The Only Person Who Can Beat You Is You
And oh how good at that I am.
Match day again. I got pinned twice, once in the first period and the other 18 seconds into the second period after spending half of the first period on my back.
It’s not like I don’t know why though. It wasn’t even all of my fault. I’ve beaten the second guy before, believe it or not it was my singlet.
I tried to tell myself it was my singlet too, I mean I was wearing the one I bought for the NAGA, the one with the really cool Tiger design on it which made me self-concious and nervous because I thought I looked cockey wearing it. Plus I wasn’t wearing any underarmour underneath, my bare skin was exposed and usually I wear underarmour in practice. I mean I did great during my warmup match because I had a Tshirt on, then when tshirt came off, I realized I had a subcouncious fear of getting mat burn (??). Then again, I have a subconcious fear of just about everything, so it’s not too suprising.
This was why too, I knew this was why, but still I couldn’t bring myself to not blame myself. Afterwards, the coach called us all together and told us not to worry if we lost 8-0 or got pinned, the only person who can defeat us is ourselves. If we walk off the mat knowing that we gave it our all, we’re not beaten.
But I was beaten because I beat myself. I can’t beat up other’s so I beat up myself. When coach say’s not to worry, that its not life or death…what do you think I start thinking about?
I get disappointed easily, I went into the girls lockerroom and (I admit) cried. I kept getting flashbacks of Coach Brogden and the Warren Wrestlers making jokes and pushing me around because I wasn’t allowed to push back. I’m never allowed to push back, I’ll get kicked off the team if I push back, and I still feel like Coach Brogden is standing outside the Cerritos Wrestling room waiting for me to screw up like he was waiting in high school. I stick out, everyone see’s my actions. Now I’ve convinced myself that even if I were allowed to push back, I couldn’t.
“You’re just not strong enough, not tough enough, not good enough, you never will be.”
These are my words. I hear them constantly from myself. There are times where I hate everything about me, and the only time it seems to go away is when I’m doing good, or when I’m winning, or improving. And even then, the only reward is silence, when I do bad, the consequence is loud screaming in my head telling me I’m a screwup. Never “Nicole you did a good job today,” I can’t bring myself to say that to me.
I hate that the opinions of people saying I can’t do it matter more than my own opinions. I guess its that I doubt myself more than I doubt other people. When you doubt other people, you’re looking for a fight, when you doubt yourself, it’s an easy victory…cut off your nose to spite your face, because you won’t fight back. I’m a looser and I forgot what positive was.
Why couldn’t I just brush it off? I knew it was the singlet. I mean no, I wasn’t about to beat Sean, but I knew I wouldn’t have frozen up like that if my body weren’t subcounciously afraid of getting burned all the way up to the elbows. I shot anyway, I wrestled anyway, I didn’t know I was afraid of that. I would have shot a lot better if my body would have known it was protected. It’s nobody’s fault for not wanting to get hurt, that’s just normal. I’m just not trained.
But no matter what I say, it all feels like an excuse. I lost, period. There’s no justifying anything I do because there’s no such thing as an excuse. If I came late to practice in High School by one minute because my lockerroom was clear acrossed campus from the wrestling room as opposed to the boy’s lockerroom which was right next to it, we were still sprawling. Anything I did wrong, everyone was sprawling. It got to the point where I stopped trying to stop, I knew it would be all my fault anyway and we’d all still be doing sprawls regardless. Learned helplessness I believe is the term.
So eventually everything that happened and everytime coach would ask me for an explanation, I’d just hang my head and appologize and go in my corner to start sprawling either alone or with the team. Explanations are excuses.
I still feel like I’m making excuses. I’m a looser.
Why am I still intimidated by Coach Garriot though? It’s not like he’s Brogden, Brogden doesn’t exist anymore! He’s out of my life! Why can’t I let go? Coach Garriot doesn’t mark us absent if we don’t say “here SIR” during role call. Coach Garriot only asks that we respectfully call him “Coach,” and most of the guys still only call him “Garriot,” and he still answers. It’s not like Coach Garriot laughs at our own inovations of moves, he encourages them. When Coach Garriot says “Aight Boys,” he doesn’t sound a thing like Brogden.
I would seldom look at Coach if he walked by for the first few weeks of practice, and I only spoke if absolutely necesarry. When I did speak to him, it was always ” ’scuseme sir…” “yes sir,” “thank you sir,” even though he always talks with a smile. It’s getting a lot better because of the little things this coach does that make me relax around him.
For instance, I had a by the first round, and coach told me “you got a by this time kid okay?” I dunno, something about the way he called me kid made me relax. It’s probably me being girly and reading into things, but it just kinda put me at ease.
Other things like when I improved my school loop time from 13:51 to 12:24, he told me good job. That sounds stupid, but Brogden never told me good job about anything, he only berrated boys who got beat by me.
Hopefully I’ll relax as season goes on, hopefully I’ll learn to stop being so negative and beating myself up so much, and hopefully I’ll do better next friday.
