January 1, 2014
I’m staying at Chelsea’s on her couch tonight….I have decided to start writing…I am just going to write…even if it doesn’t make any sense or even if it is meaningless. I am just going to write to help myself continue to work through my problems. I was told that writing can be very healing…I never gave it a real chance. I was too sad and felt very lazy when it came to writing because I never knew where to start. I spent too much time being mad at myself for not having been writing everything from the very beginning of my accident. It would have been truly amazing for me to be able to go back and read over the things I went through and how I was feeling. I am scared I may never be able to put it into words now. It was intense and it was craziness…but I got through it.
I wish I had all of the epiphanies I had that helped me move through each new obstacle in my way. I would be struggling and struggling and then all of the sudden have this crazy realization about what I believed life was really about and about how much the problem I was facing really didn’t have to be a problem at all… It was a life lesson and if taught me so much. I wish I had all of the things that I did for healing written down. All of the people and the things they said to me that helped me through the hard times…the things they would tell me were amazing. The advice they gave me was always exactly what I needed to hear at that exact moment I needed to hear it. The people that would cross my path always crossed it at the exact perfect moment. It was always insane to me. I could not believe how incredibly perfect everything would line up. My life was far from perfect…I was insanely depressed…but I always found this incredible amount of joy in the times those experiences would come along to lift me up when I needed it the most.
I was lifted up so many times. I fell down so many times…I I would fall but the extra pain that was added from the fall did not hurt like crazy because I was already feeling so much pain I was almost completely numb at times.
I am going to skip to how I am feeling right now…because this is the exact reason I never write…because I do write…but I try to start from the beginning to catch up to my life now so that I can finally write it all out…but I end up giving up halfway through the page because I feel there is no way I could ever write it out. And therefore I would never write out what I sat down to write out to begin with.
Right now…I am feeling depressed. I am feeling like I am not good enough and I could never be good enough. I am feeling like all of the hype I have been feeling, all of the excitement about the potential I have in my life and the opportunities I have to reach it…is just hype and it will never go any further than that. I wonder if I will be able to make it to where I want to be.
All of these feelings were caused by one practice today…all because I felt I was playing bad. I feel like my coach is so irritated with me. I know how frustrated she feels because she knows how good I could be…and I am just not there. I just wont allow myself to get there. I get so mad at myself…for the self destructive behavior I feel is going on in my mind. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I doubt myself so much? Why do I think I am less than everyone else? Like I could never be as good as them. I can! I can be really good and I could be as good as I could be…not as good as them. I am me and I have great attributes that can do great things…I have gifts and I should not waste them. I can be who I want to be and I can make the difference in the world that I want to make. I am a nice person…I do try my best to always do what is right. I do care more about other people than I do about myself. I am not sure if that is a good thing…maybe that is the missing puzzle piece that is holding me back from being the best that I can be…. where is the confidence I need…it comes and goes…but it does not stay long enough for me to believe it is real or it is possible for it to ever be permanent.
Although I do know I have come a long way…I do know I have more confidence today than I ever had before…I do know that it has taken extreme amounts of sweat and tears and hard work every single day…for the past five and a half years since my accident. I know I have worked hard to get to where I am and I should know that if I have gotten here in five years….I could be crazy further in five more….I have never really thought about it like that. The hard work I am putting in is only going to triple…I am now on the USA National Wheelchair Basketball Team and it is going to be hard work. It scares me because I don’t know if I will be able to want it bad enough to make it through all of the hard work I am going to have to endure to get there. How bad do I want it? What do I want? Why do I want it?
I can’t say for sure…because I honestly don’t know myself…literally… I don’t know myself. I am still learning who I am and where I am going. Right now I am just working hard. Right now I am just struggling to keep pushing forward and to find my way.
It can be very scary at times because I think about how easily everything could come crashing down. I think about how much work I am putting in right now to hold everything up…I feel like I am a pillar holding a roof up with everything I am trying to do on top of it…and it is very heavy and very hard…if I quite putting in the hard work…it will not hold and everything will fall. Everything. If I quite studying…I will not graduate in May…if I quite going to practice every morning at 5:30 AM no matter how tired I am…no matter if I have only gotten three hours of sleep…no matter how much I don’t feel like playing basketball that day…if I quit going…I will not be playing wheelchair basketball anymore. I will not be on a scholarship…I will not be on the USA team…I will be forgotten and I will be a failure. And in my mind I will have a psychological warfare going on like no other. I will never know the happiness I want so badly…Or the feelings of accomplishment I want to feel. I want to know that I can do it. I want to feel confident in myself. I want to know I am not a failure.
I let just one practice make me feel so shitty about myself.
I just submitted my grad school application and I should feel like I am being successful…like I am doing everything that I should be doing to meet my goals…but I don’t because I don’t feel like my mind will allow me to meet my goals. On the court is where I face my mind and fight it. If I can’t find a way to be confident in myself on the court…I will never allow myself to put all of the pieces together and be the player…and the person I know I can be. If I can’t find composure and calmness while I am shooting…I will never make it to the Paralympics.
I know I have an amazing shot…I have a very good shot. Not everyone has a very good shot…I have a gift and I want to be able to use it…. and don’t want it to just sit there under the pile of junk that is all around it. I want to get through that and be a leader. I want to be the one that can show others the way. Show them confidence and kindness. I want to let my strong morals guide me and I want to do everything that my gut tells me to do…if I did that…I know it would lead me exactly to where the universe wants me to be. My gut tells me to do nice things and to make people feel good. To make people feel noticed and loved and appreciated. I want to do big things and make a lot of people feel that way. I know I can do something very big…. I just don’t know why I am not doing it.
I want to videotape my team…to do interviews on them and get their stories out there. I know we can make a big difference in the world of acceptance.
I AM GOING TO FIND THAT CALMNESS. I AM GOING TO LEARN TO ZONE IN AND TO TAKE MY PERFECT SHOT. I AM GOING TO BE A GREAT PLAYER. NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES. I WILL LEARN TO FIND PEACE AND CONCENTRATION IN MYSELF. I will learn it from yoga, from planning ahead. From doing great on my USA Paracanoe speech at the conference in two weeks. I will make my coach proud and impress him with my ability to move the room AND CHANGE THEIR PERSPECTIVE. That is what I want to do and I am being given the opportunity to do it.
Okay now I am just rambling on…I need to go to sleep…I am pretty exhausted and I need to be ready to work on these things at tomorrows 6:30am practice. 11:16 PM.
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