rant and whine

Yes, I'm a derby girl and yes, I'm throwing myself a pity party. Mostly because if I don't get this out of my system I am going to freak out and lose it at practice with a full scale anxiety attack that I don't really need right now. Some of my teammates definitely have bigger shit that my issues going on in their lives and they don't need my shit to show up at practice if they can check their shit at the door too.

Wednesday night, 2/23, we jammed through most of practice and I felt as though my performance was mediocre at best. I dwelled on this more than I should have until Saturday, 2/26, when we had practice that morning and our scrimmage that night. I was doing OK at practice, feeling good, almost able to forget Wed. night when our player-coach Gen. G'Injure suggested we pop up the timer and do a relay. There were five of us and we each had to do five laps. I've been skating for several months and the last time I tried my 25/5 I was only short by four laps so I thought I would be OK doing 5/1. It took me something like a minute and a half to make those 5 little laps. We still completed it in less than the 5 minutes on the timer, but it certainly wasn't due to my skating...so the others were goofing off and cheering and there I was kneeling in the center trying not to have an anxiety attack. I got up to take a lap with them because I didn't want to show that weakness and was able to kind of shove it back for a few minutes.

On the drive home it came back and after two anti-anxiety meds, getting ready for the scrimmage, and the drive out I wasn't much better. Skating a few laps helped for a bit, but once the bout started I turned into such a bundle of nerves that I had to force myself to put my water bottle down before I chugged it out nervousness. Even writing about this makes me anxious. So in front of my husband, father in law, two derby leagues, and a host of other people I skated all of 6 jams and in one I got knocked over simply because I lost my focus. I felt like my hits were weak, my endurance was poor, and overall that I did very poorly and could have and should have done much better. I know now that I really need to buckle down and start training hard to get this together and maybe make a decent derby player, but I'm terrified that all the hard work in the world won't help me get better....not feelin' the love today...*sigh* Anxiety is not my friend.

Dixie von D.