me happy. I went out there, I won, I did what I was expected to do against a woman that doesn’t quite have the X-factor to be a world champion because she’s too much of a bubbly, goody two shoes that doesn’t truly know how this business is supposed to work in the grand scheme of things. Being placed in this battle royal… Do you honestly think that is going to make me happy? Because it doesn’t. I have to be in a match full of women that either can’t stand me, want to brand me like I’m stupid, want to shove some recent struggles in my face taking such joy and glee in it, and in some cases, root for my own failure.
It’s the nature of the beast. I get that.
But the fact of the matter is, there have only been TWO women in this locker room that have ever really given a damn about me in Myra Rivers and Christina Rose. Granted… I know I’ve brought this upon myself to a degree being so distant from everyone and all… but this match to me feels like I am purging so much anger that has built up over the last few months with all the vitriol and hatred that I’ve had to deal with. If purging that anger and running through a bunch of women that can’t stand me and don’t respect me is something that I am going to have to do to at least feel better, then so be it. I know that I have to be strong and that’s precisely what I am going to be and I KNOW that I can be because I’ve been in this spot many times in my career where I’ve dealt with a lot of people that didn’t respect me and wanted to bring me down so much. I was in that spot in UWA when the entire cruiserweight locker room decided that they wanted to run up the score every time I failed and they all branded me as a future failure only for most of those same people that ran up the score on me to have NO career to speak of. I was in that same spot in OCW when I kept being disrespected and doubted again and again and every single time they thought I was going to crack and falter, I was able to prove them wrong and shut them up.
That’s the attitude I am going to have to carry in this match. I’m going to prove a LOT of people wrong and I am going to shut them up because the last thing I am even going to allow anymore is the constant disrespect that I’ve been dealing with for months. In a match where just about every woman in the battle royal has a reason to hate me… well… every woman except Candy… she couldn’t hold a grudge… I have to take on that old me versus the world mentality that won me that world championship to begin with… that made me a star in the first place… that had me beating those “legends” in OCW one by one against the odds… that made me prove even MYRA wrong when SHE once thought that I wouldn’t amount to anything… that had me beating the hell out of Mercedes Vargas in just my second match here… that had me becoming a world championship contender in just FOUR months and a world champion in EIGHT when I defeated Roxi Johnson and Christina Rose for the first world championship I’ve ever won and I GUARANTEE it’s not going to be my last because whether you like it or not, whether you love me or hate me, I’m not going away anytime soon. I KNOW that I’m one of the biggest stars in this division and no matter how badly a lot of you want to take that away from me… you WON’T!
Because I’m learning my own truth now!
I know exactly how things are in this company. I know exactly how things are in the Bombshells locker room.
And the truth is?
You’re all going to be seeing a different side of me very soon. I’m not talking about the torch bearer of my family, I’m going to stop focusing so much on that going forward. I’m talking about showing you all the star that I am and the star that I’m going to be for years. Say whatever the hell you want to say about me, but the fact of the matter is, I’m not going to listen. I’m DONE listening to that bullshit!
And this Sunday? I’m coming to that battle royal and I’m going to silence a hater or two. I’m going to win the damn thing. And when that dust settles, you bet your ass that I’m going to be world champion again, much to the chagrin of some of you in that locker room… the ones who can’t stand me… but so be it. I could give fuck all about YOUR opinions anymore because they don’t mean shit to me!
This isn’t a ‘phoenix rising’ situation… because honestly?
I’m not even sure there IS a phoenix anymore…
Not much for words this time around, I shut off the camera and walk away, largely glad to just get those feelings off my chest more than anything else.
