No Place Like Home

[Crystal Zdunich]

Hello all of my Stars and Starlets.

I could sit here and say so much and yet it would be looked upon as complaining or being a whiny little brat but to be brutally honest. I know I have been in this situation for a while and for the first time I will be the first person to admit that I haven’t been quite up to snuff. I haven’t been where I should be in my career and there could be a lot of factors that go into it.

I won’t make any excuses to why things didn’t go my way but instead I will own up to my shortcomings because I haven’t been serious. I haven’t been putting the time in like I should have into my wrestling career. I have been trying to get by on name sake alone or threatening everybody with my stable.

Yet during this time of struggling the real reason I have been a victim is because I made myself into a victim. I am a crybaby because I complain, and whine over the same old shit over and over again. Not once do you ever hear me talk about improving my game or getting better. Instead I rather blame the entire world when I should have been looking at my own reflection in the mirror and pointing at myself.

It’s my fault that I am where I am at and I can finally see that. I am finally ready to do something about it and I won’t threaten you with a stable or using the BFC to get to where I am destined to be because if I showcase that I won’t get the respect. I won’t get the admiration, or any acknowledgement.

At the end of the day Last Rites is about one thing and one thing and that’s survival. It’s about endurance and showcasing to the world that you have the ability to fight through everybody else and make it to the very end. You have the ability to outlast whoever may step through those ropes so you could emerge victorious.

Because of my actions these past few months I was pinned and had to sit out from receiving any title match, and just recently I got pinned by the likes of Gabriela Luna and am the number one entrant in this match.

It really seems as if the deck is stacked so heavily against me. It seems like the odds are right there and all of them are saying I am going to fail but you know what? If there was a time in my life where I really needed to step out of my shell to do something!

I realize that now is that time to make something happen and that’s why I am telling you all that not only will I walk into this match as the very first entrant but I will be the woman who will go on to win this match because I am hungry for this opportunity.

I am hungry tor my star to rise again and this is my ticket to getting that leading role again. To the wonderful ladies of BFC who will also be in this match with me Kate Steele said something to Ciara and I think she had a point.

She told you not to trust me and the more I think about it is the more that I think everyone should pay attention to her. As soon as the bell rings for the Last Rites match I am going to be looking out in the interest of one person and that being myself. Nobody has lived a day in my shoes. They might look at the surface and think that I am well put together.

I might have the wonderful sense of fashion, I might have the bright purple hair that reads I am confident in myself but beneath the surface everything isn’t what it appears to be. There is a piece of me that feels very uneasy and I might not be the most confident of people.

Just for me to get to where I am was a struggle. Who am I exactly?! I am Christina Rose Hilton-Lopez. I am a half breed at least that is how everyone picked on me in school because I am a mixed Latina and African American woman.

The reality is my very birth was a mistake because some crazy college student went to San Juan on a Spring Break and slept with one of the locals. She flies back to Detroit Michigan and finds out she’s pregnant with me.

Instead of owning me that I am her daughter that woman leaves me on the doorstep of her older sister and my aunt adopted me as her despite having four kids of her own in a single mother household with the father bailing out.

As the youngest of five I got picked on by my siblings, everybody in school questioned on why I didn’t look like the rest of my family. How was I supposed to know anything about myself?

When I do meet my biological mother I find out she is a severe crack cocaine addict, and at the same time I become yet another statistic.

I had it going for me in school. As a freshman I was one of the best pitchers in town for softball. All county, and All State in my freshman year. I had scouts from Michigan State University looking at me as a prospect but I blew it and let it all go down the drain when I had a teenage pregnancy.

The struggle was always real. I dropped out of school everybody made fun of me and I am thankful for my biological father for finding me.

The biggest blessing was finding out that he was a famous wrestler, and he took me to his wrestling school in Mexico so I could do something with my life.

I became a Luchadora. I wore a mask, and became La Paloma which means the Dove in Spanish .

I worked my entire ass off in that school and I made something of myself. In my father’s eyes I wasn’t the hood rat from Detroit. I was actually somebody, and I became somebody because I put the time into it. Being in that school was my livelihood. It was where I felt alive and Lucha Libre was always in my background.

God Bless my father’s soul because he left it all to me. He left me the wrestling school, and all of his knowledge but instead I was too busy caught up in trying to get famous. In trying to marry money in Todd Williams, and trying to get on the quick path to Hollywood that everything else about the wrestling part seemed to be not important.

The truth is it is important it’s part of who I am and it was in Mexico where I learned this craft of wrestling. It is where I learned how to be a better mother, and how to be an amazing wrestler. Granted when I came back to America I found the father of my child in Todd Williams and instead of getting into the ring I spent many years being a dumb interviewer or a valet for him.

I really didn’t get the big break I needed until I found all female companies and started to make a name for myself. The fact is I have come a long fucking way from those days and when I think of being a Luchadora I think of my time with my father.

The things he implemented into my life and I will cherish them forever. This title means the world to me because it represents everything my father stood for and it doesn’t matter if I am the first entrant in the match. As long as I am focused and really push myself for it I know I can accomplish anything.

Which includes winning this match.

I am in a place that I am happy with.

I fully accept everything that has ever happened during my time here. I am ready to showcase to the world that I can earn this and I am not going to let anybody tell me anything differently. No one will stand in my way and when that bell rings I know it’s me versus the world but in reality that’s my story in a nutshell.

That’s me on an everyday basis so this match won’t be any different. I fele like I have this match and I have the tools to win. Now is the time to put the complaints to the side and do what I know I can do.

Daddy I hope you are watching because this one is going to be for you.

Lights

Camera

Action

It’s showtime!!!!

It’s time to put a curtain call on the woman that you all thought I was and Roll The Credits on what you think you know about me and start blossoming into what I am destined to be.

Nothing wil lever stop this rose from blossoming.

Mexico City, Mexico

Crystal could have been doing a lot of things but something had pulled her back to the wrestling school in Mexico. LA Palomas’s Gimnasio… When her father stepped down as head teacher he had left everything to Crystal and her brothers. Crystal walked around in a hoody as she could watch the wrestling hopefuls give everything they had in sparring matches. Crystal just gazed at everything and it wasn’t long before one of her brothers jamal Lopez walks over to her.

Jamal: You know sis… Incognito isn’t that thing. IT defeats the purpose when we can see the purple hair from underneath your hoody.

Crystal nods her head with a smirk.

Crystal: Oh was it that easy to see me? You know if I had one of my Hollywood make up artists with me that really wouldn’t have been the case.

Jamal shakes his head as he looks deeply into the eyes of his little sister.

Jamal: Don’t give me that… Why are you here Christina?! It’s not like you to just come all the way out here. I thought things were really comfortable in America, I thought you couldn’t be caught out of California.

Crystal however just shakes her head as she walks a few feet before glancing at the huge picture of her father.

Crystal: I just wanted to come out here to remember why I love wrestling so much. Sometimes it gets washed away when you live a façade for a life and have to put up a wall of bullshit so people won’t know the real you.

Jamal: Well that’s what being a Starlet is all about right? Simply playing the role of someone else so you can hide who you really are?! The fact is Crystal that doesn’t work with me, or should I just call you Christina. You know I never really liked that whole Crystal thing.

Crystal nods her head as she sighs in return.

Crystal: I know… Part of me doesn’t even want to be Crystal anymore. I am sick of it. It’s like people expect me to be a certain way and none of it is true. I am tired of living a charade and façade of a life. I just want to be myself.

Jamal smiles as he points and shows Crystal a huge picture of Crystal. Crystal is taken back as she runs her fingers through her hair.

Crystal: What is that?!

Jamal: A picture of you. Just because you aren’t here doesn’t mean you aren’t respected. These students respect you as the head teacher of this gym even though you aren’t here. They are waiting for the day for you to come in and take over. I can run it but they want what you have.

Crystal: What being a failure?!

Jamal shakes his head.

Jamal: They don’t see that when they look at you. They see someone who made it in America. Granted you might be struggling but you made something of yourself. You made a huge name of yourself, and you just need to remember where you came from.

Crystal: I know that’s why I came here for inspiration.

Jamal: Well if you need some.

Jamal points at the students.

Jamal: That should be all you need… They need you Crystal… They need you.

Crystal just nods her head with a loud sigh as she looks around. She knew she needed to be here. She knew deep down he was right.