BY K.L. DASH
HI My name is K.L. I’m a dancer. I'm a singer. I'm an actress. I'm a professional princess and I'm a former pageant girl. Oh yeah, and im a female pro-wrestler - well aspiring anyway. I'm probably nothing great but I dream to be someday. Read this blog, leave me questions. Get a view into "the biz", my mind, and all the places you never knew you wanted to go.
“Do you wake up in the morning and need help to lift your head?
DO you read obituaries and feel jealous of the dead?
It’s like living on a Cliffside not knowing when you’ll dive.
Do you know, do you know what it’s like to die alive…
When tomorrow terrifies you, but you’ll die if you look back…
The sensation that you’re screaming, but you never make a sound.
Or the feeling that you’re falling, but you never hit the ground.
It just keeps on rushing at you day by day by day by day,
You don’t know, you don’t know what it’s like to live that way.
Like a refugee, a fugitive, forever on the run.
If it gets me it will kill me, but I don’t know what I’ve done”
You don’t know what it’s like to live that way. And if you do, I have great sympathy for you. As I said in TBJ –Reflection growing up was rough. I debated if I should tell you this, and after deep thought, I will, I don’t know if you can ever understand a fighter without knowing the fight. Besides growing up in a single parent home and what one may call “poor”; we moved around no less than once every three months until the time I was about 12. My grandmother who raised us while my mother was working 2 to 3 jobs at a time passed on slowly of breast cancer when I was kindergarten and my father passed away of alcoholism before I started the fourth grade. In this time my mother was at times unstable, I spent time in foster care and withstood every kind of abuse known – emotionally, physically, and sexually. It was no fault of mine or my families, but only that of a very sad person fighting with something deep inside them. This is how, as an adult, I have rationalized and forgiven this.
I am over it and an adult NOW. But growing up and all of this happening to you makes for a very troubled person that can choose to be a negative or positive statistic. In my heart I chose to be a positive statistic, but my mind would choose otherwise at times. Besides the obvious that everyone could see, the abuse mentioned above I kept a secret until I was 15 years old, brought to earth only when I was nearly raped and I freaked out and came out with all of it to my two best friends. It was also shortly after this that my mother wanted to ban me from those friends who had grown to be my support system. In that the friends told my mother and it all came into light – it was the worst and best moment of my life so far.
My friends had always wondered if something terrible had happened to me. As one put it I was always “sad-happy.” She explained it as always smiling and joking in front of everyone, but in silent quiet moments I let my angst show. There were also clues. Besides on and off depression… I didn’t really have a first kiss until I was 17 (the one attempt before that was awful) and it was because I was completely uncomfortable. As mentioned in TBJ – Reflection I also gained weight, felt unhappy – lost the weight through anorexia, the same friends made me see a therapist (a free one of the two friends had to see as well) and I “was dealing.” Therapy helped mostly, until high school ended – in this confusing time I fell into bulimia, the friends again urged me back to therapy… to eventfully realize….
No matter what I was running from it already happened…. No matter what I did to myself physically it was never going to change the past… the only cure was to somehow deal with it, grow from it – and without sounding cold… get over it.
I’m here to tell you the words above… much easier to type then do. And up until recently… although dealt with, little thoughts of insecurity, low self esteem and straight up craziness would creep in when I least expected it, putting me on a sort of rollercoaster/fun hose scary mix.
You may wonder what this has to do with wrestling… well a lot actually. In my darkest times I related to the song from the rock musical “Next to Normal” that you read lyrical excerpts from above. And as I just said up until recently these thoughts would attack me for a few days no matter how happy I was. Although I began to feel happy & healthy & pretty & confident… I needed one more thing. I needed to feel strong. That no matter what had happened to me I was a survivor – strong - a fighter.
And this happened… this happened shortly after I began training. The exact day was February 11, 2014. I don’t exactly know how or why it happened but I looked in the mirror and felt perfectly beautiful and strong. And although I was having a particularly great hair day… it had a lot – actually really mostly – to do with wrestling.
For the first time I felt like I won.
I felt strong and empowered.
I haven’t had a bad thought since.
Wrestling training gave me the drive I needed to stay on the complete healthy path and the mindset I need to feel, look, and BE strong.
You do not know what it is to have my desolation.
You do not know the greatness it is to conquer this.
Learn from your sadness and grow from you strife.
It just may lead you to perfect greatness.
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