Her pre-frontal cortex was broken.
She wasn’t exactly sure when it happened. Maybe that soccer ball that hit her head at 10 years old.
Or perhaps it was that one professional boxing match she had when she took a hook punch to the face and landed on the mat for 30 seconds until sniffing salts were placed under her bloody nose by the referee and she came to, asking when the next round would start.
It also could be a compounding element of getting hit over and over in sparring matches and other fights she’d had over the years.
In this moment, she decides it’s when the soccer ball hit her head that everything broke in her.
It feels better to believe that the sport of fighting that she’s loved and been passionate about for so long isn’t to blame for her current predicament.
She always wanted to die. Especially at 10 years old. When she was playing on that stupid soccer team where no one included her and she felt like an outcast.
It wasn’t until she actually started hitting stuff that she felt a little bit better.
At all.
It made all the difference to be able to release her suffering, anger, resentment, pain, into some pads her partner was holding, or on a heavy bag, literally the name of it (heavy) taking all of her pent up shit, and then even better, punching and kicking people in sparring sessions.
All of it felt better.
And she got better.
But today she stood on the edge of life. No will to live.
She didn’t want to be alive in this world and she looked it up.
Why do I want to die?
Why can’t I buck up and move forward?
What’s wrong with me?
Google told her everything she needed to know.
Her pre-frontal cortex was broken.
It didn’t allow her to feel a ‘will to live’, survive, and move forward. It was also impacting her decision making.
She left the pills on the counter in the bathroom and went to sleep instead.
Tomorrow would be better. Maybe she wasn’t broken.
She might just be human.