Things happen in life that alter your course, change your plans, your goals, and sometimes even your dreams. Although there were many factors, the event that seemed for a long time to define my life was tearing my ACL and so the end in many ways of my relationship with soccer. There are times it bothers me even now, that I stopped playing the first sport I ever loved, the sport I could actually dream of having a future in.
This weekend after an intense soccer game a man asked what level of soccer I had played, and when my response was high school, he asked if I had ever thought of trying to play at a higher level, if I had ever considered trying out for a semi pro team... I understand this man is probably a no one, probably has no idea what it would take to actually play at that level, but I cannot tell you how much that meant to me.
Its crushing in some ways to know now that I could have returned to soccer in college, maybe should have, that maybe now things would be different. But in that moment all that I felt was relief. It was reassuring to hear that the confidence and hope you felt wasn't just a fantasy, something you made up in your head. That someone else sees in you what you have always felt was there... its amazing to hear that your childhood dreams may have been possible.