Post by Kyle Shane on Jun 15, 2024 17:04:14 GMT -5
My entire modus operandi has always been about being different; avant-garde, bleeding edge, espousing a "you will not out-work me no matter how hard you try" ethic with promos that did things differently, that nobody has ever thought to do before. It's what sets you apart when you're actually game-planning an approach to a weekly grind; How can a simple promo against a seven-foot dork called Silence be elevated into something approaching art?
"Are you still feeling anxious these days?" the therapist asks me, and I come back down to earth.
I toy, absently, with the frond of a fern on her side table at the arm of the pleather chair. Anything to avoid looking her in the eyes.
"Well, it's different since coming back."
"Different... how?"
"I made a decision to come back after four years because there was a general sense that I was making the talk actively worse by staying away. That, in my absence, the world thought I had stepped down and abandoned wrestling, so that now that it was over, it was ripe for think-pieces and documentaries about what my impact actually was."
"This is ground we've covered, Kyle, but I do want you to examine why this time feels not the same."
I shrug, diffidently, projecting calm, inside my mind is trying to get the wording right.
She frowned into her laptop, distracted. This therapist and I have never managed to get in synch, really, always talking over her. She never really seemed the grasp the depth of the emotions I am trying to express, always lighting on the surface meaning of my words, It's never... quite provided the same release I used to feel, "So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying, it's a dangerous game engaging the Twitter crowd at all, Kyle," Dr. Redcross said, "I get that it annoyed you when Max Daemon, I guess, said you aren't even that tall, but why poke at old wounds in the name of making a point?"
Part of me wanted to approach it the way they did when they were eighteen of course, Game On, Noobs, Runescape references and photoshopping dicks into someone's mouth. But as of now, I could only check my watch impatiently.
"I didn't think I went in-depth on the Twitter shit, doc, I was more using it as a rallying cry, the fact is that for a straight year even before piss entered into the equation, AW has been getting dumped on by people. I chose AW for the very reason people hate on it - "
"So your method is to go out there and cut loud speeches about how this company makes wrestling FUN? Dude, that's just ripe for the pickings, do you not see how that gets torn apart in R/SCJerk?"
I frown, the curse of having a therapist younger than me for once.
"So, again, why is this different? Because you have more of a chip on your shoulder? Because you're talking about the Twitter feedback head-on?"
"Because I'm...
...Grateful for everything, for once."
"Hmm, mhmmm, expand on that."
I grimace and exhale a little, then let it out, "Everything that happened to me in 2020 before I went away, the negative feelings, the feeling unfulfilled, never satisfied and jerked around by a company, is a 1/1 match for the way Tatiana Jolee approaches AW management right now on down to feeling piqued that people dislike the way she writes. It took me using that as a reflection to see where I had been going wrong. But more than that... in the months before... every time, I've left WGWF, Pure Class Wrestling, various... I was having... panic attacks, you know?"
Dr. Redcross types something on her laptop, and me not knowing if she's hearing what my words really mean, the weight of them.
"Because ultimately, what I've come to realize is that a good deal of WHY I do what I do, is that at a very young age, Hiro and I bonded over this sudden burst of fame and the titles and attaboys and golden tickets we were afforded. Nineteen years old, coming straight off the street untrained and given a platform only because we were filming ourselves saying goofy shit back and forth while we played Call of Duty on the couch, given the World Tag titles in three weeks, given Rookie of the Year honors in our first year,"
My reminescing is losing the plot with her, and she says nothing, and I shake my head, almost a brittle nevermind that, and I continue, "I grew to need it, the connection with the fans and the persona of the Game Boyz, but in the same vein a good part of me feared it. A part of me hated them for constantly, CONSTANTLY asking us to perform, to be always silly and always ON, the lightspeed tennis-match serving quips that ran between Hiro and I. The constant levelling up, the constant necessity to be a golden specimen of perfection, a human Achievement Unlocked - "
"I used to work myself into panic attacks before every show, because that need to be THE absolute best worked me into fatal burnout, time and time, and time again. The need to care what the audience thinks, but say what I wanted to say."
"Mm, does admitting vulnerability now... free you of that, somewhat?"
I hold back a sigh, because no, not really, and she isn't really getting - ehh. Anyway.
"I guess the biggest difference this time around is just that I can admit that."
"And you don't feel the need to perform?" She said, raising her eyebrows, "You have a match this week, against someone named Jacob Koenig,"
I'm... not spinning this session into an ad-hoc cut-down of Jacob Koenig with my therapist, for fucksake. Why should I, when Jacob Koenig's been stiffing the front office for weeks and couldn't even show reliably against Artico, the lowest-hanging fruit. But I think back to WGWF, and composing some wacked-out, metaphysical 2k about a post-apocalyptic future to turn into a high-concept diss against fucking Silence, or The Sentinel. Were those ever worth it? Was the six hours I'd spent crafting those promos, the headache and the clamping iron band of panic around my sternum every Sunday because I wanted, HAD to be, the biggest and best match on the card, worth it? Maybe si, maybe no.
"Well, Kyle, I want you to consider one thing. You talked about how the need to connect with the audience defined those years of your life. The way you talk about it... have you considered what a metaphor, if not a real, tangible example, this is; almost a full-blown addiction?"
That thought does give me pause, and I want to push it off as ridiculous, but I can't, quite. Maybe there is something to that, after all.
Dr. Redcross ears off a scrip from a small yellow notepad and I take it, we vow to see each other in a month's time, and I tell her I'm going to keep journaling. I'm not sure if I like doing this, it isn't... the release that I'm used to, it isn't as high-concept or bleeding edge or art as I want it to be, but it is honest. I can admit that.
I take my phone out of my pocket, and I think back to the last conversation, the last... warning I had gotten, from my ex-girlfriend's new girlfriend. Marki Staley, she of the valkyrie braids and fierce, cage-fighter body, had growled in my face, "You treat your life as a video game, and every thing around your world as a character in it, as a coping mechanism because you needed coping mechanisms from the earliest age. This leads you to treat everything as something you escape. You historically have never cared who or what you had to step on during any of this, and it landed you in hot water."
"You deserve worse than to be cancelled like Drake for talking to Millie Bobbie Brown, you deserve to be taken out back and shot in the head. On my soul, I swear this, if you ever come sniffing around Array again, it will be your ass. Goodbye forever, Kyle."
My thumb wavers over the speed-dial on my phone for a second, thinking about that stern warning, the last time I'd shown up, but also thinking about the acceptance drive deep down in the bedrock of my soul. That I need you-I fear you rejecting me-I want you to hear what I say and not care. And I think about betrayals of partners, myself having to explain this to Hiro, as well as what Array could possibly say to Marki to explain this. And I realize, I don't care, in this moment, I thumb the button for the first time in months, feeling like someone who has just blown three months of AA meetings in one night's binge; But the differences between medicine and poisons, after all...
"Array, it's me... please, don't hang up."
Aren't we all addicted to something that makes the world go away?