Zoe had been the first knife wound. Beautiful, manipulative Zoe with her narcissistic need to be worshipped. My mother, who'd pick me apart so efficiently I was still finding pieces of myself in strange places years later. Her hands, both gentle when stroking my hair and brutal when connecting with my skin, taught me early that love and pain were conjoined twins. Growing up under her rule was like living in a house with shifting walls—her way was the only fucking way, and any deviation meant punishment that seared itself into my memory.
"You're weak," she'd told me once, trying to remove my post-adolescent facade, her breath hot against my ear, smelling of mint and something sour. "But you pretend so well. It's almost convincing." The words burrowed under my skin like parasites, feeding on my insecurities until they swelled to monstrous proportions.
She'd lock me in my own bedroom closet where hours stretched like centuries in the suffocating darkness. Three, sometimes four hours of nothing but the sound of my own breathing and the occasional creak of that empty toy chest, a constant reminder of childhood joys she'd systematically stripped away. Even when she'd finally unlock the door, the light would burn my eyes while she'd stand there, a silhouette of absolute power, waiting for my inevitable breakdown and apology.
The sick twist? She'd always position herself as the victim afterward—her voice cracking with practiced precision as she'd explain how my behavior had "forced" her hand. Zoe—mother, monster, master manipulator—had carved her agenda into my flesh: everything, even my pain, was just another spotlight meant to illuminate her.
To cope with this, during my college years, I built myself into something harder. Louder. More aggressively masculine. An over-correction so extreme it bordered on parody—but the pain driving it was real enough to make my bones ache.
I was an early K1 competitor, trained by a master who was vastly more sadistic than I would ever be. Not because I enjoyed combat—I hated it—but because what better proof of manhood than having the willingness to step into a cage and bleed? I enjoyed the pain. It made me feel human again. I'd suffer through punishing training sessions that left me vomiting in alleyways, ribs bruised black, eyes swollen to slits, kicking banana trees down until my shins bled red with crimson life draining from me.
So I committed. Took fights against guys who outweighed me by twenty pounds, who had years more experience. Guys who fractured my orbital bone and dislocated my shoulder. I'd drag myself home, face a mess of purple and red, and feel a sick sense of accomplishment. This pain was proof. Evidence of my commitment to being the man I was supposed to be.
"Why do you do this to yourself?" Karen asked once, helping me stanch a nosebleed after a particularly brutal session. "You don't even seem to like fighting."
I'd just grinned through bloody teeth. "It’s better than the alternative."
But the truth was more pathetic. Each punch I absorbed was penance. Each grueling workout was punishment for the softness I couldn't seem to purge from my core. I'd stand in front of the gym mirror, body transformed into something hard and angular, muscles straining beneath skin mapped with bruises, and still see a fraud reflected back.
The hyper-masculinity bled into every goddamn aspect of my life like poison in my veins. College during the day was just the lie—evenings and weekends revealed the true desperation in the raw fluorescent glow of the a badly viewed amateur K1 career. The smell of sweat-soaked leather and disinfectant became more familiar than my own reflection as I pummeled heavy bags until my knuckles split open, leaving crimson smears like violent signatures.
I fought with a fucking fury that scared even the veterans—this six foot six bundle of rage and technical precision who'd rather get knocked unconscious than tap out. The sound of shin connecting with Thai pads—that distinctive thwack that echoed through the gym—became my heartbeat, my meditation, my fucking religion.
I drank whiskey like it was fucking water, that scorched my throat raw after matches, forcing myself not to wince as other fighters slapped my already bruised back in congratulation. That's what real men drank, right? I laughed at jokes about women that made something deep inside me shrivel and die. I adopted a swagger around the ring that felt like moving with chains wrapped around my soul, my natural gait fighting against the stiffness I forced upon it. Changed the way I spoke, dropping my voice to a growl until my vocal cords burned, cutting out words that might sound too soft or refined. Every "bro" and "nice fucking hit" that fell from my split lips tasted like blood and deception. My hands—which wanted to move with grace—I trained to form fists, to strike with brutally and carelessly, even as they ached to express something gentler. The sad part was , that I wasnt even good. I had a shit record. 3-22 one year. 4-28 another.
The woman inside me watched through my eyes as I became a human punching bag, a portrait of masculinity so convincing I almost believed it myself. Almost. But beneath the bruises and the victory belts and the photographs of me standing over fallen opponents, she was there—the woman I am now—drowning in adrenaline and self-loathing, screaming silently behind a mouthguard, each punch I threw or took was another desperate attempt to beat her into submission.
"Stop fighting me," Wendy would whisper during training with Karen and her brother Michael, her voice bubbling up when my guard dropped for just a second. "This isn't you. It never was."
I'd throw myself open, just so my sparring partners could hit me, and then demand more—hit harder, hit faster, keep hitting me—breathing until my lungs burned and my legs wobbled beneath me. The physical anguish was preferable to Wendy's voice, to the truth she carried.
"You think they respect you?" she'd murmur as I sat in locker rooms, my ribs taped, ice pressed against swelling. "They respect the lie. They'd hate who you really are."
I'd kill her at any chance I could. I'd make her go away and drown her utterly in my own acidic internalized self-hatred. All this violent performance—this relentless self-destruction—for the fucking proof that I was a man, through and through. All to prove that I was stronger than the weak, pathetic child Zoe had painted me as. All to prove that I was worthy of her love, not that the heartless bitch would ever have given it.
"Zoe never saw either of us," Wendy would remind me in quieter moments. "Not the man you pretend to be, not the woman hiding underneath. She only saw what she wanted to."
My teammates would cheer, call me an animal, a beast. I'd smile through split lips, high on their approval while dying inside. But I hated myself. Each day I hated myself even more than the day before.
"You're exhausted," Wendy would say when I stared in the mirror, examining fresh bruises blooming across my torso. "This masquerade is killing you."
I'd punch the wall until my knuckles left crimson constellations across its surface. I'd hammer my fists against concrete blocks in the gym until my skin split open. I'd drive my knuckles into wooden studs when the hollow thump of drywall wasn't painful enough. Better to destroy every surface than close my eyes to see her eyes looking back at me from my own face.
"They're calling beating dummy in the ring," she'd whisper, "but look at your hands—they're trembling. It isn’t you. It’s me."
I'd bite the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper, focusing on those in front of me, spouting rehearsed lines about dominance and power and respect. Words that fell from my mouth like dead things.
But there were nights after fights, lying alone in bed with my body a symphony of pain, when I'd cry silently into my pillow. Not from the physical agony—though the Mother of the Earth knows there was plenty of that—but from the bone-deep exhaustion of maintaining the performance. In those moments, I'd feel her stirring inside me, this other self I was desperately trying to murder through testosterone and violence.
"You're killing us both," she'd whisper in the darkness. And I'd punch the wall until my knuckles bled, just to drown her out with fresh pain. I needed my pain. It kept me warm inside.
"Pain isn't warmth," she'd counter, her voice somehow cutting through the fog of my self-destruction. "It's just the only sensation you allow yourself to feel anymore."
I'd drink until I passed out some nights, but she'd be waiting in my dreams. There, she wouldn't whisper. There, she'd scream with my voice, show me my hands without calluses, my face without scars. I'd wake gasping, clawing at my own skin as if I could tear out the imposter within me. But she wasn't the imposter. She never had been.
"Is that the legacy you want? To be remembered as someone who never existed? Some old crappy weapons that toxic men made 100’s of years ago your only legacy?" she'd tell me as more collectibles and memories accumulated on dusty shelves.
I'd take more fights, punishing bouts against opponents who outweighed me, outreached me. The pain of their blows was clarifying—each one driving Wendy deeper into silence, if only for a moment.
"You think you're drowning me," she'd say as I spat blood into corner buckets between rounds, "but I'm the one who keeps us afloat. I'm the one who remembers how to breathe when you've forgotten."
I'd roar like an animal as I charged back into the fray, my coach mistaking my rage for fighting spirit. Little did he know I wasn't fighting my opponent at all. But losers always break eventually. Mine came during some random open tourney event, my body already held together with athletic tape and painkillers. My opponent had me down, my usual hands covering my face position, his fists like sledgehammers against my ribs.
"Let go," Wendy whispered. "You don't have to be this anymore."
And for just a second, I listened. My guard dropped. The knockout blow caught me clean. Just another loss. Just more pain. But I was happy.
"I'll still be here when you're ready," she promised. "I've always been here."
Why couldn’t she just leave. Why?