Tidal waves

I learned how to walk in my father’s shoes after he left this Earth.

Both of my parents died one year apart about seven years ago and it devastated me. I had received a medical note from my doctor, while I was in a mental health ward waiting to be diagnosed, that allowed me to return home to collect university books for a course. I found my mother’s body upon getting home.

“Mom? Please answer the door?!” I kept ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door but there was no answer. “Maybe she has had enough of me?” I thought to myself, although that was not normal of my mother’s loving parenthood. Both of my parents supported me in numerous ways. My mom cooked meals for me like the relative of a certain Olympic medalist wrestler of the most popular promotion in the world would when they were in college.

My parents did not support my ambitions at first, but saw that it helped me become interested in school again after experiencing bullying which made me depressed.

I too find it productive to be busy

My father was a millwright mechanic who fixed machines. Sometimes he came home upset after long hours in which he toiled away at fixing machines within a factory. He often worked the continental shift. I too find it productive to be busy, but then the lingering draining feeling of recuperation and then going through different mental states of thinking can make for illogical thinking.

As I grew older, from being one of the youngest of my generation in Canada and keeping in touch with family members who live in a small Mediterranean island where my parents immigrated from, I knew that some of my goals would seem farfetched.

I also knew that I had to make it a lifestyle, a natural one, which would allow for me to stand out. In an industry in which the biggest and most creative names are emphasized the most, there was work to be done and it did not help that I was only a bantam weight when I started my training as a teenager.

I focused on numerous exercises and proper training and nutrition to bulk up naturally for the sport as my coach who was a national icon of his native country knew the proper methods in order to do so. My trainer died a decade ago but we kept in communication with each other as I left the wrestling school to focus on academic studies. I ended up studying at three universities in order to fulfill my university BA and ended up with enough credits for half a degree more which I plan on completing as the tides of the future wash passed me. 

I was bed ridden with panic attacks at some points in time

Both a friend and my father told me about a local pro wrestling school and I begged to be able to go to the school to learn the art of hooking since the trainer was peers with legends of the 1970s which included Olympic wrestlers in their hay day training in Japan and completing numerous high repetition squats, neck bridges, pushups, weight training and other exercises as well. At that wrestling school we ran drills over and over again along with basic pro wrestling holds and locks. In the office area of the pro wrestling gym, I listened to old stories passed along by my trainer.

I wanted to be a wrestler. A professional wrestler, but also learn the old school art of hooking and real wrestling so that I could have a background in all aspects of the game. It was difficult on the family having a brother who had severe autism as well and the financial strain of me going to pro wrestling school every month although the facility made it affordable. I love my brother and always will, and so did both of my parents. While he was never able to go to post-secondary schooling like I did, my parents always wanted him to live a good life. There were times of turbulence at home and my mom saw that I gravitated towards academics as well so she did encourage me to focus on schooling.

When I decided to travel to Ottawa to study both of my parents supported that decision too, which is where I began my studies after high school. A few years into that however, I grew sick with depression and had social anxiety through the roof to the point in which I self-harmed. I needed medical assistance and I was taken to the hospital.

Some time passed and I was prescribed various medications, some of which gave me racing thoughts and made me drool and feel mentally loopy. I was bed ridden with panic attacks at some points in time, but recently found the right medications through the help of my psychiatrist along with a thorough diagnosis which holds that I am in fact bipolar. If I do not take my medication, I suffer from terrifying delusions which make no sense and are farfetched to begin with.

Taking my medication is not important, but essential

No longer do I drool, and I am comfortable with my medication. I have been peers of wrestlers who appear on television. One female who I trained with is a regular on NXT while another who helped train me was recently re-signed to the world’s largest professional wrestling company. Taking my medication is not important, but essential. It makes me depressed when friends say that I am better off without it because that it far from the truth. I am devoted to taking each and every dose and not missing a single one.

The depression often hits me like tidal waves. I sometimes want to break free and train in dojos across the world. I can only imagine. For now taking my medication and meeting with my social worker enables me to continue onward.