I found out the hard way, receiving awards and impressive remarks often becomes an addiction, an enslavement of the mind. The more you do, the more you feel the need to do, to stay ahead of others and your past self. And when you're not doing, you feel worthless to the world. It's one thing to be build a resume to get into college or to get a good job, it's another thing to believe that resume gives you self-worth. We live as social profiles unable or unwilling to admit that Saturday night we did nothing. Looking back, tennis was trying to free me from those future expectations. [Excerpt]
Growing up I never knew quarter-life crises were a legit thing. I’d only ever heard of the mid-life variety that gifted men with new red sports cars. Recently I’ve learned that the quarter-life strain of crises are far less shiny, except for the shine of prematurely balding heads. The quarter-life crisis isn’t a secret because it’s uncommon. It’s a secret because we’re not ready to admit that we’re breakable.
Every now and then I still have horrific flashbacks to the seven seconds that set off my own quarter life crisis a few years ago.... [Excerpt]
I never expected to be the gay one. In between all the Sunday school, youth group and Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ events, being gay wasn’t quite outlined in my plans. [Excerpt]
We feared getting the same diseases, sometimes talking ourselves into panic attacks, not realizing that we already had the worst of them. The disease that is fear. Now pictured as the fear of growing older, or the lesser fear of dying. The fear of being alone. The fear that decisions that we made yesterday, or last week, or last year have somehow led us to a place that isn’t quite what we expected. That they now haunt us as we’re running out of time. [Excerpt]
