Post by strat on Jul 18, 2022 19:55:45 GMT -5
I have been scratching and clawing my way around in the dark trying to find some semblance of light, a direction, a way forward. The all-too-knowing frantic and frenetic frenzy taking hold of the wheel and driving us through dangerous paths in some desperate attempt at forgoing damnation. I’ve stepped through the shadows and I’ve mingled with the madding crowd. I know what it is to be lost, the hollow emptiness like driftwood with no shore on the horizon. Endless perpetuity.
When I was young, I guess it would be fair to say that I saw myself differently from my peers. I liked being pretty, I liked makeup, I liked feminine clothes, I coiffed my hair, wore rouge on my cheek and painted my manicured nails with bright colours. In time, and with societal pressures being what they were, this pushed me to a counter-culture where I found some level of acceptance. But it wasn’t quite right. Sure, I guess you could say I was ‘a goth’, if you want a label, but we all know that nobody completely fits rigidly into any label. I definitely wasn’t a stereotypical goth, I wasn’t short on attention and just crying out to be noticed, I just felt different to how I looked - inside and out.
Exploring this came with its own growing pains. Being a teenage boy who liked to wear dresses and paint his face, of course, had its challenges. And like I said, I wasn’t really part of this subculture of people who did it for the sideways glances or to try to bang girls in Marilyn Manson skinny tees, I couldn’t really explain it to anybody. My parents thought it was a phase, I didn’t correct them. My fellow alumna thought I was a freak, and I didn’t correct them either. People often accused me of being gay, or a ‘gender bender’, or worse, and I never denied any of it. The truth is that I myself was confused. I looked at myself with frustration because I didn’t understand. When I looked around me, in magazines, on film, in music, I didn’t see anybody like me, I didn’t feel represented, I didn’t have a label that actually fit me, so I just let people think whatever they wanted to think, there was no need to argue about it. I wasn’t exactly sorry for being who I was, I didn’t conceal it, I just didn’t know what I was. I was just me, and I just existed in this vacuum of identity, where nothing was defined, nothing moved, nothing touched me or was touched.
A lot has happened, since then. A lifetime has passed us by.
Now, the air around me is calm. My thoughts are peaceful, and fall into place in a logical and systematic order. I found the light, I found the path, I fought the demons that had been at been at my door, and all of a sudden the white noise stopped and serenity descended. I found my accord with the world. At my own speed, I absorb the world around me. I observe.
If you have heard the whisperings that often follow in my wake, it will come as little surprise to know that I have, in my time, committed untold and unspeakable acts upon people. The Dollface, who did what she did to my wife in Hawaii is who she is as a direct consequence of a series of acts that unfolded at my hand. In a former life, she was a different person in her entirety. She was the sister of Xavier Black, and the one stable constant in his life. The safe haven that kept him centered when the world around him went haywire. And now? Now she’s a monster. A wreckling machine. An agent of destruction with no capacity for the types of human emotion we come to expect from people.
The part that may surprise you to learn is that I am incredibly fond of many of the people that have been subjected to said acts in the name of tough love, in the name of making them rise against the oncoming tide. You might wonder why I single out Paul Montuori, and remark on his failings. How I corner him, and remind him of his shortcomings, and then lay out a challenge. To see him rise, to see him push his boundaries and break the self-imposed ceiling he places on his career. When he is alone in his thoughts, when he is at his most self-confident, he calls himself The King. When he is on his day, it would take an army to stop him. But he gets in his own head. He sees the looming tide and instead of standing tall, bracing himself and preparing to withstand it, he buckles over and braces for the impact. Hoping beyond all hope that he will survive the impact.
I want more from him.
And a pat on the back and a ‘better luck next time’ is not going to cut it. He’s not a child. He has to rise to the occasion. Some might say the odds keep getting stacked against him. How will he ever learn to ride the wave if he keeps going to the beach when the tide is out?
You might find what I’m about to say quite rich, given that I am undefeated in over two years, but it isn’t about the wins and the losses. It isn’t about whether you get past a janitor in a six man tag match, or whether he ruins your chances in a Skeleton Key eliminator and you end up losing to Seb Bryce’s girlfriend. It’s about what it prepares you for, and whether you have taken the lessons that are afforded to you by climbing the ladder too quickly.
All of a sudden the rungs are ripped from under you and you realise that you have to start your ascent over again. Only this time, there are no steps.
So what have you learned?
How many times do you have to repeat the cycle to understand, truly understand, what is it to be successful?
You gloated that you main evented an EXP before I did, but you forgot that this detail was irrelevant. I challenged you to work your way from the bottom to the top, just like I am doing, because it would give you the necessary understanding of what it is to be a champion. The context you require to beat the people you’re losing to. Do you want to be showcased at EXP once in a blue moon, or do you want to actually BE The King that you claim you are?
I want him to succeed, I have a long and storied history with him, but what he needs and what he’s trying to do are at odds with each other and I feel that it’s only a matter of time before I will have to intervene.
And much like him, Amber Payne is somebody that at her core is innocent. She is still clinging feebly to the shreds of reality that were long-since discarded and beaten out of anyone who’s been in this business long enough to know what it’s really like. She’s naive, and she thinks that one rough go of it and a transformation into what she calls The Huntress is going to solve her problems, but much like Paul, she is putting different lipstick on the same pig.
Amber Payne has her own story of redemption, and her own path to follow in terms of squashing demons that have followed and haunted her. A nod of kudos for that, and well wishes on her forward journey. But there will be an impedence, a backwards step, for her. For him, too. To truly transform and become the thing that they aspire to be and the thing that they tell themselves that they already are, they need to go back to the beginning. They need to be completely debased, stripped of all the extraneous window dressing and reborn.
“The phoenix only rose from the ashes when it had been burnt to the ground.”
There are many tribulations to be tried, battles to be fought, and if a pilgrim stopped at the side of the road for every outstretched hand in need, he would never make it to the Promised Land.
“Pity is for the weak.” I snarl, under my breath, as I observe her walking towards the arena and greeting the audience that had gathered around the service entrance from my vantage point not far from the Grand Sports Arena.