Poorlittleklainer

I’m a college soccer athlete. I’ve played soccer since I was 5 years old, and I love the sport. I love it so much I want to coach it when I graduate. But I‘ve lost the fun of playing the sport ever since I got to college. I’ve been playing college now for two years, starting on my third now. I’m a junior and thinking seriously (or as serious as a 20 year old can) about the future. And when I entered this program, I was told everything was great and the coaches were awesome. And when I came down to train with the girls and the team I liked them and the girls and the coaches. So I signed on. Then I actually get here my freshman year.

Cue being told you’re terrible for screwing up. That every wave you don’t make means you shouldn’t be here. And that if you feel bad at being constantly told you aren’t good enough and you’re replaceable and you’re expendable, well you’re just being an emotional kid and can’t handle real life shit.

So I sucked it up that year. Was promised I’d be the starting goalkeeper the next year since there were only two of us and the senior was graduating. Then comes sophomore year and another goalkeeper is brought on without my knowledge or anyone saying anything and she starts over me. And I’m not gonna say she isn’t good and that’s not the point. The better keeper should start and I totally get that. That’s not the issue.

The issue is our coach uses the two of us as pawns. The minute she makes a mistake I’m told to warm up in full view of the other keeper. It’s her warning. Don’t screw up or else. All the while the same stuff is getting drowned into our heads of we aren’t good enough.

Now the team is seeing the way the coaches treat us. The other goalkeeper is the starter so obviously she’s better than me. So I become lesser than a starter. So I don’t deserve the same respect they give the starters. So they start treating me like shit too. They don’t talk to me. They don’t interact with me unless it’s to tell me to make the save. To try. Even though I’m trying with every fiber of my being and it’s not good enough. I’M not good enough.

Cut to the end of the year and I’m thinking I need to quit the team. I’m having a mental moment and my mental health isn’t good at all. Because being told you’re not food enough affects me outside of soccer too. Suddenly a 95 on a test is an F. Suddenly the person in the mirror is a terrible person and doesn’t deserve any semblance of happiness.

I didn’t realize before this summer how bad it was until I started talking to my parents and realized I don’t remember when the last positive thing I said to myself was. I don’t remember the last time I thought I was good at soccer. I don’t remember the last time I thought I was pretty. I don’t remember the last time I complimented myself on something I did good, because nothing I did was good.

But I decided to stay playing. Stay on the team that is causing my mental health to suffer all because of the scholarship. See that’s the root of the issue. I’m getting a really good scholarship for an out of state college that pays for a little more than half my tuition each semester. I keep thinking I can push through all of this but I’m just so tired of feeling like a failure every moment I make a mistake. I’m so tired of crying after every practice. I’m so tired of my mental health taking a backseat because I need this scholarship. And I’m trying so hard to get out of my own head and tell myself it’s just a game and that you are worth more than this but it’s so hard. It’s so hard to tell myself I’m worth more when I feel like I’m worthless.

Hey, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and I just want to say I’m sorry. But I was putting way too much stress on myself, to the point where I was breaking down crying pretty much every day and generally felt like shit about myself. So I had to regroup and focus on my own mental health and take this winter break as a way to just disconnect and focus on myself. However, I do have a new story that I’m writing, and it’s different than anything I’ve actually written before. So if you wanna head to my AO3, it’s called Thicker than Water and Chapter One is up now, and you’ll immediately see why it’s different. 

This isn’t fandom related, but I still need to put this out there. I live only about ten minutes away from the STEM school in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, where currently, 7 kids have been injured and one has been killed. I can’t even put into words the amount of anger I feel that not only has this injustice happened, but that it continues to fucking happen. 

My dad and I were watching the news and he said he keeps getting flashbacks to the time my uncle was a senior in Columbine twenty years ago. Twenty years ago he stood outside the school he went to, waiting to hear if his little brother was alive or not. Twenty years has passed since that tragic day in Columbine, when we thought it wouldn’t get any worse than it has. 

Well guess what, it’s gotten worse. 

What pisses me off the most isn’t the fact that people have died. Yes, that’s an absolute tragedy and I feel so bad for the families of the kids who shouldn’t be dealing with what they are dealing with today. It’s that as I was watching the news, the newscasters were saying kids today are used to this. WE ARE USED TO THIS?! Why the fuck should we be used to this? Why the fuck should we be raised in a society where active shooting drills are normal? Why the fuck should we be raised in a time when people refuse to put the responsibility in the hands that could actually change shit? And yes, I’m getting political. Fuck whoever says I shouldn’t. Twenty years has passed since Columbine, and the only thing that has changed is our reactions and protocols and safety to this scenarios. And yes, I understand that we need these safety protocols, I understand that the situation could have been much worse than it was today. But twenty years has passed, mass shooting after mass shooting, and what has changed? Why do we still live in a time when it might be the day parents drop their children off to school, a place we should be safe, and yet that day might be the last time they ever see their children alive? We need change, and we needed it twenty years ago. 

I’m sick and tired of the people who could actually change shit sitting on their asses and sending their “thoughts and prayers.” How about you send some actual gun reform? How about you send some actual help so that this shit never happens again? 

And the worst part of it all is that I KNOW this isn’t going to be the last school shooting. There’s going to be another one, because this is just another blurb in history that people might talk about twenty years from now. I’m fucking done with this shit.