Empire Skate hugging her daughters after a game
My oldest daughter once asked me what I was most afraid of. I answered immediately.
“Making mistakes,” I said
She looked at me with confusion. “I meant like spiders or something.”
I’ve never been afraid of spiders, but I’ve always been afraid of mistakes. One of my earliest memories is of crying at the kitchen table while I was trying to learn to write because I was worried that I couldn’t form the letters correctly.
That anxious 5-year-old became an anxious adult who was constantly terrified of getting things wrong. I’ve always been good at what I did because I avoided doing things that were hard for me. If it was hard, I would make mistakes, and that wasn’t okay. I didn’t apply for jobs that would have paid me more because I was afraid I’d fail. I passed up opportunities that were out of my comfort zone. And I definitely avoided sports.
I had tried a few sports when I was a kid, like football and basketball, and they didn’t come naturally to me. I knew I would never be a great athlete, so I stopped playing sports all together - that is, until I found roller derby.
I was living in a new city and working from home, and roller derby seemed like a good way to get to know people and get out of the house. But trying roller derby was a big risk for someone like me. I already knew how to roller skate - I grew up on Long Island in the 80s and 90s, when pretty much every birthday party took place at a roller rink. But I didn’t know a thing about derby. I might make a lot of mistakes in the process of learning.
Reader, I did. I still do.
I’m not a great roller derby player. That’s not me being humble; it’s an objective fact. I’m not really agile enough to be a jammer or strong enough to be a blocker. But every week, I go to training and lace up my skates. I get knocked over by people who are much better than me. I have fun. I’m starting to learn - at the age of 40 - that making mistakes isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Most people know that making mistakes is a normal part of life. But to someone with an anxiety disorder, it’s something you need to learn slowly, over time, as you build up evidence that you can mess up and be okay. I fell over and I didn’t get hurt. I struggled with a new skill and no one judged me for it. I got knocked off the track - over and over and over - but I got back on again.
Roller derby is teaching me that it’s okay to fail at something. I still have a lot to learn - playing in front of a crowd still gives me the fear - but it’s forcing me to let go of the idea that I have to be good at everything that I do.
It’s left me wondering what else I might fail at next. Art, maybe. I’m very bad at art.
This post was written by Empire Skate as part of #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek.
