recently, or for a few months now, i’ve struggled with getting over a tournament.
i’ve been in a sport cca, which i will call z. i have liked and enjoyed this sport, but when i was made captain before the tournament, i felt pressurized by myself and i told myself that i was not good enough, and i shouldn’t disappoint my teammates and coaches. i liked my coach, platonically, because she was funny and friendly to me.
during the training period, i started to fall into a hole of self-deprecation. i played z. sport mostly because i felt obliged to do so, and to prepare for the tournament.
fast forward to the tournament, for the first game, we won by nine points. however, the next game, the loss was by a huge margin. during that game, i felt further pressurized that i should win, or make the loss a close one, which broke me. i knew from the first goal that the opponent scored that there was no chance to win, and i lost heart to play the game. the coach was probably disappointed at me, which also tore me apart, but i didn’t know what to do.
as i was also struggling with self-worth/ self-esteem then, i impulsively sent a vent email to my coach. maybe it was a sort of excuse to wriggle out of the inability to play well during the second game.
something happened, and the vent email was leaked to the teachers that were in charge of z. sport. before the third game, one of the teachers talked to me, and i pushed her away (metaphorically and physically).
this led on to my form teachers knowing about my current situation, and my parents knowing about it too. this isn’t bad per se, but i much rather prefer it if the coach had kept the email to herself. i asked her if she had leaked the email, but she denied it.
after the tournament, the relationship with the coach had become taut and tense. i did send her a few letters, mostly to apologise for how i acted. i also clung onto the mostly bitter memories of the tournament and the times when the coach pulled me aside to ask how i was. before the tournament, i was mostly happy and callow. now, according to the teachers, i had changed. i found it very hard to move on from the tournament and kept revisiting it. z. sport also became a very touchy topic for me to explain.
i tried to be mostly happy, but i would still come back to the coach and the tournament. i refused to admit that i was the captain, because i thought didn’t deserve to be one, and wondered why the coach selected me, out of everyone else. i revisited the juniors when they had their own tournament, cried during some nights, still struggled with my self-worth, etc. i probably became a worse person after all this.
i’m trying to move on from this tournament and the email leak incident. in the past, i felt really attached to the coach, and even after all of this, i still would trust her, time and again. i do need advice to move on because i can’t do it myself.
thank you for reading, take care of yourselves.
