Do you know when your problems started?

Let me tell you a story of my youth…

I was really struggling to find a topic for todays post. Seems like I don’t have a lot of inspiration at the moment. However, I managed to come up with something so you have something to read (isn’t that great?). Most of my post are either settled in the present or are non-time-related things. This part, however, takes me way back into my teens. I am talking about 10-15 years in the past. Why? Well, because that’s probably were some it started – the corrupting and blackening of my mind.

Back in the day I was a completely different person. People I got to know since I started to study in 2013/14 did not meet the Luke from his teens. Back in the day I was probably one the sportiest persons you’d ever meet. I played football (soccer for the Americans) since I could think I guess. My parents even told me I was kicking the ball before I was able to walk at all. So yeah, football was my life. Nothing else mattered – ok I was gaming all my life too but it was never such a “religion” or lifestyle like football was back in the day (nowadays it is, tho).

Almost everybody I knew I met through football. Football was all there is. Because of that, I was very ignorant and probably the opposite of open minded. I could not understand why someone is not sporty and does not love football. Not only that, I was also very good at it, too. In fact I was that good that I probably was the best in all my early teams and I made it in several selection teams with ease. Football wise a lot of people looked up to me (I guess). And yes, my goal was always to become a football pro someday. I think I was the happiest person alive when I heard of the interest of one of the best german clubs “VFL Wolfsburg” (for everyone not having a clue, this club plays in the first league in germany).

To speed things up: I decided to transfer to the club and was a step closer of achieving my dream. This sounds awesome, right? A young lad passionate about something one step closer to his goal. Normally I would agree but not this time. In retrospective this was the decision that changed everything. Of course I did not know that at the time. I was just so happy to play for the club.
Again speeding things up: I played for the club for half a season. I was not thrown out for being too bad of a player or for screwing up otherwise. It was my decision to leave the club. Everybody was irritated and without understanding. After all I apparently was a guy with a lot of potential (there was a lot of talk about me among the people in the club – at least I heard that, I don’t know if it’s true). So you may ask, why would someone just give up on their dream after half a year without any obvious reason? I can understand that question, I really do. Let me explain. First I will tell you the reasons I told everyone back in the day, especially my parents.

There were two reasons for me to leave the club. Firstly, I did not like that I did not have time for anything else anymore. During the week I had school obviously and I was picked up by the club at around 4 pm for training and came back home at ca. 9pm, 4-5 days a week. So I just had time for homework, eating and sleeping. On the weekend I had a game with sometimes hours of travel-time. Secondly, I lost my passion for football because playing at a semi-pro level you have to perform everytime. It’s not only fun anymore, you have to be at your best play at all times to not get cut of the team. That pulled the fun out of me. With that being said I do want to clear out: I did not lie back then, I was really thinking those were the reasons. But they were not!

I found out the real reason due to my therapy. Yes you heard right, I (or something inside my mind) somehow convinced myself of fake reasons to conceal the truth. The reason I quit playing for the club was just one simple reason: Fear! I was just afraid I could not do it. There was so much pressure from myself, from the club, from almost everyone I knew from football from my hometown and that was just killing me. I realized that like I said just recently – 12 years after everything happened. For 12 years I conciously believed in the wrong reasons. The odd thing about it is also I always knew that this was not true and I was just afraid, but also I didn’t know. It was more like an unconscious thought that popped up every now and then. Now I’m sure, though. And I’m not ashamed to be honest about it. I was afraid, and still am a lot of time. Some of it is probably just my personality but I try to cope with it in my therapy of course. It’s hard, because the world scary I’m not gonna lie.

For years I did not mention anything of my football past when meeting new people. I was afraid of coming across as arrogant. I really was kinda ashamed to adress that, honestly. Nowadays it’s easier for me to talk about it, because I know not everybody things I’m an arrogant asshole when I tell them I was very good at football and so on. Also, probably a lot of people just don’t care at all and I understand as well, it’s actually better that way.
This post was a quite personal story of my past I wanted to write down and share. I hope it was a good read. Take care of yourselves and don’t be afraid to be afraid! It’s fine. Peace!