by Ronda Rousey
My MMA career was getting off the ground, but I needed another job to carry me through until fighting started paying the bills. I hustled to find work. My sister Maria called a friend from high school and got me a job working the graveyard shift at 24 Hour Fitness. The job sucked, but every time the resentment welled up, I imagined the backseat of my Honda as my bedroom.
A few weeks later, I got a second job teaching judo at a club on L.A.’s Westside. I picked up a third job working as a vet assistant at an animal rehabilitation clinic. It was piecemeal employment, but it was enough to pay (most of) my bills. Besides, I was so in love with DPCG that, as long as he was with me, nothing else in the world mattered.
But you can only live in a bubble for so long before it pops.
After almost a year of being nearly inseparable, DPCG called me as I was leaving grappling practice.
“I need to see you,” he pleaded.
When I got to his place, he was sitting on his bed, crouched over. Roxie was cowering in the corner of the room, more frightened than I had ever seen her. I set my purse down next to the bedroom door.
“I drank,” he said.
I didn’t know what that meant. “It’s not the end of the world. You drank today. It’s one lost day. We will move on. Just talk to me about everything that’s going on with you.”
He had drunk a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor before I arrived and he pulled out a six-pack of beer that he drank as we sat there. He’s going to drink for today, I thought to myself. Just let him get it out of his system and we will move on tomorrow.
A few hours passed. He slipped into this other place. His pupils were so dilated that his eyes looked black. I couldn’t get him to focus on me.
“I gotta go on a journey,” he told me. His voice was flat.
“What is wrong with you?”
As a bartender, I was used to seeing people who had too much to drink, but this was unlike anything I had ever seen. He was starting to scare me.
“I gotta go on a journey,” he said again.
“Talk to me. I’m right here.” But he was somewhere else. He kept staring into space, then he got up to leave.
“You’re not fucking leaving this room.” I didn’t raise my voice, but I stood blocking the doorway.
Looking right past me, he tried to move me aside as if I was a chair that happened to be in his way. I planted my hands on his chest and pushed him onto the bed. He tried to get back up. I shoved him again and he hit his head against the wall. My stomach dropped. I thought I’d hurt him. But he shook it off, unfazed, then tried to get up again. I shoved him once again, more gently this time. He didn’t fight me. He just sat there for a few seconds, then tried again as if he had forgotten what had preceded. We must have danced this strange dance a dozen times. Each time he tried to stand, my muscles tensed, preparing to go another round. And each time my heart sank deeper. DPCG was slipping further away from me, and I could not pull him back. Finally he sat on the bed.
I ran into the kitchen, found his keys on the counter, and hid them in a cupboard before running back into the bedroom in case I had to intercept him again.
I sat down beside him, feeling exhausted and sad. A little while later, he got up like he was going to the bathroom, then made a sharp turn for the front door.
I headed him off, and for the next hour, I sat guarding the door, blocking the apartment’s only exit.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I’m sorry. Let’s lie down. Let’s just lie down.”
I was drained. It was past three a.m. and I had been guarding him for hours. We got into bed in silence. I looked into his eyes and he seemed present again. It looked like he was finally sobering up. We lay there together, and he held me in his tattooed arms. Slowly, I relaxed, and eventually, I drifted off to sleep.
I woke up in the morning, alone. The contents of my purse were strewn all over the bedroom floor. DPCG was gone along with my car.
I called his phone, but he didn’t answer.
I called everybody I could think of. I called his friend Mike. I called his friend Luke. I called his friend Jack. I called his mother. I called my mother. Everyone said the same thing: Call the police and report your car stolen. They’ll look for the car and they’ll find him.
I felt ill and my hands shook as I dialed 911. The dispatcher did little to reassure me.
“If you report this car stolen and he tries to resist, then you know, they have license to shoot him,” he said. “Do you want that to happen?”
“No!” I said appalled. “I don’t want you to shoot my boyfriend!”
They sent a squad car over to the apartment. There were two officers—one a head taller than the other. I invited them inside. They were very nice. The tall one gave me a forced smile, then his partner took out a notepad and flipped it open. I told them my story, and the knowing looks on their faces made it clear that they’d heard this all before.
“Are you really going to shoot him?” I asked.
The officers looked slightly confused.
“No,” the short one said. “We’re going to drive around to different motels, looking in the parking lots. We’ll try to find him for you.”
His partner gave me a sympathetic look.
“Here is a number where you can reach us,” he said, handing me a business card. Then they set out to look for him.
I sat on DPCG’s living room floor, leaning against the wall, and barely moved. His dog, Roxie, lay at my feet.
“What the fuck did you get yourself into?” I asked myself aloud.
I had no idea what to do. I kept checking my phone, turning it over and over in my hands. Willing it to ring. Then it did. It was his mother. We had met in passing, but were not close.
“What exactly happened?” she asked.
I recounted the events of the night before.
“You let an addict drink?” she said, her tone accusatory. “How could do you that?”
“I . . . I . . . I thought he had a problem with heroin, not alcohol,” I stammered.
“Unbelievable. They’re all connected,” she said. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but this is your fault. You encouraged him.
“Let me know if you hear from him,” she said, and hung up. Fifteen minutes later, she called again. I let it go straight to voicemail.
An hour passed, and I heard someone at the door. I jumped up. Roxie started barking like crazy. The door opened. It was his mother.
“No word?” she asked. She seemed less angry at me.
I shook my head.
“This is why you shouldn’t get involved with an addict,” she said.
She pulled out her phone and started making phone calls. I sat there in the kitchen, shell-shocked. She went into his bedroom and started throwing clothes into a bag. Her phone rang. We both jumped.
“It’s not him,” she told me, looking at the caller ID.
Late that afternoon, DPCG just walked back into the house. A wave of relief washed over me. He looked like shit, but he was OK. He threw himself down on the bed and started crying.
“I’m so sorry,” he choked out between sobs. I’d never seen him cry before. He confessed to taking my car downtown to score heroin. All he could find was crack. So he spent the morning doing crack, then just drove around. As he started to come down, everything hit him at once. He was low. Lower than I’d ever seen him. He couldn’t even look me in the eye.
The situation was so fucked up, I didn’t even know how to process it. His mom took control with an amazing level of organization; she had been down this road before.
“Get in the car,” she said, firmly. “You’re going back to rehab.”
He stood up slowly but didn’t argue. She led him out to her car, a luxury sedan. I followed them, Roxie close behind me. DPCG slid into the back and I sat next to him. Roxie lay down at his feet. It was a forty-five-minute drive to the rehab center, and it was silent all the way there.
“I’m sorry,” he said once we stepped out of the car.
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I tried to force the kind of smile that tells a person it’s going to be all right, but I couldn’t get the corners of my mouth to turn up.
DPCG signed his admittance papers with a shaking hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m so sorry.”
His mom and I got into her car. I needed to go back to his place to get my car. She looked tired and worried. We pulled onto the freeway.
“I can’t believe you let him drink,” she said again. I said nothing.
“God, who lets an addict drink?” She wasn’t even looking in my direction. She was quiet for the next few miles.
“I knew when he met you, he would be back here, but I still can’t believe we’re going down this road again.” She wasn’t talking to me this time. She was clutching the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were white. I glanced back at Roxie, who was still lying on the floor in the backseat.
We kept driving.
“You need to leave him,” his mom said to me, breaking the silence. “He’s no good for you, and you’re no good for him. You can’t be with someone who is running around doing this kind of shit.”
She continued like this in bursts, the entire way home. She never took her eyes off the road, and I never said a word.
She dropped me off at the house and drove away without saying goodbye. I stood there with Roxie, who stared up at me looking scared and lonely. I realized I felt the exact same way. I reached down and scratched the back of her neck.
“Come on, girl,” I said. She followed me to my car. I opened the back door and tossed my purse on the floor. I tried to get Roxie in the car, but she became frantic, pulled away, and ran down the street. I slammed the door and ran after her, catching her halfway down the block. Holding tightly to her leash, I walked her back to the car and went to pull open the door. It was locked. I had to laugh. I could not have possibly imagined that the day could get any worse. I called AAA, and then sat on the curb to wait. Roxie would not settle down, and I yanked hard on her leash.
“Roxie, calm down,” I said firmly.
A guy I had never seen before walked across the street in my direction.
“How would you like it if someone jerked you around like that?” he asked me.
“Motherfucker, you don’t have any idea what’s going on today. Do not fuck with me!” I snapped. He looked at me like I was crazy, then walked away.
It took more than an hour for AAA to come.
By the time they arrived, it was too late to pick Mochi up at doggie daycare. I didn’t know how I was going to afford paying for two overnight stays. When I finally got home, my apartment was cold. Money was tight, and I had decided that while electricity and water were necessary utilities, gas for heat was not.
My room was dark and I just climbed straight into my bed. I didn’t have sheets (they cost money that I didn’t have), just a sleeping bag. It was so cold. Roxie climbed up onto my bed. I covered her with my sleeping bag and wrapped my arms around her. We spooned all night for comfort and warmth. Tears poured down my face.
While DPCG was in rehab, he would write me long handwritten letters filled with apologies and declarations of love. I’d lie in my sheetless bed reading them and spooning his dog, and crying, thinking, He loves me, that’s all that matters.
I missed him a lot. I had been around him every single day for months. I had actively started pursuing my MMA dream, and he was the one person I felt really believed in me. I wanted him back.
I went to see him on visitors’ day about two weeks after he had been there. He looked a million times better than when we had dropped him off. The light was back in his eyes. We sat on a little couch in the visiting area holding hands, then he took me on a tour of the well-manicured grounds. He was embarrassed that I had to see him there, but happy that I had come. I had been there for an hour and then it was time to leave. As I walked out the door, I realized I wasn’t ready to go. I wasn’t ready to let him go.
A few hours later, I pulled into the parking lot of 24 Hour Fitness in North Torrance. I sat in my car, trying to muster the strength to walk in. It had already been an emotionally draining day, and of all the jobs I was working, this was my least favorite and the most thankless. I closed my eyes.
“Just wait,” I told myself, launching into the internal pep talk I pulled out whenever I needed some cheering up. “I’m going to be super successful one day, and I’m going to write a book. It’s going to be a kickass autobiography. And this is how it always happens in the book. This is just that part of the book where the character is going through hard times. This is that sucky part of the story. Just get through a few more pages, and it’s going to have an amazing ending.”
I took a deep breath, stepped out of the car, and walked into the gym. I sat behind the counter and spent the next several hours jerking my head back as I tried to keep myself from nodding off.
“I hope you fucking die,” Eileen spat at me, snapping me out of a semi-sleep.
“Huh?” I shook my head slightly, pulling myself back into the moment.
“I hope you fucking die,” Eileen repeated.
I put on my best customer-service smile.
This is just the sucky part of the book, I reminded myself. And you, I thought, turning my attention to Eileen, will be one of the villains.
The last person I wanted to deal with was Eileen, an alcoholic lady who lived in her car. She reeked of booze and her dirty blonde hair looked like it rarely saw a comb. She had bags under her eyes and a cluster of pimples along her jawline. She scowled at me, and though she was probably in her mid-thirties, she looked closer to fifty.
I had less than an hour until I could clock out. The air conditioner kicked into full blast at five every morning and I was freezing cold. I just wanted my shift to be over.
Eileen would wish death upon me every week when she would put the tip of her finger, where the finger and nail meet, on the scanner and, of course, her print wouldn’t register. Tap. Tap. Tap. I would hear the angry tapping of her fingernail on the scanner’s glass.
Eileen would glare at me. “It’s not working! It’s not working!” she shouted. “Just let me in.”
She would always fight with me. She’d scream that I was stupid and I would calmly explain that she had to place the pad of her finger down, but this morning I just couldn’t bear to guide her through the process again.
She kept jamming her finger into the scanner. Finally, by chance, she got it right and the machine registered her print.
“You’re all set,” I said in an overly cheerful tone. “Have a great workout.”
Eileen stormed into the workout area.
As the clock slipped from 5:59 to 6:00 a.m. I grabbed my keys and headed to the car in the cool November air.
“Damn it!” The gas gauge was on empty. I was surprised, somehow I was always surprised, but the empty tank was strategic. The cheapest gas in L.A. was right by the 405 freeway entrance near 24 Hour Fitness. I would time it so that my tank was at the absolute emptiest point when I had my shift. It will be fine, I told myself, it was only a short drive.
But the whole way there I leaned forward, praying that the smallest amount of momentum would be enough to propel my little Honda to the ARCO station.
As I stood there pumping the gas, I was so tired and cold that my hands were shaking as I put the gas in my car.
I put my whole minimum wage paycheck into the tank and my heart sank. I wasn’t taking home a single penny after having worked all night. I wanted to curl up and sleep right there in the gas station parking lot. Keep going, I told myself. In twenty minutes I’ll be home and in bed. I was doing strength and conditioning training on Mondays and I had to train in a couple of hours. But if I got home by six-thirty, I could sleep for three hours before I had to work out. I got in my car and turned the heat on full blast.
I pulled onto the freeway, ready to zoom home. Gridlock. Bumper-to-bumper as far as I could see. I forgot it was a holiday weekend. Everyone who had
tried to avoid the return-to-L.A. traffic on Sunday was coming home at dawn on Monday.
The traffic was slow. The heat was on. I was so tired. My car was so comfortable.
BOOM!
I woke up when my face smashed into the steering wheel. I opened my eyes. The accident didn’t knock me out. It woke me up.
I had rear-ended a silver Toyota Solara.
I pulled over. When I touched my face my hand was covered in blood. I was edging toward hysteria. My breathing was quick. Tears were burning my eyes. I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what to do. I called my mom.
“I just got into an accident on the freeway, and I don’t know who to call. Do I call 911?”
She told me emphatically yes.
Cars crawled past and I could see the passengers staring at me. Neither car was badly messed up, but the accident would have to go through the insurance. I started to worry again about money. My insurance rate would go up and I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough for rent.
The woman in the Toyota walked up to me, and I watched as the color drained from her face when she saw me. She kept asking me, “Are you OK?”
The paramedics came. The guy looked me over and told me, “You have a broken nose and maybe a mild concussion. That sucks. Go home.” He may have used more medical terminology, but that was the gist.
When I fell asleep at the wheel, I smashed my nose on the steering wheel and deviated my septum; now my nose is a little deformed. It’s one of the reasons why when I get punched in the face, my nose goes flat. If you look up my nose, you can see it’s off.
Since both cars were drivable, the highway patrol officer said we were free to go. The paramedics left. Highway patrol left. The Solara driver drove off. I sat in my car on the freeway for another few seconds. I don’t know what I was waiting for. I was just waiting. I wanted to close my eyes again and wake up and be anywhere else. To wake up in my bed, rested for the first time in God knows how long. And not sore for the first time in God knows how long. And certainly not looking like I’d been whacked in the face with a baseball bat.
I felt beat down. My face hurt. I was shaken up from the crash. I felt myself teetering on the edge, struggling to find my footing. Everything seemed to be falling apart.