2. The Making of Sometimes

Charlie collapsed onto the couch of her Chicago apartment, letting out a long sigh of relief. Life on the road, while satisfying, never got any less tiring and when compared to motels, car floors and living room floors of friends and acquaintances, her couch seemed like pure heaven.

Charlotte Sometimes, or Charlotte Rogers as her birth certificate read, was a professional wrestler. It had taken her years to finally be able to call herself such with pride, but it felt damn good now that she could. Right from the beginning, Charlie was determined. She had grown up with a love for professional wrestling and had no other plans but to pursue this passion.

At seventeen years of age, with nothing but a few thousand dollars to her name and sheer determination, she took herself to the Steel Dominion, a wrestling school just a small distance from her own Chicago home, and did everything she could to get started. When she wasn't busy with school and completing her High School education, she would set up rings, take down rings, go to as many local shows as possible and of course, train.

The beginning was tough. Not in terms of learning how to bump and being beaten the crap out of (although those things weren't at all easy) but in terms of her fellow trainees. In a class dominated by young men with only one other girl, respect was even harder to come by as usual. The attitude towards women on the independent wrestling scene at this point was poor. Most were regarded as rats and were expected to act as such. The only other female dropped out after a few weeks, but Charlie had too much heart to quit. For months, she took the insults and derogatory slurs and turned them into motivation.

School dances, parties, even her Senior Prom was abandoned in favour of working a local show in front of a crowd of 23 people. Not even to wrestle, but to manage the team of Colt Cabana and CM Punk. She had bonded with the latter man over music and movies, with both of them being huge fans of Punk and horror. Cabana was a naturally likable young dude, who it was hard not to get along with. Road trips with the two men became a regular occurrence and when they weren't blasting the Bouncing Souls whilst driving down the streets of Illinois, they were discussing wrestling, something Charlie was always eager to do.

Through these local shows, road trips and big bumps taken by Charlie (or Charlie the Crisis as she went by in her earlier days) as their valet, she quickly earned the respect of the two men, as well as several other wrestlers and managers in training. Her passion shone through and overshadowed her gender and the boys quickly learned that she was not there to play around. Not all of them wanted to know, but none of it bothered her. As the shows got more frequent and her circle of wrestling friends grew, so did her confidence. Under the tutelage of Ace Steel and Danny Dominion, Charlie was becoming a wrestler, just like she had always planned.

When she finally made it out of Illinois, a year and a half after she first began training, everything began to fall into place. With a High School diploma finally under her collar, Charlie's wrestling career took off. She would go on to work all across the Mid-West and eventually the Mid-South. IWA was her first big break, so to speak. There she would meet countless fellow independent wrestlers who were all around for one reason: to learn. Most importantly, she was surrounded by respected women. Daizee Haze, Lacey, Rain, Sara Del Rey and Allison Danger were her first real female friends in the business and they had remained such in the years that followed.

From the very beginning, her trainers and peers, male and female, made it clear that women's wrestlers had it hard. It was more difficult to get booked, more difficult to get noticed and more difficult to get respect. The amount of dedicated women's wrestlers she came across in comparison to girls out to hook up with wrestlers (or rats as the boys often referred to them as) was shockingly low and the more she travelled, the more uncomfortable Charlie felt with that fact.

Regardless, she did everything she could to keep herself together and keep learning. She would intently watch the matches of the guys she travelled with like Bryan Danielson, AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Low Ki, Samoa Joe and of course Punk and Cabana and always work hard at bettering herself.

The next big break came in 2002, when Ring of Honor was formed. The small independent company brought in the best names across North America and luckily enough, Charlotte Sometimes as she now called herself as a homage to her favourite song by The Cure, was considered one of them. Although she rarely wrestled for the company, she would still travel around, managing the guys and training whenever she could. At this point, Charlie was twenty years of age and officially a college student. She had compromised with her father and enrolled at a Community College with the intentions of getting herself a degree in English Literature and Communications, "just in case the wrestling thing doesn't work out".

This meant her wrestling schedule was cut down significantly and when she was on the road, she would fit studying and writing essays in between working and training. She wasn't alone in this though, as several of the wrestlers she worked with did the exact same. At that point in time, independent wrestlers weren't the most successful bunch and none of them knew if they would ever really "make it". College degrees ensured there was always something to fall back on.

Years passed and the wrestling continued. After graduating in 2003, Charlie was able to begin wrestling more and more. By this time, she was more refined a performer and it showed. She would receive compliments from fellow wrestlers, fans and promoters and her name was finally getting out there. At 21, Charlie was invited to work for a promotion in Japan and for six months, she would scrub dojo floors, train with veterans and learn more than she had ever imagined.

From there, her determination to improve hit its peak and her one and only plan was to be the best in the world. She disregarded the big promotions in North America and instead took herself around the world to learn everything. Through travel and friends, she picked up Japanese techniques, European techniques and Lucha Libre techniques. She wanted to know everything and refused to settle for less.

As the years progressed and Charlotte Sometimes (the person and the character) matured, independent wrestling began looking up and up. By the mid-2000s, women's wrestlers were working more matches in ROH and she had more managing experience under her belt- ranging from accompanying the Second City Saints to Tag Team gold to being the love interest of Austin Aries- and through this, she became known as one of the original Women of Honor. Then, Dave Prazak opened SHIMMER and everything just got better from there. Women's wrestling was on the rise and professionally, Charlie could not be happier.

Around the same time, her personal life was looking up more than ever too. Following a wild night out after a Ring of Honor show in Cleveland, Charlie found herself becoming closer to Patrick Martin, or Alex Shelley, a fellow independent wrestler who she had known and been friends with for several years. The two of them and a group of their peers had found themselves at a local strip club and most left in the early hours of the morning drunk out of their minds. Charlie was one of the few non-drinkers of the circle and was thus the designated driver for such nights.

That one night, Shelley, despite being one of the heaviest partiers she knew, was sober too and the two of them ended up striking up a conversation whilst driving back to the hotel. The conversation continued in her room and the chemistry between the pair was undeniable. They had more in common than Charlie had with most of the people in her life, from their wrestling styles/preferences to general tastes and to be frank, she found him damn attractive.

The relationship began as a secret, due to the intrusive nature of most wrestlers and fans. Both of them were determined to make whatever they had last and a secretive relationship was the best way to go, they decided. Due to being busy with wrestling and school as a teen, Charlie had never been with anybody before, and her relationship with Alex played a big part in her developing as a young woman. When she officially gave herself to him some months into the relationship, she was sure she had met her match, even though she would always deny anything remotely smushy out loud, even when they came out as a couple.

Six years on, the gears were still turning and Charlie's relationship with Alex Shelley and the wrestling business was still as strong as it was from the get-go. She was a professional wrestler, an independent wrestler and she was happy with it, beyond belief. She had watched countless friends move up in the wrestling found and receive lucrative contracts but not once did she ever feel "left behind".

With her face buried deep in the pillows on her couch, Charlie smiled, content with yet another successful wrestling week. She was self-made, having never been contracted under either of the "big two" wrestling promotions- WWE and TNA- and that made her proud. 28 years of age and nothing could be going better for her.

And that was when her phone rang.