According to my plans I should still be playing professional soccer right now, striving to get an opportunity with the U.S. National Team. I should be in prime physical condition, doing yoga to ensure my longevity, and watching every game on TV to study and learn.
Now that I consider it, I don’t know if or how I would have ever stopped playing by my own decision. I joke (kind of) that my body did for me what I couldn’t or wouldn’t ever do for myself. I had tied my playing career up in my identity so deeply that I didn’t even realize my career was no longer good or healthy for me.
Just about three years ago, I was very, very sick. My Ulcerative Colitis had flared up to the point that it was all-consuming, and I could barely go about my day-to-day tasks. I was trying to finish out the season with FC Kansas City, but it was really rough.
If you would have asked me about my career at the time, I would have told you that I was doing exactly what I was meant to be doing and was happy and fulfilled. Strangely enough, I feel that I was still at the peak of my abilities as a player, and still unlocking doors of improvement. I had relatively recently become a center back, and had fallen in love with learning this new position.
What I wasn’t able to process at the time was the terrible pattern of stress that had started to grip me over the years. My playing was no longer the fun, exciting, potential-filled experience of a young pro. Every day was a battle between who I was and who I wished I could be as a player. It was probably only a 1% disconnect, yet one that I could never seem to rectify. I was watching players younger than me living my dream on the National Team and succeeding in the NWSL in ways I had never been able to. I was playing every day, while at the same time mourning the loss of the player I thought I should have been.
And then there was the moving -- the constant life upheaval every six months, sometimes more often. I’m a creature of habit, and for years had lived out of my suitcases with no true home base I could rely on. Every time I got into a routine and learned to love a place, I was ripped away for one reason or another.
I had also launched my own business, out of necessity, because I was making very little money. This journey started to feel much less like a fun adventure, and more like a burden I shouldn’t have to be thinking about at that time. It was hard. And I was ambitious about it, because that’s the only way I know how to do things.
Through all of this I insisted, to myself and others, that I was “living the dream.” Because I was. And I prided myself on my grit and being relentless in my pursuit of improvement. I told myself, “I cannot step away from playing until I feel I’m no longer getting better.” But at what cost?
I got to the point where I was so sick, I literally could not play. I could not travel. I actually sometimes could not get out of bed. And so my mindset was forced to change. My fine-tuned athletic regimen shifted to whatever exercise I was able to do. I could have cared less about becoming a better player, and just wanted to be able to live a normal life and feel good. I went months where I literally could not even begin to consider the things that once guided my every waking thought, so much so that I began a natural separation from those thought processes and that way of being altogether.
I started to examine the source of my stress. I assumed that I must be blocking out whatever emotional turmoil I would experience eventually from not playing. Surely I would grieve this sudden loss of my first true love at some point. But what I realized, through a lot of introspection and a number of appointments with a therapist, is that I had been grieving this loss for some years already.
I didn’t love my professional career. It was a battle for me. It was a continual slipping away from what I thought I could achieve as a younger player. As a kid, I had set out on a mission to be the best woman ever to play this game. And while I was certainly not so far off, and played with and against those who I would consider that caliber, I wasn’t that.
I will never announce my retirement. Because that doesn’t feel true to me. I’ve treated this game the same way ever since I was 12 years old -- far before I ever signed a pro contract -- and I will treat it the same way long after my last game as a pro player.
I now see my Ulcerative Colitis as an amazing gift. Being sick allowed me the separation to understand that I had already lost what I was in search of. It let me step away from something that had become too tied to my identity for me to be able to see that. And it allowed me to examine and appreciate the parts of the game that I still do have and always will have.
In my slow journey back to good health, I jumped right into running my business full-time, my work on the NWSL Players Association, and now am expecting a baby girl in six weeks. At night, I still have anxiety about going to bed on time and getting enough sleep. I still think about some of the “what if’s.” And I still feel a sense of jealousy when I watch the players who are living my dream.
But I’m emerging on the other side of being sick as a much healthier person overall. It’s allowed me to be honest with myself, be even more appreciative of the miracle of pregnancy, and create some of the stability I hadn’t been able to before. Whereas before I couldn’t possibly see how there could be room in my life for all the things I wanted -- the sport I love, a family, my business and a passion to continue my work in the sport -- somehow being sick created more room.
I saw this Instagram caption today from Gianluigi Buffon, which sparked my urge to write this blog: “Maybe this futile pursuit of perfection made us who we are.”