5:00 am wake up. Pack your bag. Grab breakfast. Head out the door. Drive for an hour. Play for an hour. Drive for an hour. What now? Again and again and again. Or 5:45 pm get ready. 6:00 pm leave the house. Drive half an hour. Practice. Drive half an hour. Dinner, homework, shower, bed. Again and again and again. I live this simple life, something I’ve never lived without. It seems to have become a part of me, a limb I wouldn’t dare to detach.
I forget everything once my cleats are tied and shinguards are shoved between my too-tight socks and always-bruised shins. Sixteen people. I can depend on them, yet they hardly know me. Three to five days a week, five to ten hours. Yet I feel like it only gets in the way. I am blind. Either by the sport or by everything else surrounding me. I would like to think I would breathe easier without it, but to be honest I would probably suffocate myself instead. A love hate relationship is what I want to call it. One minute I love it and the next I hate it, but I always go back to loving it. I feel stuck as well as just as free as a bird. Is it something I need but don’t want? Want but don’t need? Why question something you would need? What would they think if I stopped needing it, wanting it?
For the moments when I am on the field I am concentrated, with laser focus, ready at the whistle. Anything and everything stops following me at the field entrance, and from then on I can breathe the crisp air and sweat out all the problems that have decided to try and cling on a little longer. If only time could stop and I could forever play here and now. Maybe I’m not deciding on the soccer, but what’s next. Maybe it isn’t the sport that’s the problem, but everything else surrounding me. We’ll see, but for now I will play on, again and again and again.