011: Finish Lines

Two Xanax to take the edge off and he had that bitter taste in the back of his throat like he'd been chewing aspirin. The plane was stuck on the tarmac, takeoff delayed due to the wind and the sideways blowing snow and he heard whispers of 'engine trouble' as he was getting off. He should have been four hours on his way to London by now. Instead, he was sitting in the lounge at O'Hare with his phone plugged into a port, watching the snow swirl across the concrete, questioning why he was even trying to get to London when he wasn't booked for the damned event. He should have been at home in Vegas. He should have been with his family and instead he was sitting here, burning both ends of the candle, wondering when he was going to get there – time zone math was always beyond him, more frustrating than anything else and he wished Hannah was here. She always did that for him, had this handy little app on her phone and everything. He wanted to call her now, if only just to hear her voice but if the sun was just edging over the horizon here, it was going to be too early back home.

She needed her rest. The baby was due in ten days and she'd been so uncomfortable the last week or so. He hated seeing her like that, hated feeling so helpless when he couldn't do anything to shoulder that burden. He'd pushed it down, let it mingle with the righteous fury of the Kanye West moment. If he'd spent more, he wouldn't have been grounded here and it wasn't as though money was an issue. He still had a lot of savings banked, still had money coming in from the sponsorship deal with Brutal Apparel. He'd just opted to repeat patterns because the connecting flight had been cheaper. Last minute tickets on an economy-class flight and he hadn't even looked at the name of the hotel when he'd booked it – he wasn't going to be there long enough for it to matter much – the website at least forced him to make the right choices. Lodging. Transportation. It remembered his preferences and he was a creature of habit. The routines kept him from getting anxious, from unraveling before he made it to the arena. Keeping it simple meant he could save all that mental energy for the inevitable interaction with the public. The hotel's name started with R, it had at least three stars. He wasn't picky. Modern conveniences to keep someone like him functioning. He'd scrolled down, found the first one under a thousand dollars. A bed and four walls were enough, if he even managed to get sleep once he was there. The way the anxiety was still clawing at his insides, he doubted it.

The wind howled and he could feel the glass beside him shuddering. Closing his eyes didn't make it any better, almost as if the vibration was coming from inside him, like he'd become some sort of goddamned tuning fork. Mentally, he started to sift through the fact, asserting the truths as if layering on his own personal armor. He still had the Anarchy Championship – he still mattered in some small way, even though the company landscape seemed to be changing daily. Technically, he still held the Olympus Zeus Championship too, not that it would ever be defended again. He opened his eyes, staring down at his discolored knuckles, at the scar tissue that never really seemed to heal. His jaw clicked as he tried and failed to stifle a yawn, catching sight of his ghostly reflection in the glass. Dark circles under his eyes looked like bruises, like foreshadowing and he could taste blood from the tear on the backside of his bottom lip that never really seemed to heal up the way it should. He looked haggard, strung-out and defeated with those haunted eyes like two piss-holes in a snowbank.


I know I've said a lot of contradictory things over the course of my career. Spent a couple years pussyfooting around the truth, denying that I wanted to end up on the top of the heap. I've probably said this before, but I need to repeat it. Up to the point in my career where I faced Aornis Black in Full Throttle, my goal was to stay alive. That wasn't just wrestling.

No.

It was everything. It was the rebellion hardwired into my DNA and even though I was so goddamned suicidal it wasn't even funny, I never aspired to much more than drawing another breath, than getting up one last time after getting knocked down. My entire existence was formed around that tenet. That's why I went to The Circuit and fought in an environment that could have killed me every single time I stepped into that fight circle. I excelled there. Sixteen wins, six losses and every time I walked out of that warehouse under my own power, I considered it a major victory because the goal was only to stay alive. I wanted that place to go on forever and when it got busted up by the feds, I mourned its passing like I'd lost a family member. I tried to find a place like that, one filled with bloodthirsty animals – I claimed I wanted to test myself, to see if I could still wrestle under hot lights with cameras rolling. I shunned the spotlight. When I said I didn't care about gold or accolades it was because of that simple reason: they did nothing to further that one single goal that had shaped my life. I wanted to outlast because that was my only form of revenge. I was an almost-corpse. I spent years going through motions, pretending to be normal.

I lied to myself. I lied to those around me.

I lied to the bookers.

I thought there would never be another thing to animate me. I thought I was dead, and Hannah was going to have to bury me and then, everything changed in the blink of an eye. A mistake became a blessing and I realized I was beyond stupid, so very wrong about everything that mattered. Of course, I didn't see it then.

Survival had always been so much more than an instinct. It was an integral part of my life. It was like some misunderstood mantra that I just kept repeating, throwing it out there when it was convenient to remind the frauds that they didn't really have the 'hard knock life' they thought they did. Deep in my heart, I believed that was the only truth in the world and I'd spent the last twenty-odd years fooling myself in ways you couldn't begin to imagine.

I kept getting up after every fall, after the blows finally stopped raining down. I always lied to myself and Hannah that we were safe. We weren't and it went in cycles of lies and defeat that was never on my terms. Sitting here right now, speaking these words with the hopes that saying them will help me to cope, my head is full of that childhood street and the sound of the cicadas in the trees. It's full of the smell of her strawberry shampoo and the warmth of her embrace when everything else was breaking around me. For every horrible night, for every fire that was lit that I wasn't in control of, for every moment that was wasted, those memories will always remain with me.

The limelight kept calling, kept pulling me in like a doomed moth and all I could see was Icarus and the wax wings – I could smell burning and it never occurred to me that maybe I had to set it ablaze to truly become what I was meant to be. I let them bleed me a million times over and I thought that was the end of it because they stopped coming after me with sharp objects. They took me in with open arms and I thought I'd finally found my way through. I thought I'd made it, turned a nobody into a somebody – I finally earned the right to call myself a good guy, to bask in their cheers and let myself feel something at the sound. It was pride, I realize that now. It was poisonous and vile, and I had to strike a match to purge it all. Being a phoenix is overrated. Smoke inhalation is for the birds, pun intended.

I forgot. I couldn't see the forest for the trees and then I came crashing down with the worst kind of reality check. I never felt betrayed either. No. I expected the other shoe to drop.

I expected more of myself.

I know the truth now. I found it among the lies.

"What'm I doin'?" He muttered, shaking his head, feeling a strange sort of déjà vu that wasn't just because he was in Chicago with a battered Cubs hat on his head. Hannah would have seen some sort of irony in the layover. He thought it was better to have that break than to be stuck in a tin can for an entire day, nonstop flight. Maybe one more blow to the head and he'd forget the rest of the shit, forget all about the days following the collapse of Olympus and the crumbling of his relationship with Claire. The suicidal bullshit, the casual disregard for his own well-being had so much to do with it – hindsight had driven that truth home. She didn't understand, couldn't grasp why he didn't evolve past that need for the damage. These days, he wanted – needed – to purge it all and forget. The past belonged dead and buried, New York added to the list of states he didn't care for anymore. Virginia was there, too.

He couldn't keep from thinking about it, dwelling on all the dumbfuck mistakes he'd made. He'd dropped the ball spectacularly in international waters, dropped the championship to Zepp. Maybe it was for the best. It had started to feel more like a security blanket than anything else. HE didn't feel like their savior anymore. He'd forgotten completely why he had in the first place, as if Dagvald Riddick had never gotten under his skin. As if he'd never taken on the role of hero, driving the monster from their midst. In the light of day, this misplaced angst and revenge scenario made less sense – what was the point of crashing the party? They'd given him the time off and here he was, shitting all over that blessing.

Sighing, he moved to his feet, picking up the overnight bag that contained his gear and a single change of clothes. He'd left the Anarchy belt at home and its absence now felt strange. He felt like time had slipped backwards, that he was reliving that moment he'd come home to Chicago from Vegas and told Hannah that he needed time away. He almost expected to see her waiting there, holding a squirming toddler. He blinked and reality reasserted itself, the wind and sleet driving against the windows, chittering like alien voices as he tried to walk off the stiffness. He couldn't get on that flight, no matter when it left. It wasn't a matter of arriving too late to do what he'd planned to – something wasn't right. Lashing out at Kintaru was more of the same destructive behavior that had had him chasing Finn Whelan. He knew it was futile. Some people would never respect him. He couldn't change that, as much as he couldn't stand the thought of it.

The closer he got to the ticket counter, the more dread he felt. All the outgoing flights were showing either CANCELLED or DELAYED. He could feel the tension in the air, feel the frustration boiling up. He was going to be stuck here for the time being, trapped in the worst kind of limbo imaginable.

He pulled out his phone, sending a quick text.

Change of plans. Flights out of Chi are grounded for shit weather. I'm gonna come home. Text you when I know more.


I know now that I was not destined to burn out or fade away. I was meant for something more. I don't want to un-see this truth. Don't want to kill this sudden clarity and maybe it's just sleep-deprivation talking but right now it all makes so much sense that I want to crow from the rooftops. I want to dance like nobody's watching, to terribly misuse a phrase. 

I'm through with living between moments without any sort of inspiration. I wasted too much time living day to day, drifting from one wasted motion to another. I'd done it so many times I'd forgotten how to stop. And then I heard that pure, perfect sound. Covered in blood, wishing for death to save me from my own inadequacies, I finally felt it inside me. It burned. It consumed me and now I wonder how I went so long living in a land of make-believe. The crushing pain when I realized the emptiness of my life should have destroyed me.

I thought there was nothing more to see. I was so wrong and it took losing everything I thought mattered to drive that home. Family is everything. This glory, this fame, this endless song and dance is fleeting and so damned ephemeral – it's never going to last. Even the best get forgotten eventually.

I know there's something out there that makes me feel joy down to the bottom of my guts – yeah, there's something that makes me rip the blinders off my eyes and see it. I know that if I keep moving, I stand a chance. Fight mindset still works: keep moving, keep pushing forward. No wasted motions. I can still control the moment, still keep the last spoil of war and maybe it's a blessing that the Legacy championship was the one lost. The torch was passed from Riot. That means more in the grand scheme. 

I was chosen.

I know I can reach out and touch the stars. I can rise above because it's always been right there for me. I just didn't know how to parse what I was seeing. The truth is, there are no heroes. There are no villains. We're all just people, linked by this common experience. We're not playing roles. We're LIVING. This is who I am, stripped bare of the lie. I'm not bitter about this. No. I'm thankful. I'm so fucking grateful for all the experience. Defending the belt now, well, it's everything. No pretenses. No hiding.

That version of me died a long time ago. Eulogy was said more than a year ago. Vultures picked the bones clean. They were salted and burned and there's no coming back from that.

I feel lucky. Survival rate was never good for me. I never expected to see forty, and it's looming on the horizon. My daughter turned five last week – where has the time gone? I don't know what to say. I don't know how to explain that I'm still doing what I love. I am a modern-day gladiator. I fight for a cause, I fight for things I believe in – always balls-to-the-wall, full throttle. I know no other way. I dig deep, pull it all up from my guts, and throw myself into things with the same frenzy that I always have. Guts and determination, and zero self-consciousness. I don't care what they think, honestly. I haven't for a while. 

Some people don't need much to live on. They don't need money, or fortune or fame. Hell, some folks live on pennies a day. Some live on handouts. Some ride coat-tails. I've never understood that. I've never been able to play well enough with others to ingratiate myself that way. I can't connect. I speak another language most of the time. We all use the same words but mine never quite make it through the way I intend. I'm not good that way. I never will be. I'm fine with that because I know what I'm good at. I know what I'm here for and I don't need to reinvent myself for every last fight.

I know who I am, why I started.

All I need is a purpose. The cycles have stopped repeating and I'm not about to spiral downward into madness. Into silence. Into darkness. I'm falling back into the hole I pulled myself out of. The hole's grown deeper, the sides slick with my own fear sweat. I can see my skull shattering. I can see Clay's lunatic grin. I don't fear that inevitable end anymore. Let it shatter. Let all the pieces fall to the bottom and I won't bother to sift or sort them out. They don't matter.

I'm going to do what I should have done in the first place.

I'm going to do what I came here to do. I'm going to finish it.