Discouragement

So I missed a few more practices due to a cold, and allergies, a migrane from hell, and being out of ton over the 4th of July weekend.
Last night I wrestled with my demons and decided to go. While skating with the new group of fresh meat (about half of my old fresh meat class, the girls who started when I did in March, graduated to become rosterable skaters!) I started to feel discouraged.
Some of the new girls can skate circles around me. During a couple of the drills I was fighting back tears because here I am, having been doing this since March, and I am still slower than some of the girls who are just starting. I realize we all have to start somewhere, and my first time ever on skates was 2 weeks before my first derby practice! Some of these new girls have been skating all their lives.
When I first arrived at practice last night, one my teammates said hi, and asked where I'd been. We chatted for a while and she has been involved in derby forever--she was one of the founders of our team. She said that she has seen people who improve fast and those who improve slower, she said that some girls start off great and then plateau. There are so many different people. She told me not to give up, and I admitted that the thought had crossed my mind a time or two.
Yes, it has been frustrating at times that I can't do a crossover and that I feel so much more awkward at times on the rink than the other girls look. But I have improved SO MUCH from when I began. Do I still lose my balance and fall a lot? Sure, but I fall small :)
And last night, while skating laps on the outside of the track, one of the veteran skaters doing drills on the inside, was knocked out of bounds and into me, and I didn't fall, in fact, it barely phased me. My Meat Mistress saw me take the hit and smiled and nodded at me. I gave her a thumbs up. If that would've happened a few months ago, I would have been on the floor.
Small things like that keep me going, even when at other times during last night's practice I was holding back tears at not being able to do a few of our drills...
I know I have to keep trying, and I have been missing a lot of practices over the past couple of months, but I definitely plan on re-prioritizing derby in my life-as well as my physical fitness in general- if I get in better shape, derby will hopefully get easier!
In the words of Andy Grammer (and the video I am about to share below (hopefully it works)), I just gotta keep my head up!