My derby story

So far I haven't written anything terribly personal on this blog, mostly because I'm pretty certain you aren't here to read about what I had for lunch today, but I feel compelled to explain why I am doing this whole thing and why I have the passion for derby that I do.

Sometime in mid 2010 I found out about a local roller derby league and immediately wanted to get involved. I looked up information about clinics and gear, but the time wasn't right and I didn't really pursue it.

At the end of November I started feeling strange. I was exhausted, emotional, and I just felt not normal. One Saturday morning I was driving and listening to a story on NPR about a woman who rescues dogs from Afghanistan and started bawling. Well, that made a light bulb come on in my head and lo-and-behold I found out I was pregnant.

I remember that when I told my boyfriend, I cried as if I were telling him it was terminal cancer. This was not my plan. I had no intentions of even having children, but abortion wasn't an option. After a while I started getting used to the idea, after all what choice did I have? Our family found a bigger house, started buying little baby things, and told our friends and family.

Then at the end of the year I started feeling like something wasn't right. A bad day at the emergency room confirmed that I had lost the baby. It was such a strange feeling because I hadn't even wanted this child and now I was devastated. I'm not typically a very emotional person, in fact my girlfriend says I have "man emotions," but this was one of the toughest things I had ever dealt with.

Two weeks before I found out I was pregnant, my best friend at work also found out she was pregnant. In addition to that, another woman in our office (of 6 women) was pregnant. Then a few months later, another one. For months after I lost the baby it was all around me for 8 hours a day - pregnant women, talk about baby showers, names, everything. The first time my co-worker brought her baby in, I had to leave so I didn't cry at work. I relied a lot on online communities and other women who had gone through the same thing, but I started to become obsessive and knew I needed to find some other focus.

In March derby drifted back into my peripheral and I knew I needed to do it. I went back to the links I had looked at so many months ago and found the next open clinic with a local league. I ordered gear (which arrived 2 whole days before the clinic) and started this crazy derby journey.

I have barely been playing roller derby for a year, but it has already changed my life in so many ways. I think that somewhere along the line I had forgotten how to be selfish when it came to taking care of my own needs and derby has given that back to me. It's given me back a drive that I hadn't had in a long time and has been a catalyst for a lot of positive changes in my life.

I know I have a limited amount of time before roller derby doesn't make sense in my life anymore, but while it's here I'm going to make the most of it.