So. I had been trying to work my way through the Steenerico corpus chronologically, but then Mith was talking about watching DDT 2008 and Kev having a strong reaction to losing the tag titles. The way she described it, I wanted to watch it immediately. I have big emotions, and I’m a sucker for them in others. I watched it and then needed to watch DDT 2013, the last time they tagged together.
I’m still learning how to see the subtleties of movement and story that make a match great, so I won’t comment on that. But emotion…emotion I’m good at.
I say on twitter a lot—probably too frequently—that I relate to Kevin Steen/Owens. On the one hand his character is frequently monstrous, possibly evil, and so I slightly worry how those statements will be interpreted. On the other hand, it is so vanishingly rare that I relate to someone as strongly as I do to him, I won’t hold it back.
I am monstrous sometimes. I hope you don’t know this for yourself, it is very fucking difficult to get out of a situation that will leave you with PTSD without doing something monstrous. I have done things that I consider to be evil—bearing in mind, I have a damn low bar for what’s evil. Harming others non-consensually, pretty much. Sometimes I get more angry than I know what to do with, and I lash out at the wrong people—like I just did, just now, to my husband when he interrupted my writing. He’s fine, he’s just curious, but my thoughts are unwieldy and hard to match up to the feelings, so I got frustrated and snapped at him. I feel enormous feelings and whether pleasant or socially unacceptable, sometimes they run away with me. When I first heard the parable of the soul being a chariot harnessed to a good horse and a willful horse, I thought, “Yes!” Enormous animals, far stronger than me, not at all well-trained. That’s it exactly.
Sometimes, when I’m really truly upset—can’t keep it together upset—I shut down. Nothing is safe, anything might push me over the edge. So I lock it all down and figure, I’ll get back to feeling things later, when I can afford to. When it’s safe. When the next thing won’t break me.
That picture up top? That feels like a goddamn self-portrait. That look on Kevin’s face, his posture, that is exactly like what it feels like. I doubt Kevin was feeling quite as bad off as I describe. It’s probably just a ridiculously unlikely coincidence.
Did you know that the word ‘monster’ comes from the same Latin word as demonstrate? Essentially, colloquially, it means a thing you point at. That’s all. A beautiful thing, a scary thing, a numinous thing. That part matters not at all. It’s something that makes you feel something strongly, and compels you to point it out to others.
A friend and I were talking about watching this match, and they said, “Prepare to cry a lot.” Afterwards I responded, “If I was well-adjusted, I probably would have.”
Some emotions are too big for tears.