In my last post, I wrote about the bittersweet balance of fun and grief that accompanies playing soccer while grieving my dad, a former player.
I ended the post, which you can read in full at the link above, by sharing that I hoped to one day score a goal in the league and to dedicate it to him, imagining what my little celebratory point to the sky would look like. I posted the essay in the team group chat and shared it with a handful of people who I met through the space where we play each week.
The following week, we had our first game with me and my husband both playing of the new season. It was really sweet how many people stopped to tell me how much the story had moved them, and how they were rooting for me to get my goal. At the very beginning of the season my husband got me a little captain arm band, but I was always too shy to wear it. The league is pretty casual, and I already felt a little insecure in our custom matching kits for a beginner soccer league. When I found it a the bottom of the bag I decided to put it on for the first time.
The team loved it, the crowd loved it, and I felt very uncomfortable with the symbolic weight of being CAPTAIN (don’t you guys know I have no idea what I’m fucking doing out here!) But once the game started, and I shook off my nerves, I started to feel the powers of the arm band. I waved my arms at the stands to get the fans to make some noise when we scored. I cheered on players from the sidelines when they made shots on goal, and was excited to be subbed back in after a few minutes of catching my breath. In a chaotic final ball of the first half my husband and I and another team mate rushed the box and with the goalie surrounded I managed to poke the ball in between their legs and watch as it slowly rolled into the goal.
I guffawed, unsure if this was a goal and even more surprised to realize that it was actually my own. My husband ran towards me full speed, screaming his head off and picked me up. All around me, teammates rushed and screamed and our friends in the stands went completely nuts. I could tell that the other team was confused, like why the fuck did this goal mean so much, but not like the other three goals that were scored.
The half time whistle blew and I remembered my celebration. Tears down my cheeks, I pointed up at the sky whispering “Tatusiu” upwards, my dedication complete.
All around me, friends and strangers, people who had read what I wrote, hugged me, eyes misty, knowing what it meant to me.
Most of the time writing true things about your life, for other people to read, is scary and sometimes embarrassing. But I realized in that moment that the reward for being vulnerable, for sharing your dreams and hopes with them out loud, means that they can celebrate that win with you.
After the game, inspired by the Polish tradition of celebrating, I took my team out for drinks. I don’t even drink anymore so I treated myself to a slice of cake to celebrate. On the way out, people kept saying some variation of “You manifested this.” or “You wrote this into reality.” and “You wore the captain arm band and made it real.”
I really had to hold my tongue on the internal monologue that it was just a fluke, and that it was more of an accident than a banger, because I didn’t want to minimize how happy people were for me. People telling me how proud my dad would have been, people who had never met him, who barely know me, healed something in me.
Another friend, who had not read my writing before, told me how much reading my writing made him realize that he did not know me as well as he thought. That it took him a minute to connect the voice on the page and the person he hung out with, and that it made him want to pay more attention to who I was, and what I was going through.
So often grief is quiet and lonely. It is little smiles we make to ourselves about inside jokes and coincidences that only the person we miss would understand. But this experience of writing down where I’m at, sharing it with people and then making it real has reminded me why we write. Why we tell. It is for that expansive, hopeful, feeling of human connection that happens when you feel truly seen for who you are.
