Personal Barriers
I have been thinking about this for a few days and even discussed with a teammate. The subject is a little difficult for me as it is something I have struggled with all my life. I have Dwaine's Syndrome. Most of you will never have heard of this but basically it means I was born without a muscle in the left side of my left eye. This means my left eye does not move to that side and when I look to the left it remains in the centre. Because I was born with this, my parents taught me from a very early age that if I wish to look in that direction I must turn my head. Even when turning my head I have quite a significant blind spot. It sounds awfully silly and most people don't even notice unless I point it out to them. If they do they think I have a lazy eye, which is quite irritating, I don't really know why? I was, however, bullied for this in school as a child. Kids are cruel. Something, I have recently come to realise, is that this natural oversight in my development, may cause me issues when trying to play the sport that I love, which is of course, roller derby. For example, keeping an eye on the jammer coming on the inside of the track when I am on the outside - I must turn my head all the way around causing my body to shift. I feel as though I am at risk of causing myself an injury in this stance and somehow still have a blind spot! I let this get under my skin at the last training session, along with my recurring blister, so by the time we finished I had just had enough. I felt extremely frustrated. I, STUPIDLY, let this fester away at me instead of mentioning straight away to one of the other skaters in my league who might be able to discuss. By the following evening I had managed to convince myself I was never going to be good enough to bout with this issue and so my derby journey was ending before it had even started. BUT… then I mentioned it to one of the girls, which is what I should have done straight away instead of sulking and being negative. She reminded me that we can overcome these things.
"We'll find a way around it, it's fine. Was that all that was bothering you?"
My point, as always, in a long winded way of telling it, is that we all have our personal barriers we must overcome at some point. Whether it is mental or physical there is almost always a way to overcome this if you really want to. I have made the decision that I am not going to let this rule me, why should it? it was said to me that if we let the negativity take over then it will cripple us and just take over. I don't want that to happen to me so I have to learn to be positive and remember I can be awesome. I am awesome. Good Day! BDR xx