I was in a weird place. There was no point in going to practice anymore, and so I'd go if I felt like it, which I really didn't. I immediately put on about 30 pounds, due to the limited number of calories I was taking in each day my body was in starvation mode, and eating normally again caused me to gain weight pretty much over night. I had a lot of time on my hands since I didn't have anything to train for, and even thought my bought with depression had ended, I was dealing with a whole new situation. I didn't spiral out of control, my grades were still solid, and since I was only 17 I never thought about alcohol for any other substance abuse, but my world had been shaken. Five years of my life had been spent work towards something that was taken away in 6 minutes.
People tried to encourage me, tried to get me to focus on what was next, on my senior season, but I really didn't want to hear it. No one understood how I felt, or what I had experienced and I didn't have the ability to explain it at that time, and at that point I really began to not trust anyone. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to wrestle the next year, I think I knew for sure that I wasn't going to, but everyone else still held out hope.
My dad tried to get me to talk to my coach, and I really didn't want to. My parents had him come to our house to talk, and I remember being in my room, hoping they wouldn't make me come outside, they did, and I remember sitting across the patio table from him, not even making eye contact with him the entire time.
Things began to get tense at home. I wasn't working towards a goal anymore, I wasn't training all the time, and my dad and I began to argue a lot. He didn't understand how I felt, and I didn't know how to explain it, and without wrestling to bond over, he invested so much time into my pursuit of a State Title, we began to drift apart.
I mentioned a great coach, Deke, in the first post of this series, he was the one person who really seemed to get it. I remember he came in one day and pulled me out of study hall. He gave me a book, Failing Forward by John Maxwell, told me he loved me like I was his little brother, and didn't try to push me in any direction. I heard that the following year the entire coaching staff was pushing him to get me wrestle, which he didn't do. He was the first person I told that I was done, and he told me that he understood and respected my decision. He's the only one I've really talked to at all since high school ended.
All of this feels really randomly thrown together. This is the first time I've really talked about any of this in about three years, the first time I've ever shared the last three paragraphs, and up until now I would always rant about how unfair the entire situation was. That attitude made me angry and bitter. I was hung up on the injustice I had suffered, blamed others, and gave up on my dream...
TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!
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