Turnaround
Jet City South - San Diego
OFF-Camera
Something was still off. I could feel it. If I am honest with myself, I have felt it from the very beginning. Since the moment that I first got back in the ring, I just haven’t been able to find a good groove. Sure, I may have won a couple matches since my return, but the losses have been overwhelming. I’ve even stopped counting at this point. There’s no point in keeping track of something that makes you feel hopeless. There is no point letting it drag me down. It isn’t the problem. It’s just the most apparent symptom. If I can find the cause, and fix it, things can get back to normal. I thought that helping Coby was going to be the answer. Maybe stepping in the ring with him would jar something. It turned out to be a dead-end. Not that it didn’t help him. We ran through everything that Jet City South had to offer. I’ll never understand where the guy gets the energy to keep going like that. I just wish it would have had the same benefit for me. Maybe it’s time to put thought into actually giving up.
Kris: I figured it out, you know.
I jumped. No lie. I didn’t hear him come down the hallway. I’m not even sure how long I have been sitting here. I think it was more about his voice though. Coby said he hadn’t really moved from where he was in the office. We had given up on him being helpful, and then here he was.
Court: How was your nap?
He laughs in that way that tends to wipe the smile off of everyone around him. It’s by far my least favorite thing about him. He can be so condescending sometimes. The worst part of it is that he knows when he is doing it. It probably didn’t hurt that Coby and I just put hours worth of work in, and this smug asshole has the audacity to walk up to me all smug and well-rested.
Kris: I wasn’t sleeping. I was thinking. I’ve had a lot of time for that lately.
I’m sure he has. The rest of us have been slaving away trying to pick up the slack. It makes sense that while we are all running out of time, Kris seems to have found all the time in the world. I was at least a little jealous, but there was so much more to it than that. It was insulting that he seemed perfectly happy with abandoning his teammates.
Court: Unemployment looks good on you. I thought you went home.
I should know better than to poke at him, but I was frustrated and he made himself such an easy target. It didn’t seem like he was going to take the bait though.
Kris: I will. Eventually. I have some unfinished things here that I needed to do first though. One in particular I haven’t been able to crack before now.
I didn’t like this version of him. Kris was best when you could tell that his blind confidence was bullshit. I liked him most when he hated himself the most. These times where he managed to pull himself together almost always made me sick. The condescension was thicker, and he actually meant every word of it. It wasn’t just a mask to hide the things he didn’t want people to see anymore.
Court: Good for you. When you’re done with that maybe you can help me with my thing.
I tried to mask my contempt for his epiphany, but I doubt it was successful. I could feel my face twist up as the words came out of my mouth. It didn’t appear like he was taking them personally though.
Kris: Your thing was what I figured out.
I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t believe him. Especially not how he just blurted it out like that. I had been trying to work through whatever was wrong with my in ring skills for months, and he finally put it together after taking some time off. It was insulting if it was true. So it couldn’t be true.
Court: I doubt it. You’ve been on some kind of sobriety vision quest up there.
He laughed in my face instead of taking it as the insult that it was meant to be. I don’t know why, but it made me nervous.
Kris: I realized that I have been knee-deep in my own shit lately. I wanted to take a step back and try to worry about others for once. Kind of put everything in perspective, you know?
If there was a point, he didn’t seem like he was in a rush to get to it and I didn’t have all the time in the world to waste like he did.
Court: No, Kris. I don’t know. So if you have a point, can you get to it?
He shrugs his shoulders.
Kris: That’s your problem… and it has been your problem since you swung at me and broke your hand.
I didn’t need to hear any of this, and it wasn’t going to be productive. This is why I preferred the openly hostile Kris.
Court: Alright then, let me just go back in time and fix that.
He shook his head as I pushed past him. I thought that he would just let me leave, but he put a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t even stop to think about what I was doing. I grabbed him by the wrist and wrenched it an awkward direction, preventing him from using his entire arm. He didn’t try and fight back. Instead, he looked down at my hand with a smile on his face.
Kris: See how that works? That is what I figured out.
His smile widens, and I let go of his hand. I wasn’t following and all of this seemed a little weird. Almost like he was trying to provoke me into defending myself.
Court: See how what works?
He takes a quick step closer to me and raises his arm like he is going to clothesline me to the ground. Without thought, I bent backwards under the arm but when he turned back to face me he was still smiling.
Kris: Come at me...
He held out his hand to me and waved me forward. Having had enough of this game, I didn’t need any reason to take him up on the offer. I tried to fake with my right hand and land a left but he easily trapped my arm to his side and then flipped me off of my feet with a hip toss. Instead of letting me hit the concrete floor though, he slowed my momentum and dropped me safely.
Court: I don’t know what this is supposed to prove...
Without warning, he raised his shoe and moved to bring it down into my chest. It felt like my body moved on it’s own. I rolled onto my side, and used my right forearm to shove his leg off target as it came down. He struck nothing but the floor where I used to be, but then wobbled off balance. I used my newfound freedom to roll up into a ball and spin my legs towards him before kicking him square in the backside and send him careening into some mats stacked along the hallway wall. Instead of being upset though, he was still laughing.
Kris: I still don’t see how you aren’t getting it...
...but I had, and his words finally made sense. Since the moment that I swung at him and broke my hand, I hadn’t ever stopped swinging. The problem was, he was able to easily shake off all of those attacks. I was firing blind and angry. It was predictable, and untrained. On the other hand, the moment he tried to attack me and I was moving on instinct, I had him beaten.
Court: I didn’t train to fight like you. I trained to fight like Mikah. You’re aggressive and reckless. She is calculated, and defensive….
As he picks himself up, he claps his hands a few times slowly.
Kris: You haven’t been using all of the things you’ve learned because you’ve been too pissed off to fight smart. You keep attacking, trying to force what you want to happen. When it doesn’t you just get more angry. The bigger the hole, the faster you’re digging it. Still, the only way you’re going is down. You have to get back to being you.
It was so simple, and made entirely too much sense to ignore. Everything about the last few years started running through my mind. Every misstep and failure felt so easily avoidable and I didn’t even see it for all this time. All that time fighting in isolation was just making my problems worse. If I wanted to get out of the hole, I needed to make changes. Oddly enough, I knew right where to start.
Court: I have to go...
Again, there was no shock of surprise on his face. The only thing that seemed off was that he wasn’t gloating about having been the one to figure it out.
Kris: To go see Ruby, or get back in the ring?
I stood up, but stopped immediately. How did he know about Ruby? He had been avoiding everyone and pretending to be gone for a while already. There’s no way that Coby knew, so that was out. Mikah didn’t care. I guess I had to chalk that up to his miracle nap as well.
Court: One feels a whole lot more important than the other, doesn’t it?
He nods, but I didn’t expect him to get it. Not really.
Kris: Yeah, and the gym will be here when you get back.
Again with the surprises. Maybe Kris having his head out of his ass wasn’t going to be the worst thing ever. He had already solved one of my problems for me, and I was well on my way to filling in that hole I had been digging.
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>I am soooooo fucking tired of losing.
I know that you people have to be tired of seeing it as well. I mean, back at the beginning I bet it was entertaining. I get that I can be a little intense, and borderline annoying, so watching me get knocked down a few pegs had to make a lot of people feel really good about themselves. I mean, Jessie Salco even got a real kick out of it. However, I feel like even those that were excited to see me losing at the start have lost interest now. This has gone on too long. It’s not funny anymore. The people that used to be laughing are starting to give me pity pep talks. I have gone from one of the fastest rising stars in this company, to being someone to feel sorry for.
If I’m honest though, this isn’t something new, and it hasn’t even just been inside the Sin City ring. Ever since I got injured a few years ago, I have noticed that something has been different. Maybe I was just kidding myself when I forced myself to get back into the ring. I used to think that I was ready and I had it together, but looking back it had to have been more luck than anything else. I’m not saying that Fenris carried me through Blast from the Past a few years ago, but there were definite cracks in my technique. They were just easy to overlook because I was successful. We were winning, so the weaknesses didn’t matter. Then I got hurt. Then I got hurt again. And again. Not just inside the ring, but outside of it. I was injured, but more than that I was a broken and lonely person. I turned all my focus to the inside, and forced myself to claw my way back into this business. I went against the advice of doctors, and that likely dragged out my return even further. I pushed away friends, family, and everything that comes with it, because the only thing that I want was to walk down an aisle in front of thousands of people again. Nothing else mattered but getting back. Now that I am back, have been back, and can’t get it right, I can’t help but feel like it is all my fault.
Maybe I should have been more careful. Maybe there was more that I could have worked on back then without the inflated ego I was carrying around. Maybe if my personal life hadn’t been so isolating, I would have had the support to make better decisions for myself. There are hundreds of things that I could have done differently. There are dozens of reasons why I have consistently failed since my big return. I came back as a shell of the woman that I was the first time around, and I am starting to see that I wasn’t so perfect back then either. For a long time I have been taking the same approach as always, and trying to force things to change through brute force of will.
Well... I’m done with that.
I accept that I am a monster of my own making, and I have been working to dig myself out of the hole that I have created. I am the one that chose isolation. I am the one that forced myself down the hardest path back. I refused help, because I wanted to do things on my own. I didn’t want anyone else taking credit for my successes, so I have to take responsibility for all of my failures. And yes, I know that lately there have been a lot of them in the ring.
The problem is, my failures have an impact on others. For months, everyone from Jet City has had to hear people discount us because of my performances. I have reflected negatively on them whether they have anything to do with me at all. The Black Sheep have had to deal with the same problem. I am the lone weak point in an otherwise dominant team. All three of the others have successfully defended a championship since our return. Everyone but me, and it is hard to look past that. Even worse, students like Ruby, who I didn’t want to give any credit to at first, and Kyle Kavanaugh, have passed me up even though I had a head start on them. Ruby is in the Blast from the Past finals as a rookie, just as I was. Kyle showed up to Underground as Cyan and held a championship for a few months.
I come from a successful gym. I am surrounded by dominant teammates. Yet, we have all seen how I have failed to live up to all of that. That is going to change at Blaze of Glory.
For the first time in a very long time, I have found the confidence that I used to have in the ring. The last few months may not have been successful for me, but there was at least one positive inside that ring. After a few years away, I needed the extra conditioning, and despite the fact that I haven’t come out on top in a match lately, at least I know that I can keep up with the Bombshells on this roster. That is a step in the right direction. The rest is all mental, and over the last few days, I have been feeling a little bit more like myself because of one of the finalists in this year’s Blast from the Past tournament.
See, I have a real partner that I have to impress now. I have people that are depending on me that I am done pushing away. I am ready for the challenges of this business physically, and for the first time in a long time I’m mentally prepared to do what needs to be done in order to come out on top. I know that I faced Bella Madison just a few short weeks ago, and she made short work of me. That’s not going to be how things shake out this time around.
It’s not Bella’s fault. She has been on one hell of a roll since coming back. She has been a champion in this company, which I haven’t quite pulled off yet. I think that the two of us probably both have a bright future ahead of us here, but this time I have something that I need to prove. I have this immense weight pushing down on me that I desperately want to push off my back. I need this win, but more importantly, I can see this win. I have been in the ring with Bella, and I can see the things that I did wrong. I know that I can get things turned around, and then I’m going to start working my way backwards through the list of losses.
Court Pierce used to be a name to be afraid of in the Bombshell locker room.
It’s time to remind people why that was.
To steal a phrase from a friend, THAT’S WHAT’S UP!
