Cutting Off My Leg?!

Before you start hollering at me that cutting off my leg is probably not a sanitary or remotely good idea to do, just hear me out. I'm not going to literally chop off my leg. In a way, however, I'm cutting off a part of myself. (Yikes.)

So I'm gonna go with the "ripping of the Band-aid instead of peeling it off" technique and just lay it out here.

I'm quitting tennis.

For those of you who are new followers or this is the first time you've checked out my blog, you probably don't know much about me. When I was probably around 8 or so years old, that's when I first started getting into tennis. I started as just a wee little child, and for almost a decade, it was my life. Whenever someone asked me what sport I played, I answered, "Tennis!" Any questions I got about my extracurricular activities was the same. I loved the court, and I loved the game. There was something thrilling about smashing a ball down on a court and scoring a final game-winning shot.

I made a lot of friends during my years as a tennis player, and during my middle school years, it became something that I just adored. We had several undefeated seasons, and I was so excited to join the high school team and see where things went from there. I felt like the team was my family and we were unstoppable.

And then freshman year of high school came around.

I thought everything would be the same as middle school years. We'd be this unstoppable dream team and everything would be awesome. But it wasn't the same. My best friend dropped the sport, and several of my other friends decided they wouldn't be coming back either because of other sports and things like that. I'm not a quitter. I wasn't going to just stop because they weren't doing it. However, in high school, you have the division of varsity and junior varsity. I tried out for varsity, just for kicks to see what would happen, and I didn't make it. That was okay. What was not okay was the fact that girls who I knew who made the varsity team made me feel horrible that I didn't make it. They would stare me down from their courts and make me feel so embarrassed and miserable that I began to slowly start to hate the sport in a way.

I tried to shake it off and just keeping playing. I took private lessons to get different aspects of my game to a higher level, and for a while, it worked. But then I hit this point where I couldn't get better. I was stuck at a certain level of gameplay, and I couldn't reach higher than that. And then I started to get worse. I was going through some rough things (of which I won't repeat, but you can click here for the post where I discussed them) at that time, and I was just losing ground. My coach kept bumping me down a rung during matches, forcing me to play against the lowest players and doing very little to boost my confidence in the sport. I felt like I was failing at all aspects, and I couldn't figure out how to get things back under control. The season ended with me stuck in the middle of the pack and faking my happiness.

I don't want to keep doing tennis just because I always have in the past, and because I feel like I have to. I don't want to force myself to do something I don't enjoy. Even if I did make varsity this year, a lot of the girls on that team can be nice, but they've already formed these cliques within the team and some of them can be really nasty people. The same thing goes for some of the girls on the JV team. I don't want to put myself into a toxic situation where I'm miserable and hating myself for not being able to do better. I know that if I force myself back into the sport, I'm just going to feel like I'm not good enough, and that's not what I want. If I'm going to do something, I want to give it 110% and love doing it. If I'm hating every minute that I'm doing something, then what's the point even?

And now since I've made my decision, I keep asking myself one question.

I'm so so scared this is the wrong thing to do, but at the same time it feels right. I had some awesome experiences with the sport, but like all good things, it has come to an end. This is something that I have to do if I want to be happy with myself. I don't want to be miserable doing something I hate, instead of being happy doing something I love.

I know this was a bit of a word-vomit post, but I would appreciate any words of wisdom you have, or even an invisible teddy bear for comfort. I love you all, and I hope you have a fabulous day. (:

That is all.

Cheers,

Seana