To be perfectly honest, I was a shit soccer player.

I wasn't great at the other sports I played as a youngster either, but a part of me enjoyed soccer the most, if only for the belief it hid my relative lack of skill better than the others. Twenty two players on one field at the same time creates a hodgepodge of colors and noise roaming in all directions, and unlike the constant stop-lineup-and-start of football (or American football, for any international folks), soccer presents a fluid yet seemingly nonlinear picture to a random viewer. In other words, I could somewhat hide.

The one thing I could do very well in a generalized, unspecific sense was run around. I wasn't exceptionally fast, per se, but I could float around a field near or at my top speed for long periods of time without collapsing in a pool of my own vomit, which counts for something; that something being selected as a central midfielder which I played at almost every level of youth soccer I participated in, up through high school. I wasn't especially creative, and could barely use my left foot for anything other than short passes and as a source of constant self-loathing and critique, but goddamn it, I could run up and down the pitch and sure look like I knew what the fuck I was doing. 

Aside from being a shit soccer player, I also had the added value of finding ways to injure myself every other week. I gave up basketball during middle school because my left knee started to feel like jello. I had to put baseball down for a couple years after a shoulder injury on my glove hand made it virtually impossible to lift my left arm above chest level; a particularly cumbersome problem as a centerfielder which also made the whole "swing a baseball bat" thing kinda difficult. At least soccer put less strain on my knee once it began to heal and didn't require much use of my arms; but I was still brittle. After completing my freshman year on the JV soccer team, I felt as if I were using the body of a nearly deceased octogenarian. For the next few months, I moved about during school and elsewhere with the grace of a heavily tranquilized rhinoceros needing hip replacement surgery. Eventually the aches and pains subsided, and finding myself in surprisingly good spirits and awash with optimism, I thought I could make a run at the varsity team the following season. Two practices in during my sophomore year, while in the middle of running an otherwise mundane drill, I felt my left knee start to act up again. Didn't think anything of it since the pain was far from excruciating, yet mere moments later, in full sprint after the ball, I brushed paths with a teammate and our knees collided. You can see where this is going...it was my left knee that ended up buckling against his. The odd thing was, I don't remember the pain so much as vitriolic anger; not at the teammate for the collision, or at my ailing, utterly useless body parts. I was just...pissed. At everything. I hobbled towards the sidelines and I'm pretty sure I told our coach to "fuck off" when he gave a half-assed "you okay?" as I passed by. I do remember he didn't talk to me the rest of the day, which I could understand after having a 15 year old trying to make your team tell you to go screw, but I really didn't care. 

While the injury wasn't as serious as the cartilage tear I suffered a couple years before, it was a severe sprain that served a main course of required inactivity for a few weeks, which meant there was no way I could make varsity that year. More importantly, I found my desire to get back and playing waning by the day. I was done. I made a cursory attempt to play on the baseball team the following year, but mostly rode the bench as a few years removed the sport robbed me of my timing at the plate. In retrospect, I really didn't give a shit and have few memories from that team.

It was over.

While the benefits of playing youth sports are numerous, I share this because the hidden cruelty about my time playing competitive athletics is that the day I hung up my soccer cleats for good ended up being almost the exact point in time whatever innocence and youthful naivety I had was gone. Over the course of the next few months during that fateful sophomore year, a couple best friends of mine were killed and I lost my virginity; a bizarre one-two-three punch and kick combination that damn near changed me overnight. Neither of these things made me a "man", as becoming a man is decision one makes in regards to accepting and dealing with real responsibilities as opposed to simply "experiencing things"; yet, there's no doubt I was no longer the same person. The version of me that glided across a soccer field never once seriously thought about mortality or anything particularly serious outside of "where I should go to score a joint afterwards," nor did I have goddamn clue how to express or carry my own sexuality. For the first 15 years of my life, girls were pretty things with different anatomical parts that I didn't really understand well, nor did I have a strong desire at the time to learn more (outside of a couple early romantic interests, I was borderline asexual, really). Yet, in the aftermath of losing dear friends, something hormonal clicked where different gears starting turning; perhaps it was the materialization of some hasty carpe diem wave I rode during a time of significant emotional distress and upheaval, or it just took a few months before my 16th birthday to realize I had a penis. I really don't know; it was a fucked up time in my life.

Either way, it is funny, and sad at the same time, that giving up soccer so clearly represents a clear end to a certain part of my life. A certain part which was largely carefree, oblivious, and unrepentant. That "me" never wanted to take over the world or embodied any serious ambitions because I didn't know the world enough, nor cared to know it enough. I was just a kid. 

Recently, I had a random dream where I was back playing soccer on the JV team, yet I knew of the trauma and changes that would soon come. It took place during a game, and during the latter stages of it, our team draws a penalty kick and I'm asked to take it. The dream then momentarily becomes a montage of friends long gone and early sexual experiences, I assume this was supposed to be going through my head as I place the ball and approach the kick during "the game". Eventually, this dream then snaps back to me standing mere yards in front of the opposing goalie, and after standing there for what feels like eternity, my dream-self mutters "Carly" (one of my friends who would pass away during my sophomore year) out loud, before blasting the  ball into the lower right-hand corner of the net. There's no celebration with teammates however right after, nor is there anyone else on the pitch; the second I score, it's just me out there as everyone has magically disappeared. The dream more or less ends with me sauntering off the field, as I think even my dream-self knows this moment is complete bullshit. My alarm clock wakes me shortly after, and my non-dream, actual real self starts my day as normal. I choose not to really think about it much, because to conflate the pre- and post-soccer self into some feelgood nonsense seems almost like another tragedy on its own. Since that time and through today, I may dedicate things to those who have moved on, but not then. That version of me I want encapsulated and sheltered from the ills of the world and the now-realized faults of my current being. He was free, and I don't want anybody or anything to touch him. I don't want to burden him with loss, heartache, regret...anything. Let these things be the cross I bear today; I want to leave him be.