In a surprise to no one and a relief to many, I am indeed in therapy. I knew after my operation I would struggle. I mean so much of my life changed when I was injured. For one, I couldn’t play. But also, for two months, I literally couldn’t walk, bear weight on my right leg, bend my knee, or stand for more than 5 minutes. Not to mention the grueling road to recovery I would be on for an unspecified amount of time. Add in my pre-existing anxiety and it’s obvious I was going to need some additional support to deal with the psychological toll of injury. However, after my operation, despite having been in therapy before and preaching about its importance, I desperately tried to avoid going back. I’m not sure why. I don’t know if it was some sort of internalized stigma, or just ego. But, the “decision” was difficult. I use that word “decision” lightly because it wasn’t really one. The word “decide” implies that there was some sort of choice. Like I could’ve done it or not done it. To be honest, I don’t really think I had a choice, or not a good one.

Maybe a week or two after surgery, I really felt my mood change. Like normally you feel things on a range between 1-10; ten is amazing and one is awful. I felt like, no matter what happened, I couldn’t feel over a 5 or 6. Everything just felt muted for me. With so much change, I didn’t feel like I had control over anything in my life anymore. I felt like I was drowning;  I was barely staying afloat. I was like treading through life not only unsure where to swim but unsure if the destination even existed. My emotions, they were festering inside me but I felt like I couldn’t access them at all. My one outlet, soccer, I didn’t have it anymore. I’m the kind of person if I can’t go to the field to just release pent up energy, then I have to talk it out; but, I couldn’t even identify the feelings to organize the thoughts to pin to the words to communicate my anguish. This only led to more frustration and anger, the only emotions I knew I was feeling for sure. The panic attacks became more frequent, and almost welcomed because they meant there would be some sort of release, and that empty feeling that follows was almost appreciated because it meant that I could start the process all over again. And I did, until I couldn’t do it anymore. So, that’s why I say I didn’t really make the decision to go back to therapy. I waited and waited and waited. Until I was freaking out over the smallest things, angry over nothing all the time, and having panic attacks with virtually no warning or trigger.

So, in January I started up with therapy again. I thought we would just jump in and start with strategies to help me get over my injury, to move on. But, I think that’s what I had been trying to do the whole time. I was trying so desperately to put everything I was feeling into these neat little categories and boxes. However, my thoughts and emotions were so overwhelming and unalike. I just gave up; I was just trying to push past it without really acknowledging it because it was too difficult to decipher.

Whether it’s true or not, I refuse to believe that my injury is random. There has to be some lesson or some growth. My therapist has suggested that I can’t even consider learning something from this until I accept what has happened to me and process everything. For that reason, she is encouraging me not to move on from my injury but move through my emotions, to name them, confront them, experience and accept them. So, shoutout to Ruth, she had me write a letter to myself, the self that had just been diagnosed with this injury and was about to undergo surgery. She wanted me to think about to what I was feeling then and to write about it. I was going to keep this to myself, but maybe someone else will find solace in my mind’s chaos. So, here it is…

Dear Kim,

I’ve typed, re typed, taken breaks, got back to it, completely started all over so many times with this. I don’t really have anything to tell you that you don’t already know. You are injured, you have to have an operation. I know at this point you have stated this so many times to yourself. Either as a reminder or simply just to make it feel real. There’s this block though. That I can only compare to when we had COVID and couldn’t taste food. We did all the work, we prepared the food, we could almost smell it. We could taste it faintly, but not really. Maybe we were just “tasting” the memory of what the food was like it wasn’t really clear.

I think it’s the same here dealing with this injury. We know what we feel, or rather what we should feel, but we can’t quite experience it. You’re feeling what you think the emotion would be, or maybe what others are telling you that you’re going through. But that’s not the same. Like, you’re feeling tense all the time and there’s this negative energy you can’t quite name or expel; it’s annoying to be in the midst of all this feeling and not be able to actually identify it. So there’s distance between what you’re “feeling” and what you’re experiencing. This breeds frustration and ultimately lacking the motivation to try to name the emotion at all. Of course this leads to us just giving up, pushing it to the side, and ignoring it. Honestly, though I don’t know if this is really stemming from the injury itself. I think it could be way more simple. I think you’re scared of something.

Your entire life in this sport you feel as if you have been underestimated, like you always have to fight for acceptance, attention. You’ve never been the most talented on a team, or the most technically gifted, but you fought for it. And these past few years you have been slowly getting there; you were getting to be that best player. And then the injury. Now you’re scared that you will never reach your potential. You will never get to lift a trophy. You moved to this team with that goal in mind, and now what do you have to show for it? A knee injury?

Our biggest sins are wasted time and potential. I think this injury is so frustrating and challenging for you because you feel like both. I mean really think about truthfully how easy it was to accept the injury. Remember? You laughed, you literally laughed at the doctor’s appointment after finding out you needed surgery. This was never about your meniscus. You feel like a disappointment. You’re going to get frustrated, angry in the future watching games, listening to teammates talk about the team, strategy etc. You’re angry because these are people accomplishing your accomplishments. They are experiencing your experience or at least what you wanted it to be if that makes sense. Whenever you see your friends sign to a team, score a goal, make a great pass you will be jealous because they are living out your potential. Stealing it almost. And you will fight yourself every second because you don’t want to feel that way.

Right now, you’re feeling fucking pissed because the world didn’t stop for everyone else when we tore our meniscus. You went to practice a few days later and it was still on, barely anyone said anything to you. You were just there spinning right along with everyone else on Earth. That’s the other thing, we had to keep spinning, we now had a decision to make, and quickly. Operation, recovery, return to play. We had to sort all of this out in a different country, on our own.

 So, the world kept going, and we kept going right along with it. Kinda. I think the distance we feel right now between us and our emotions is because we’re fighting it. We don’t want to keep going, we want to breakdown, but we can’t. We have to keep going until we feel we can catch up to the world again. That’s the thing though, we don’t know when that will be and there will be setbacks along the way. This injury is a bitch. Some people say it will take 4-6 months to return, but another 6-12 to be fully healthy? That’s a huge window of possibility and we don’t do well with unknown. Like at all. Not to mention rehabilitation is never a linear journey. There’s ups and downs, but we cannot accept the latter. Any day not actively pushing towards a comeback feels worse than a waste; it feels like a setback. Any time spent not getting better is just more time injured. More time with our world completely a mess.

Right now we’re scared and confused because our world flipped entirely upside down, but kept moving forward. We are just trying to get our bearings. It’s going to take a little bit to catch up. For now everything feels muted.