I will miss this..

This was my last night of any practice with Sacred. I'm praying it's not my last practice entirely, with any league, because I love this sport so very much and I don't want to give it up for any small reason like moving. I am going to put in for a transfer to the B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls (BAD) if my work lets me have the schedule for it with school classes, as well. We'll see..

But tonight I tried my very hardest to not make it about me. I got together with one of my teammates, Harsh Mello, who transferred from Bellingham Roller Dames(pretty sure that was their name), and she and another skater from the Fast Track program, Kiersten, brought their video cameras to practice. Miss Behaved was coaching, and she let us set up the cameras, one on top of the office on a tripod in an attempt to get as much of the track as possible, and the other in my hand to follow them as the skated by. I always wanted someone to take video of me skating around the track so I could show my family and friends my progress and so I could set personal goals for myself to overcome. I wanted them to make goals that were attainable, rather than "I want to skate like Susie HotRod", which, while highly possible, is not a very practical goal when you're just learning how to do everything to begin with. Plus, I don't want them to ever compare themselves to someone else, because we are all capable of greatness in our own ways.

After we filmed everyone skating and stopping, a few of us went out for drinks. I had a beer, provided to me by my fabulous derby friends, and then they decided to go around to tell me all the reasons why they would miss me. 

That almost got to me. At first it was mostly just fun things that make you smile and nod like, 'you're a ray of sunshine', 'you're always so cheery', and my personal favorite, 'you're not leaving, you just haven't accepted it yet'. But then it took a turn for the serious when Stache dropped a small speech about how I remind her of 'The OG', or The Original Group(or was it Old Girls?). How they had a genuine family feel that tethered everyone together. I almost cried.. But I didn't. Just tucked my chin into my neck and tried not to let my eyes leak.

I am going to miss all of these fabulous humans very very much.

I'm going to miss the way I cough at the end of practice after stretching down because of the dust in my lungs.

I'll miss the smell of sweat, oddly enough, because it's the smell of determination.

I'll miss hearing wind blow past my ear and helmet as I do warm up laps.

I'll miss hands in, and trying to think of something awesome to say, but only coming up with something crazy like 'Booty Sweat'.

I will miss seeing my brother and twin sister every week.

I will miss pestering my coworkers to clean things with strange notes left all over the store.

I will NOT miss entitled bratty customers who don't want to pay for the extra extra caramel in their drink who don't understand why I wont let them pay with someone ELSES credit card. Won't miss that even a little bit. Nope.

But everything ELSE? Definitely.

This past year has been full of challenges for me, both good and bad. I genuinely wish I had more initiative to sit down and write more, as it is a very good outlet for me.

It was really rough for me in the beginning, trying to adjust to a new place with new friends, new coworkers, new pet, new hobbies, and new activity level. I have learned so much about who I am as a person, and what I am capable of. Some of which has surprised me, and some of it was exactly as I expected. But I couldn't have done all of it if I didn't have family, friends, and an incredible league cheering me on. Yeah, there were some people who openly told me they didn't want me to continue, and there were those who were needlessly worried about me. My favorite were the one's who scoffed at me. But here I am. I am one hundred times more confident, not only in my individuality, but also in my femininity, in how I carry myself, and in my approach with people.

And I'm only gonna keep going. So I'll let you all keep wondering. ;)