A post Post-"The Big One"

photo by Jed Soane

For clarification: this is completely and utterly my opinion and not the opinion of anyone else, least of all of the League as a whole. And it’s the only time I’m going to whinge, I just need to get it all off my chest because I am exhausted and suffering an extreme case of The Meh. Also, today the pain in my body has set in and I am aching horribly. Right, so, I want to write something super awesome and positive but mostly I am feeling absolutely GUTTED that we didn’t win. We worked so so hard before this bout and were down two players (one due to pregnancy, another due to LAMENESS). The final score reflects how close it was and how hard we worked towards the end of the bout – 126–112 (to Smash Malice). We did over take them by one point during the second period and there was much rejoicing, but I think we probably rejoiced waaaay too soon. They made up the ground in the final couple of jams and we just couldn’t hold them off despite the amount of penalties that they were getting. Apparently the crowd had an awesome time, which is fab. It’s good to have a good time! I know that I personally played as well as I have ever played, I led a jam which was pretty awesome as that’s the first time I’ve done that in a bout, and I got some fucking awesome hits in too. I wish that I had more time on the rink but to be honest, that’s how I always end up feeling and I think it’s less to do with how much I’m on the bench and more to do with a weird perspective on time that I get during the night – everything is long and compressed at the same time and I tend to get chronologically dyslexic during the bout. I keep reminding myself that it’s only been about a year since the ankle break; and that this is my first competitive season; and that there will always be next year; and that I am improving and will continue to improve. I had yesterday off because I was Feeling Down About Things… I’m getting over reading stuff about how awesome Malice is, not because those girls are not awesome (let it be said – THEY ARE GREAT) but because it’s an unexpected side effect of playing in a spectator sport that it’s surprisingly upsetting when the crowd doesn’t like you as much as the other team. I keep reading stuff about the bout where people are like “wow Malice totally slammed them because they rule and Brutal Pageant suck!” and it makes me feel even worse. Did I mention that I cried when we lost? I sobbed sweatily in my boyfriend’s arms. Apparently someone took a photo of me crying like a big lame-o but I haven’t seen it so hopefully it was deemed “inappropriate”. (FYI, I’m hoping like hell that it wasn’t the not winning that made me feel so awful because that means that I’ve become some kind of crazy competitive freak and I’ve never been like that before, and because it kind of defeats the whole Derby Love thing). Also I found out yesterday, while lying in bed and feeling like shit, that I didn’t get what I thought was essentially My Dream Job. CRAAAAAAAAAAAP. And more time lurking around Here. Next bout is the interleague against the Pirates on the 5th of December and I’m not skating in it (because I wanted to do other things with my time other than train). So, totally didn’t go out in a blaze of glory for this season. I went out in unmemorable puff of failure. Gah. NOTE: As I was looking for photos for this post I went through a whole bunch and actually felt a little bit better, like as in, felt the Love again. So it looks as though the disappointment will fade with time*sigh of drama*.