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I Spoke Too Soon...

[putting this back up as it's.... real... ]

Four of the guys who were regulars, either as substitutes or as main players, have said that they won't go forward with the team. Merek, the one with the most experience in competitive, who had gotten into ESEA open teams that were quite good, said explicitly that he wasn't going to play with the team if I wasn't playing anymore.

He said that he'd had so much experience in competitive that it wasn't about winning anymore, it was about the people he was playing with. And if they weren't fun to play with, then it wasn't worth doing. And if I wasn't going to be playing with him, then he didn't want to play anymore.

When I told Joanne that they'd had to have an ex-plat medic to replace me, she interrupted and said, "They can't replace you. No one can replace you." She was right.

And I have to hear them both...


I think that despite the true problem being that I'm physically injured, that some part of me was thinking that the real reason I was quitting was because I just wasn't good enough, that I wasn't talented enough. But giving the guys on the team the benefit of the doubt, I am sure that they were all right with me going forward with them. They knew what my lacks were, and were willing to take up the slack, since I was doing my part by carrying the load of the scheduling and communications and drawing certain boundaries about how we played and whom. And they'd all seen evidence of how I could work to improve. That was real to them.

And early on, Baddie had said that he didn't care as much about winning as he did about everyone begin happy, especially me. That he understood that if I was hurting, I wouldn't be happy, and that he really trusted me as his medic, compared to the people that we were trying out. So that was real, too.

And it's hard for me to admit, but being tired and in pain also has been making me more stupid. I don't make great decisions when I'm exhausted. I don't do well in game when I'm as tired as I now am, and I don't have great reflexes when I'm hurt. It's just a real thing. I don't play well when I've overextended myself. But the only way to regain those abilities is by resting; but I don't learn and gain new abilities by resting, I have to train or work at it. And the guys were working every single day, and it felt weird to not be able to in order to 'get better'. So I felt guilty about not being able to do what they were doing, and, perhaps, a bit envious.

So it is just a reflection of my own mind, not what was real.

There's a prayer in our hymnal that struck me hard a few weeks ago. It's by Barbara Sargent, and a part of it encapsulates how I think of competitive communications:

"Grant us grace to be true words --
Not gentle when it is in anger that we live,
Not smooth where it is desperation that we know,
Not patient when time has narrowed down to now,
Not wise, not neat, not all our fences mended..."

And sometimes when they're are said in those ways and in those moments, even true words can still wound. The prayer goes on about taking those words back and saying them again so that they become "a power that keeps company with pain."

I expressed some of my pain to some of the guys, and they heard me and kept company with me and have helped heal me.

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