The Pursuit of Derbyness: 72 Hours Later

There’s something about derby that skews my perception of reality in favor of the extreme. Every time I walk into the rink I feel like I’m waging an epic battle in which we mere humans don our armor and morph into gladiators - larger than life and hungry for war. Yet the fall that screwed up my PCL was not epic. There were no screaming crowds or brawling foes. I couldn’t even really tell you what happened. I fell, and when I stood up something wasn’t right. I removed my skates and walked off the floor without fanfare.

As I watched the remainder of practice in increasing pain, my world began to fall down around my ankles and a thought occurred to me. For all these months of skating and drilling and scrimmaging it’s been as if I have not yet earned the right to call myself a player. I’m not on a team. The real goal remains ahead. It’s so easy to dismiss the events and successes that have already come to pass because of that and yet I’ve really been playing derby all along. Nothing drives that point home more than an ice pack coupled with a sense of impending doom.

When I sat at my desk the following Monday, having seen a doctor but not received a firm diagnosis or plan of recovery, a storm of questions began to gather and force their way into my consciousness. I don’t know how long I’m going to be off skates. What if they forget me? I finally managed to break the four minute barrier for my 25 lap time. How long before I’ll be able to do it again? Will people see me differently than they did before? As weaker? Less reliable? I was waiting, hoping and wishing for my better nature to kick in and the longer I sat there stewing, the more dire my situation seemed.

When I started skating last summer and felt the lifting of the depression that had plagued me for months, I pledged that I would do anything to prevent those slow dark tendrils of despair from creeping back into my life. I used to wish that depression would manifest itself as a physical being so that I could turn and confront it in a singular moment of strength. “YOU. SHALL. NOT. PASS.” But such a moment never arrives. Instead the days and weeks go marching into an ever darkening gloom until the day comes that I’m crawling slowly across the floor because at least it feels different than lying in bed; and my ability to help myself is so far gone that it’s all I can do to keep from screaming like a banshee at all the normal people who are happily going about their everyday business.

Derby has helped me with the little battles that lead that giant nothingness through exercise and companionship. The loss of mobility coupled with less time on skates with friends was a major blow not just to my odds of making a team during the next draft but to so many other areas of my life as well. A plan to deal with it could not wait for the sense of urgency caused by the accident to fade or the doctors to make up their mind about what I was going to do about it.

And then it came to me. A solution so simple and so very much a part of my personality that I couldn’t believe it didn’t occur to me sooner. I always want to be the best. If I’m going to be an injured fresh meat skater, then I’m going to be awesome at it. How? Well, we have a formidable strategist in our league. I’ve heard that she developed that skill in part because she injured her knee last season and chose to spend the resulting free time reading the rulebook, so I brushed mine off as well. My right thigh is a full inch and a quarter smaller than my injured left. Now seems like a good time to address that asymmetry. When the PT inevitably comes, I have every intention of being the very best patient possible through every one of those excruciatingly boring little exercises. I know that intention doesn’t always get you very far, but you sure as hell won’t go anywhere without it.

At the end of the day it’s not an epic battle of good and evil. These things happen and I’ve marveled in the past at other skaters whizzing by when it seems like just yesterday that they were sidelined with crutches. Derby continues on just as things do in every other facet of life. I made it through the first 72 hours. I can only get stronger from here.