Gawd! I don't mean to compare myself to Christ. In no way, actually, do I ever want to be compared to a spiritual body. Please, keep all your strange religious menageries, I want no part of them.
Instead I have doggies and derby love, and they are both a huge part of my most recent metamorphosis. Things have changed, at the very least, transitioned. For the first time in all my 22 years, I am having to do more than rationalize by external logic why I am doing what I am doing. Let me begin, well I already have begun, but anyway, let me proclaim, rather, that playing derby is the first real thing I have chosen to do because it makes sense to me and only me. No higher power, no societal standards, no emotional forces. Just me and my own logic.
So, as I wrote about earlier, I broke my ankle and without derby I realized that I was doing everything else in my life for no "real" reason. I'm not talking about the "real" reasons you imagine. Instead, I'm talk about genuine motivation that comes from the self and nothing else. It's not because you have to get a college education, it's not because you have to pay your rent, it's not because it's your responsibility as a friend, a girlfriend, a sister, a daughter, a "high-functioning" adult. It's because, well heck, you don't even have to say the reason. No need to justify it to anybody else except yourself. So, I changed and even cut all the things out of my life that I felt compelled to rationalize and explain to others.
I got a new job, I ended a broken, no not just broken but rancid, relationship; I moved; I stopped sleeping, sleep never made sense to me anyway. The last stronghold, though, is school. For 18 years I have gotten straight A's and plugged through school because I had to, that's just what you're supposed to do, right? Now that I am in a graduate program, this logic is broken. I love my job and my career field and getting my masters is certainly a goal of mine, but why? Why is a it a goal? Not what will it allow me to do in the future...but why is it important to me, and why is it important to me now? I haven't discovered an answer to this pickle just quite yet.
I do know that I'll never have a mind-numbingly boring job again. I do know that I'll never drive around the block not wanting to go inside my own home again. I do know that I'll never stay in a relationship again just because it makes me feel "normal" or even worse "needed." Fuck being normal, fuck living by other people's standards. Trying to live by other people's standards is not genuine, it's cowardice. Live by your own standards, value shit because YOU value it. Own your life and how you live it.
So anyways, doggies and derby love...throughout this time of transition, I have been met with open and supporting arms from my derby family and their doggies! Never could I have imagined that by being hospitable and welcoming me into their homes, hearts, and letting me bond with their children, furry or not, could my derby family have inspired such internal motivation, such genuine change and strides towards authenticity. Thank you Highway and all the phenomenal women I skate with on TVR, you have no idea how you and how derby has effected me, no, better yet, how you have encouraged and fostered personal change.
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