Thoughts When I Should Be Working

But the game yesterday only made me want to stay late to run sprints and kick the ball barefoot; and I just read an article about Mia Hamm.

See, and that’s what people just don’t get. On the other side of that touch line, anything goes. Emotion is no longer outlawed. It’s not even frowned upon, and it’s often rewarded. On the other side of that touch line nothing on the outside of the line matters. No coaches, no stands, no parents, no family, no friends, no car in the parking lot, no clothes in the closet, no money in the wallet, no eye contact, no grades, no bathroom mirrors; only a ball, a net, a position. Only the fight. Only the battle. Only the best I can give of myself. Only myself. Only how much practice I’ve done on my own. Only how many hours I spent in the backyard dribbling around the dog; how many tries it took until I got it over the neighbor’s fence again. Only how many hours in the front yard, 25 continuous feet touches was the goal for today, so it’s not nearly enough. It needs to alternate every time; how many with just my left foot; how many never touching it with my thighs? If 25’s the goal, then no water until 50, and no refills or quitting until 100. Nothing matters except not going in until there’s 30 juggles on the head. It doesn’t matter if the lights on the tennis court—the only open place to practice—go out at ten, the moonlight is all the light I need because I can’t go in until I get that 30, and really 35 is better. No, I can’t go inside until 100, but I can’t go inside with pride ever, and not with contentment unless it’s 200. The runs never end, nor are they ever far enough, and I better start the sprint to the finish line well beyond 100 yards out because a run from half after a 90 minute game and another 30 minutes of overtime in the championship when it’s tied is a hell of a lot longer than 100 yards, and a hell of a lot more important than if there’s lead instead of quadriceps and fire instead of calves and fatigue instead of oxygen in my lungs. If I’m not bloody then I haven’t played hard enough. If I can get up the stairs at the end of the game without help then I didn’t play hard enough. If I’m able to eat right after the game then I didn’t care enough and don’t deserve to.

And that never comes back. That never exists again. I still love soccer. I still love playing. I love the smell of the grass and the feel of the ball at my feet. But now I also love the joy and guilt of the ball hitting the back of the net, for my team or theirs. It’s always wrong to score and it’s always wrong to let the other team score. It’s always correct to score and to let the other team score.

It’s still an escape. It’s still a game. It’s still the best sport in the world. It’s no longer the release. It’s no longer emotion and a different world. It’s still in this world. And that’s inherently the problem and the solution. It’s still in this world so I’m still real and my entire worth isn’t based on scoring or stopping them from scoring or how many times she got the cross off or how many times I dove in or how many one-on-one headers I didn’t jump high enough to win. I now have worth in this world of cars in parking lots and friends and money in wallets and grades and degrees. So I’m okay whether or not I play well. But that’s all I ever can be. My security from failure is also my obstacle to success. I’m okay. I don’t live or die on the field, so I no longer die, but I’ll never completely live again either.

I want to know when I can feel again. When I can play with reckless abandon and have something matter so much that tears are appropriate and it makes sense to not be able to eat and the preference is always blood over tears because the tears can only come when the rest of the team is out of view and earshot, and the blood might mean I did an okay job. I want to know when I can feel all the passion running through me and not be embarrassed by it, but live fuller because of it. I want to know when it will ever be okay again for a coach to almost rip my shirt, for a man in a position of power to physically force me to hurl around to face him and his utter disappointment in my dare to be afraid. When will it be okay to see a grown man push back the tears as he pushes us together, our noses mere inches apart, the saltwater stench from his pooling eyes burning my own nostrils with the knowledge in my heart that I was the cause. That my failures out on that field didn’t do enough to stop it. When will it ever be okay again to love a group of women so much it’s okay to hate them and to have them hate me right back? In what other situation am I allowed to be free to scream and run and slide and make myself hurt? Where else is the more I hurt positively correlated with the amount of admiration and rewards I receive? Where else can I be strong in the truest sense of the word I know? Where else do I need to control my emotions so fiercely that the correct course of actions is to let them out, funneling hatred into speed, desire into finesse, anger into forethought, and love for others into taking the ball and scoring myself?