ever since i was a little kid, i always wanted to be a tough girl. my mom made me stop watching the powerpuff girls as a kid because i was punching my peers too much. as a pre-teen, my hero was joan jett. as i grew, i started playing lots of violent video games with female protagonists and i relished the slash of their swords as much as the cut of their jib. i’m also pretty sure that i started smoking in an attempt to look tougher (jury’s still out on how well that worked). i always looked at tough girls with the classic bisexual one-two punch of desperately wanting to be them & desperately wanting to be with them, though unfortunately i am usually too intimidated by beautiful tough women to approach them. i have gotten lucky on this front only a few times.
but i am not tough, at least not in the way i wanted to be. i’m a sensitive, romantic, and sometimes whiny cancer with abandonment issues. i care a lot about what people think and my feelings get hurt extremely easily. i always hoped that people mistook my dark sense of humour, my bravado, my sailor mouth, my preference for “masculine” pastimes as tough cool girl stuff. wrestling brings all my insecurity around being tough enough to the surface. i can get knocked around in the ring til i’m bruised all over and just keep going (being stubborn is one part of tough girl stuff that i’ve mastered) but the slightest indication that i am in some way failing or not living up to expectations and i just collapse inside and i still don’t know why.
pro wrestling training was, is, a way for me to feel tough—to persevere outside of my comfort zone. COVID happened less than a year after i graduated from college, which is not traditionally a time of great confidence or self-knowledge. i stayed at the university i went to, working as a teaching assistant while my friends went off to travel or get good jobs or masters degrees or even to have babies. i stayed in the same apartment i’ve lived in for four years. my life during COVID was largely the same as it had been before and i needed for something to be different, to show me that i was that person i wanted to be, to show me i was “tough enough”.
right now i’m really struggling with bringing out my inner wrestler. i know she’s in there, but fuck is she ever lying dormant right now. my coach says that every person who wants to wrestle has that chip on their shoulder, that little bit of anger, that fight, that toughness. it’s still in me, but after a really difficult and busy september wherein i hardly went to training or the gym, it’s waned. i want my inner tough girl back and i want to carry myself through my training with confidence and bravery.
a big part of developing a professional wrestling persona/gimmick is bringing out what makes you you, what distinguishes you as a wrestler. it’s you PLUS, not a separate persona entirely. it has to be in you for it to work. here’s hoping that the tough-talking swaggering braggarty chick that i always wanted to be still lives inside me…i think she does.
best wishes and much love from your powerbomb princess xxx