derby
Here is a cheesy little ditty about derby:
In high school I had this bit about punching. I remember explaining to anyone who would listen how I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but I wanted to send a fist as hard as I could. At a person. It just felt pointless know that, even so, I simply wasn’t going to get myself into a punch worthy situation. That wasn’t me.
Despite my use of this as a conversation starter and the flippant manner in which I delivered my complaint, this feeling would come up often. At that age where so much feels desperately necessary but hopelessly out of reach, I felt untethered and limited, my body wanting more responsibility than it was given. I don’t think that I’m unique; I think we all want to hit or kick, even bite, sometimes. I was hyper but quiet, “intense”, trying to hide it by being nice. Running or talking didn’t feel like enough: I also wanted to hit hard. To fight.
I never got a punching bag and I packed that unruly and illogical feeling tight, punching it down to a tiny, manageable little ball. And I let my feelings out in bursts and flashes of words. And, honestly, I kind of forgot that I never got to show anger with muscle, skin, and bone. That ball was buried deep, maybe for good.
Derby feels so real to me because of the way that I shove through life. Smacking into walls, Dawn and I said. I actually enjoy a shifting struggle. I see a wall and I beeline towards it. Hips first, head on into other people. It often feels like if I want to live, there is no other way.
And I’m tangled up and pushing against people who also need to use themselves in this way, who have their own flurries of anger or energy seeking direction, some buried for longer, maybe deeper, than my own.
The second you break through it’s just back around, into that wall one more time. What else to do, anyway? Faces, backs, shoulders. Blocking is just as futile. Hold them off for a second, two, maybe five. Find a teammate for support and make a wall, trying to find strength again and again until they punch through. That first moment of breaking through the pack is joy.
And all of a sudden, I am encouraged not to hold back. I don’t make a fist and swing it, instead I throw my whole body into other people and push, hard. I have to fight just to have space, purchase, myself. It’s one force against another, pushing and pushing back, the object not a limb or a ball but ourselves, our whole selves. I am there, my body the object, my body on the line. Where else to be, anyway? It holds fast or it doesn’t. It breaks through or it leaps into the resistance, flailing, pushing, waking something that I always knew I needed but forgot I ever wanted. Fighting with my body. All, really, that I am.