As some of you may know I transferred home from UCI after my first year of University basketball. This is when my stress and anxiety went from a 2 to an 11 out of 10. This transition home was great because I was able to be around my family and continue my education while doing what I loved. During my few months of that summer I was burnt out and started working, and as I started working the basketball/working out started becoming less and less of a priority. I was terrified as to what I was going to get myself into and I knew that since I had declined a position on the SFU team a few years previously, I was going to be starting at the very bottom of the food chain. Although I was grateful for the opportunity, once I had arrived I felt uncomfortable. I was out of shape, and being pushed out of my comfort zone while trying to live up to expectations of a coach that I wasn't used to. I felt like a floater who was just going through the motions but wasn't wanted or welcomed. I was told that I was a puzzle piece that didn't fit. I hated going to the gym and to practice because I was convinced that everyone hated me. After deciding that I was going to come forward and say something to my coach and tell him that I needed to be more involved, I waited and waited. But nothing happened. The girls were great but they were all extremely independent and I was used to a really tight team who were friends first, and teammates second. I always felt like when my coach was quiet with me that he was mad at me. It made me so stressed out because he would talk to everyone except for me when he walked into the gym and I let it get to my head. I finally went to talk to him and I told him that I needed to have more communication from him so that I could feel comfortable, but we are opposite (as I am extremely extraverted) and it would last a few weeks and then eventually fizzle out. Then I would be right back where I was feeling like everyone hated me and as if I wasn't wanted. At this point I was also sitting on the bench due to my physical condition when I showed up in September. I felt so frustrated because when I would play I was on such a short leash that I was playing scared and out of my typical style. When I had played through high school I barely even thought about the game while I played, I just went out there and left everything out on the court. For the first time in my life I was in my own head on the court and on the bench, and it was clouding my ability to play. It's a vicious cycle, because the more you sit on the bench the shorter your leash gets. So when I did get an opportunity and I didn't have an outstanding performance, I would get taken off and moved back even further down the food chain. And then it made me so worked up that I would dread going to everything basketball.
I used to wake up at 4:15 AM (yeup, you read that correctly) because I was commuting from Surrey to SFU Burnaby campus every day for a 6AM practice. I would wake up an hour before I had to leave because I was paranoid that my alarm wasn't going to go off and that I was going to be late or there was going to be an accident on the way. I was so concerned about not screwing up because I was already on the sh*t list. It stressed me out so bad that I would wake up with my stomach in knots and I would get physically sick. I would throw up whatever I tried to have for breakfast. I would have trouble falling asleep at night because I was dreading the morning, and I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to wake up. With the physical toll that it had taken on my body I started to get really sick. I got so sick and I developed a terrible cough that I could not shake for the life of me. I have been sick almost my entire 2 years at SFU. Which made it even harder to push through everything that I was feeling. Also SCHOOL! The schoolwork was harder than I had ever experienced, and was leaps and bounds harder than my first year of school in California. This was another stressor that I had internalized. With all of this happening basketball shifted from being what kept me sane, to what was the cause of all of my negative emotions. I never felt safe coming forward because every time that I did I was told by my coach that I need to relax and stop overthinking things. As helpful as he may have been trying to be, I didn't have the ability to do that. I never felt comfortable. And the more things progressed the more I emotionally pulled away from my sport until the point where my fire was finally burnt out. I am so exhausted and even writing this post has worn me out, because it stirs up so many emotions to think about the different layers of stress and anxiety that transpired. I am hoping that in these next few months I will be able to let go and start fresh and use these experiences as tools to help me in other aspects of my life.
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