Incomparable

by Brie Bella

  Then, she just let Bear speak. It was her voice, but it was his lingo. It was what he would say and how he would say it. When he was done, Tricia said: “He’s rubbing your earlobes right now. Is that a thing?” I gasped. Bear used to rub my earlobes all the time, whenever we were watching a movie, or driving, or he just felt like reaching over and touching me. When his casket was going into the ground, his mom had reached over to rub my earlobes in his stead, because I was so upset.

  Tricia ended up becoming a really important part of my life until I moved to San Diego. She was a different type of grief counselor, but one that I desperately needed. While these moments of reconnection and conversation with Bear didn’t take away the pain of losing him, they helped me tremendously because I could feel him. I could hear the proof that he was still there, that he could hear me, that we were still deeply connected.

  I lost touch with Tricia over the years, though other mediums and healers have come in and out of my life as I’ve needed them. Judy, who owned the shop, was another pillar of strength, doling out a hug to anybody who needed one. All of my girlfriends started going there, just for hugs from Judy. Like me, they all came from families of divorce, families with shitty dads. She had the power to make you feel like the world was actually a really wonderful place, that all would be well. I was back in Scottsdale a couple of years ago and went by to see her after nearly a decade. As fate would have it, it was her last week in the store. She felt she was being called to move to the East Coast to open a store, that the people there needed her more. I had given her something of Bear’s to put on the wall, and it was still there.

  When you’re a kid, you think you’ll live forever. Even adulthood, with kids and responsibilities, feels like it is decades away. When I lost Bear, I began to look at life differently. The day he died, he had skateboarded, gone to Jack in the Box with his friends, barbecued with his family. All in all, a beautiful and simple day that ended badly. I know that every day is a new day, and that I’m lucky to wake up and have it. I shouldn’t take those small pleasures, like greasy fast-food fries or a really fun night out with friends, for granted. I know that my only real concern should be living how it feels right and honest to live. It is never worth wasting energy on those who might judge or disagree with the choices that I’ve made. When I emerged from constant tears and heartbreak, I felt like a liberated spiritual being, free to love and live every moment. It is how you live when you feel like you’ve lost one of the things that is most valuable, when you realize that death might not necessarily be the end, and when you accept that we might just have a far greater purpose here.

  I’d shed all my tears for Bear. Nothing else could make me cry—not my abysmal 2.7 GPA, not the way I’d lost my virginity, not anything going on at home or with soccer. Nothing sucks more than dying. I could do really badly on my SATs—which I did!—but death is worse. Sure, my life wasn’t perfect, but things could be so, so much worse.

  When I graduated, I had to get out of Phoenix because everything reminded me of Bear. I needed a fresh start, where I wouldn’t be triggered by … everywhere. My house, his house, the hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint off Camelback Road where he took me for burritos on one of our first official dates. He even drew something on the napkin for the waiter. If you’ve lost someone in a tragic way, when you are wholly unprepared for their passing, then you know that there is no forgetting. I’m sure that is true for those who’ve had long goodbyes and peaceful ends, too. People are always scared to mention someone you’ve lost. I think they’re afraid that maybe you’ve forgotten that that person is gone, and they’re reminding you of something painful. But that’s not how it actually is—the people you lose live in your mind, your heart, your very being, in a way that is constant. Talking about them feels good—even if it might also bring tears—because it’s a way of bringing them to life again, of indulging in memories. There is no getting over it. There is only learning to live with it.

  The affirmation from Tricia also helped me learn how to trust my own gut, and tap into my intuition. I know, when I feel a certain internal pressure, or shove, that I should pay attention. It feels like Bear pushing me forward. In fact, I think it was Bear, knowing how much I love music, and art, and drama, who pushed me toward Los Angeles and WWE. Like most people, I was really only comfortable when I was good at something, when success was pretty certain. Blind leaps of faith were really fucking scary. When you have a lot of money, you can make mistakes and fall back into a safety net. I didn’t have any dough for missteps, but the push was persistent. If someone had told me my senior year that I was going to become a WWE wrestler, I would have told them, “No way.” But I think Bear knew it was the right thing for me—it was Broadway, it was art, it was sport. When we were kids, guys used to call Nicole and me the Basham Sisters, after the pro wrestlers Doug and Danny Basham. It was our personalities, our aggressiveness, the fact that Nicole and I both really liked to brawl. If Bear could have been in the stands watching us, he would have loved it, this funny totally unlikely future in WWE. He would have loved it because I love it. After all, the only thing he really wanted for me was to stand up and fight for what I want.

  Who knows if my relationship with Bear would have even survived high school; who knows where our lives would have gone. It is a weird thing, to have a relationship that was never allowed to complete itself, at such a young age, when you are keyed up to love with such abandon. When it feels so magical. There was no closure, no sabotage, no fighting until we hated each other. As we get older and wiser and a bit more seasoned, we make choices in relationships that transcend that beginning honeymoon phase—everything is more measured, more sustainable. I’m so grateful that Bryan is the man he is. He can hold all of me, even the parts that will always be a little broken. I’m free to be sad when I’m sad, without judgment or feeling like I need to hide in the bathroom to cry. My residual grief is not an affront to him or diminishing of all the wonderful people and things that I now have in my life. He understands that my heart is fully his—but that there’s room in there to celebrate and remember Bear, too. I like to think that Bear helped make me who I am. By loving me, Bryan’s love extends to Bear as well.

  CHAPTER 4 MY OTHER BIG BREAK

  1993–2007

  Phoenix, Arizona

  Nicole

  I kicked the soccer ball for the first time when I was in fifth grade. And when I say I kicked it, I mean I whaled on it. It had been my parents’ idea to put me in club soccer—I was extremely athletic and very aggressive, which roughly translated to a “sports for her” decision. Though for my parents, athletics translated to free college and the promise that I would be too busy to become a drug addict or have an active dating life, so there was that, too. In contrast, they put Brie in ballet. That was short-lived, as they made her start playing soccer a year later, I think in part because I was so good at it. It seemed inevitable that she would be, too. While Brie is also very athletic, she took soccer for what it was and ultimately quit in high school. It didn’t really speak to her. I, on the other hand, wanted to “go HAM.” I took that shit seriously. I played sweeper, which meant that beyond being a starter (the ultimate honor), I typically stayed on the field for the entire game. This was rare in fifth grade, when there was pressure to give all kids equal playing time and show no signs of favoritism. But I was a closer. I was good.

  Soccer was a big deal in Arizona, and our coaches were former professional players from Europe. It was a no-bullshit, we’re-not-just-here-to-tool-around-and-kill-the-afternoon approach to the game. Even in fifth grade, we were on that field to win—and I loved it. I wanted to be depended on in that way. I relished the faith and trust the coaches and other players put on me. We traveled as far as Washington, D.C., for tournaments, which meant that soccer could literally take me far away from home. The promise of a life that wasn’t tethered to Arizona was very appealing at the time. It seemed like a real ticket out.

  I threw myself into soccer with so much aband
on, because not only was I good at it (and what kid doesn’t love that type of affirmation?) and very, very competitive, but also because it provided me with the structure, schedule, and boundaries that my parents weren’t able to construct at home. My coaches were strict—mandatory curfews, bedtimes, specific pregame meal plans. I needed that sort of oversight from adults who were invested in my future, who cared about my well-being, who treasured me and thought I was really worth something. My parents needed it, too, because it created a way for them to really show up for me. My parents rarely missed games. My mom would run up and down the sidelines cheering us on. My parents loved us, but the scene at home was volatile, at best. Soccer was anything but—as dependable and orderly as possible, controlled for all variables and factors.

  I was also very good at track. When I made it to regionals in fifth grade, I was the youngest competitive runner to break the track records in the 400 and the 800 in Arizona. I was super fast. I made it to regionals one year, which were held at UCLA. It was the first time I was away from Brie—I was there for a week, and so we would write each other letters. I think this was the first time that our paths ever diverged, that something separated us and put physical distance between us. I bombed my race. The girl who I really looked up to slipped and fell in the race before mine. It really shook me and I couldn’t get my head into my run. I pretty much jogged. It was the first time I had ever experienced being taken out of the game—I couldn’t get back into it.

  Throughout high school, I spent my summers doing Olympic development programs. At that time, women did okay in the pro league—it seemed like a decent living if you could line up some endorsements. That was really the only path to the World Cup, which was, of course, the ultimate dream. But my first priority with kicking that ball was to use it to get my college education paid for. I wasn’t a major student. As my sister and I say, we never learned how to talk good. But I knew I needed some sort of degree if I wanted to have a future. It all seemed within reach, too, because when I was in high school I would get pulled up into Arizona State University scrimmages. My ultimate plan was to have soccer take me away from home.

  It’s funny, because those scrimmages were some of the first times that I encountered eye rolls as an upstart. I would head onto the field, and to be fair, I was cocky as shit. The older girls would just send hate rays my way. I didn’t care at all. In fact, it just made me more driven, more competitive, more inclined to take the ball away from them. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a good training ground for WWE locker rooms. For moving through negative energy and that unbridled hope for my failure. On that field, I learned how to thrive in the toxic stew, to use it to my advantage.

  And I was aggressive, undeniably. I once got a red card (not my only one), because this girl took out Brie by yanking her down backwards by her shirt. If anyone was going to do that to her, it was going to be me! I screamed, “Don’t touch my sister!” and slammed that girl into the ground repeatedly. Obviously, a total overreaction, but people learned not to fuck with my sister! I got into a lot of fights and would yell at the coaches. I was a hothead, and I felt like I had nothing to lose. During one game we were playing in Arcadia, the crowd in the stands started yelling, “Beaners! Beaners! Go back to Mexico!” So I slide-tackled their star girl, looked at the crowd, and threw my hands up into the victory sign. They used to call me “The Rock.”

  I’ve always maintained that in order to do well at sports, you have to have a certain amount of confidence—maybe cockiness—but fearlessness for sure. Since fifth grade, I’d always made All State, or been MVP. My senior year I really wanted to be Player of the Year, which was a senior-year-only award. The rumor was that it was mine, even though a lot of the other coaches and players hated me (as mentioned, I had a mouth on me). Then a week before State, a week before that award might have been mine, a forward on the other team had a breakaway, and I did a slide tackle—and she kicked me in the shin and broke my tibia in half.

  Out on that field that day, I couldn’t move—my left side was in complete shock. My dad had to carry me to the sidelines. The firefighters came, though I assured them that nothing was broken. They played along with the charade, even though they knew just from looking at my leg that I was in serious trouble. My parents couldn’t afford an ambulance, and so the firefighters carried me to my dad’s pickup truck, and he drove me to the hospital, where I sat in the waiting room for hours. By the time they brought me back, my leg was too swollen for surgery—the doctor wanted to operate but felt like it was too risky because of the swelling and potential for blood clots. They put me in a cast and sent me home for two weeks to wait until my leg deflated. To get the cast on right—from hip to heel—they had to straighten my leg and flex my foot. Despite my incredibly high pain tolerance, I screamed bloody murder. I haven’t experienced childbirth, but to this day, it was one of the most painful experiences of my life. And I’ve been flung from the ring into tables.

  When my parents divorced a few years prior, our insurance had changed—and not for the better. When I was fourteen, I had double knee surgery because there was no cartilage between my knee joint and my leg (patellofemoral syndrome), and I was able to have it done under the supervision of a really good surgeon. But this time, it was different. The first attempt to put a rod and three screws into my leg did not work—so they had to redo the surgery three weeks later. All of my college offers were rescinded since it wasn’t clear that I would ever be able to walk properly again, much less play competitive soccer. I can’t really blame those coaches: I was stuck in bed. When I was up on my feet, I had to walk with a cane—my future as an athlete certainly wasn’t assured. And then two weeks after I broke my leg, Bear died.

  The night that Bear died, my high school boyfriend, who we’ll call Ken, had finally convinced me to get out of the house. I had been bedridden for two weeks, and getting up required a massive amount of energy—plus, my entire future had collapsed and I was pretty depressed. Ken was a football player and drove a green Camaro (of course), which was extra impossible to maneuver my leg into. We made it to the movie theater, and I was limping in on crutches, when I felt a strong urge to go home to be with Brie and Bear. Ken was annoyed—it had taken a lot of effort to get me there. But I made him take me back. He understood what was happening at home, as he had come from a broken family, too. Thank God I felt the pull to leave. Thank God I hadn’t been in a movie when she got that call.

  After Bear died, our home was a terrible scene. We had moved into a smaller house when my parents divorced, and Brie and I were sharing a room. At night, she cried inconsolably—her body just heaving in pain. I felt so far away from her, like I couldn’t possibly reach her in her grief. I also couldn’t lay any of my own sadness on her either. It didn’t help that I was immobile. At night, I would army crawl and drag myself across the floor to get into bed with her and try to calm her down. We were just two girls in Arizona with collapsed dreams and uncertain futures. Brie, in particular, felt like everything she loved had been taken away.

  After Bear died, I had an appointment for my screws to come out. My mom was out of town, so she asked my dad to take me. He was really not in a good place—and we really weren’t speaking. After, I was recovering at his house. He and Ken started fighting about something stupid, I think it was about who was getting more attention from me. They got into a yelling fight, and then both took off. My dad to walk down the freeway, Ken in his green Camaro. They both just ditched me, with nobody to even help me go to the bathroom. I think my dad was on mushrooms that day—though it was never easy to tell when he was using and when he was not—but drugs certainly fueled his rage. It was a weird time, the end-cap to a pretty terrible four-year run. It only underlined for me and Brie that we needed to get the hell out of Arizona. We needed a fresh start far away.

  My grandparents had a little bit to give for college, but my parents weren’t in any situation to pay for undergrad for two of us. I had always loved interior design and went to A
SU to check out their program. I ultimately didn’t feel like I could take out student loans and ever be certain I could pay them back. I just couldn’t afford college, but I wanted out of Arizona—it was just too full of bad memories.

  I thought about going to cosmetology school, since I was good at doing hair. I went to beauty school orientation, but it didn’t appeal. As graduation approached, Brie and I decided to pack our bags and head to San Diego, to Grossmont Community College. Anything seemed better than home. Brie and I knew we could hustle for cash—we had both worked since we were fifteen. We’d been hostesses at Seafood Central, and I’d worked as a receptionist for my mom and at a local gym, the Village. We figured if we were responsible for ourselves, without the drama of home holding us back, it could only get better.

  We did a year at Grossmont and then went to Los Angeles. Then I ended up back in San Diego with my boyfriend, the professional snowboarder. I felt like I needed to make something of myself. Even though I was old for community college, twenty-one or twenty-two, I showed up at the soccer field. Fortunately, the coach knew who I was from my high school career, and he insisted that I walk on. I demurred, but he told me to run a mile, right there. I was woefully out of shape, but he yelled “Go, go, go” the entire time. I booked it until I almost passed out. He told me to make it to my classes, keep my grades up, and I joined the team. At that point, I felt a little awkward about my age—the other girls were always hitting me up to buy them beer. When the driver of one of the vans failed to show up for a tournament, I was the only player old enough to take the wheel of a rental car and drive instead. I played there for a year and took them to a State Championship, earning MVP. This was despite the fact that I got a stress fracture in my right foot and had to learn how to kick with my left. The girls begged me to stay for another season. The coach thought I had a viable shot of making it as a professional player in Italy, but I was still with my professional snowboarding boyfriend. I knew that would be a total disaster if I moved to Europe. And by that point, Brie called me about the WWE audition—I watched the girls on Raw and then drove up to L.A. to try out.