grief's silent struggle

do your feelings ever just hit you all at once? i suppose when you’re constantly surrounded by people, you suppress your feelings. not out of fear of being vulnerable or authentic, but because sometimes it’s not functional to be constantly so emotional.

that’s how it’s felt this past month. we lost someone close to us earlier in the month and naturally with loss comes grief. but grief is a bit fucked up. it’s never linear in its process. and 99% of the time we just continue with our lives as though nothing has really changed. and externally, it hasn’t. but internally there’s a loss there that only few of us are feeling. it’s like a silent battle. and the times where it hits us the most might be times where it’s not really appropriate to break down. maybe you’re serving a customer. maybe you’re mid-session coaching a team of men or junior girls. maybe you’re just going for a walk in public. regardless of the occasion, we often suppress these moments until a suitable time when we’re alone. and then it comes out like a tsunami of emotion.

i suppose that’s where i am now. sitting alone in my car, feeling all the things i’ve tried tried to ignore. things often too hard to articulate. or too hard for others to support. so instead of sharing, you keep to yourself. conscious of being a burden or a black cloud to others in your life. there’s only so long that people want to hear the same story, instead we often tell a narrative that ignores the heaviness or the pain out of consideration for others. but all that does is a disservice to ourselves. because that pain remains.

the thing with losing someone is that it makes you think about all the people, and pets (if you have them), who are still near and dear. it makes you imagine a life without them. for those of you who have read other blog posts of mine, you’ll remember how petrified of death i am. how incomprehensible i find it. so to be forced to confront the reality of a life without those dearest to me is a heaviness i often silently carry on a daily basis. it’s not really a dinner conversation now is it?

what’s been compounding these feelings is also the fact that i’m constantly in pain. six and a half months post surgery and i still can’t run, train, or exercise to any capacity that’s fulfilling. i’ve experienced long term injuries before - acls force you to do that, but this has been different. i haven’t had the progression. all i’ve had is pain. i wake up each morning still unable to bend my knee without pain. i try to demonstrate drills in my academies only to be acutely reminded of the pain in my knee.

sometimes i think i’m just weak and i need to toughen up. if i ignore it, it’ll disappear, right? but that doesn’t work with our feelings so in what world would that work for pain?

for the first few months, i could accept the pain. i had had surgery and the arthritis was really bad. my body needed time to heal. no worries. this also aided in me accepting my retirement and transitioning into coaching - i had made the right decision. but we’re now nearly seven months on and i’m still in agony. i still can’t coach freely. i still can’t get any form of endorphin release. i’ve lost my primary identity - as a footballer, and i’ve substituted it for another one - a football coach. but what i haven’t been able to substitute is the chemicals associated with playing. the endorphins. the oxytocin. the serotonin. instead these happy, good-feeling chemicals, have been substituted for pain. and to be honest, i’m getting a bit over it.

the problem with chronic pain though is no one else can experience it. no one is fighting the daily battle with you. you’re alone. much like your experience of grief. and i suppose that’s where i find myself with these feelings. externally, everything is peachy. but internally there’s a heaviness i’ve been carrying in which i’m not sure how to alleviate. i suppose writing about it is my attempt at offloading some of that.

here's what i wrote shortly after our friend passed away:

grief is a bit fucked up. it hits you immediately but then it wavers. surging at random times without warning. the tragic thing about death is that life goes on. it goes on even though it feels like the world should stop. stop to mourn the passing of someone so important to you. but that’s the thing; death doesn’t affect everyone equally. it affects those nearest and dearest the most. and even then, the pain isn’t equally shared. for most, the passing of someone will just mean they won’t see them once a month anymore, for others, they’ve lost their ‘person’. their outlet. their rock.

how is someone so alive one minute, and then gone the next. i find death incomprehensible. it doesn’t ever feel real. it always feels like you’ll see that person again. but i think that’s because the pain of accepting a reality in which they’re not a part of is too hard to bear.

even when you know it’s coming, you trick yourself into thinking there’s more time. there’ll be more memories. even as the person deteriorates in front of you, we don’t want to accept reality. we don’t want to prepare for the inevitable. it’s a lot less painful to ignore. it’s a lot more challenging to confront. but we always regret the words left unsaid, rarely the words we shared. i suppose that is why i feel so passionately about hand written notes. of expressing gratitude to those, here and now, while they can still hear your words.

we lost someone dear to us this week. someone who only entered our lives in the past year but who made a lifelong impact. Jude’s zest for life was contagious. her passion for football shared. and her knack for storytelling endearing. what a beautiful, loving, and warm person she was. we feel so grateful for the memories we did have, for the time we spent together, for seeing in this new year with her. it still feels so unreal that she is no longer with us. Jude wasn’t just a champion for the teams she supported, she was a champion for the people she supported too. we will miss you and the life you brought to our lives. losing you feels like losing a family member - because that’s what you’ve always felt like for us. i only wish, as i’m sure we all do, that we had more time with you.

i’m not sure what to make of an after life, but i really do hope we get to meet again. in the meantime, i hope you get to meet my Opa and your football brains can keep each other company. until next time x

*this really isn’t meant as a ‘woe is me, life is so hard’ post because life really isn’t bad. i know that. these are just human experiences i know others have experienced, and are experiencing, but perhaps also don’t articulate. grief and pain aren’t permanent. but they do feel pretty shit at the time.

law of averages

what type of driver are you? below average, average, or above average? if i collated the responses of everyone reading this, i would almost be willing to put money that most would define themselves as an above average driver. what’s the problem with that? well, it’s statistically impossible for everyone to be above average.

about 15 years ago, i remember a sports psychologist asking the players in my SASI team this exact question. and, as anticipated, all of us stated we thought we were above average drivers. granted there weren’t any metrics defining what makes an average driver compared to above or below average, but it’s this illusion that we believe we are better than the majority – in social psychology terms, it’s called the dunning-kruger effect.

i was reflecting on this question the other day when considering how many average experiences i’ve had in my life whether it be with doctors, physios, dentists, coaches, coworkers, and the likes. i started to remember learning about the bell curve theory (also known as normal distribution). within this, 68% of the population fall within the first standard deviation – 68% of people are average*.

bell curve source: tom sherrington, 2013, teacherhead, accessed 30 december 2024, <https://teacherhead.com/2013/07/17/assessment-standards-and-the-bell-curve/>

if i take my experiences as a player, that means that for every coach i have, there’s an 84% chance that they’ll fall within that average or below average category. that leaves only a 16% chance they’ll be above average (exceptional [two standard deviations and above] is statistically even smaller at 2.1%). statistics were never my strength in school, so i’ve been re-educated to learn that stating it might take six different coaches (given that 16% is a one in six chance) before i experience an above average coach is actually not mathematically correct. the point though remains the same; the probability of having an above average experience, in anything we do, is very small. why is this so profound?

it's profound because as a society we expect our experiences to be above average all the time. we expect to get above average service at a restaurant, we expect to get above average treatment in a medical clinic, we expect our coworkers or peers to be above average in their drive and motivation, but the humbling reality is that most people we meet and interact with on a daily basis are in fact, average at their jobs.

since reflecting on this fact, i’ve found it to be liberating. and admittedly, it’s something i wish i had realised ten year’s earlier. it would have alleviated so many of my frustrations for wanting people to fall into above average categories when the reality is, most people will not. most experiences will not. that is why it might take you multiple appointments or candidates before you find someone who falls into this above average category. the unfortunate thing is that most people either don’t have the time, the patience, the resources, or the motivation to endure below average and average experiences before they stumble upon an above average individual. so what you find is people either avoid this process by quitting or not seeing medical professionals, or they become jaded and hyper-critical of those in those positions.

i have been guilty of both. i’ve avoided physios and dentists because i haven’t been able to find one i think excels in their profession. but i’ve also been hyper-critical of coaches; wanting them to all be above average all the time when the reality is, they statistically can’t all be above average. being reminded of this knowledge, now, has allowed me to be more understanding and more patient. it’s liberating. that doesn’t mean we have to accept mediocrity and stop striving for greatness or holding people to those standards, it merely offers an explanation for the gap between what we want and what we more often experience.

so, what type of driver are you now?

*assuming a large enough sample size

**please note, what might be an average experience for one person, might be considered an above average experience for another. 

it's time to grow up

i've asked this question many times before, but it seems to be all i can think about at the moment - at what point do you try harder and at what point do you give in? when do you need to accept the reality that some things just aren't meant to be? when is resistance a sign and when is it an obstacle to overcome?

i've been here many times in my career. i was here in 2014 when i tore my second acl. again in 2018 when i got cut from adelaide united. a year later when i did my acl for the third time. then again in 2022 when things didn't work out with an agent i'd signed with. and instead of getting there at the end of last year, when w league didn't work out for me (again), i decided to pack up my life and move across the world to pursue my childhood dream of playing professionally.

i was hopeful. eager. finally things will work out for me. they have to. i'm in a different country, where no one knows my name or has any preconceived ideas about who i am and what i can/can't do. this is my chance. but within weeks of me arriving in the UK, i quickly learnt that that dream would not be achieved in this country either. but i refused to let this experience be wasted. i still signed with a really good tier 3 side. outside of football, i've been pottering along, volunteering and coaching at as many different organisations as i can, even ones i don't enjoy. all with the hopes that one day this will pay off. one day i might be given an opportunity. one day, it might just work out for me.

but at what point do i need to just accept the reality that it's not going to work out for me? at what point do i just need to let go of my childhood dream and move on with my life. i'm 30 years old, soon to be 31 and what do i actually have to show for myself? i work casual jobs in coffee shops, i coach on the side, and i'm trying, perhaps even forcing, trying to make something of my football career. i have no stability with a career. and none of that is going to miraculous change until i can let go of playing. even transitioning into coaching - that's not a full time career. that doesn't pay you maternity leave when you decide to have kids. unless you move to any other country other than australia. but i'm done moving across the world. i'm done feeling alone. i'm done feeling like i'm swimming upstream with anything that i seem passionate about. but perhaps that's my own doing - perhaps my problem is in that being interested in so much, i've been committed to nothing. perhaps that's why my business of equipping individuals with skills to support others when they're struggling never went anywhere. perhaps that's why my playing is at a standstill. why nothing much has progressed with coaching.

meanwhile, all i can see around me are people settling down. settling into their careers. having babies. starting families. and the only people doing that? are the people that let football go a long time ago. and to be honest, i feel like that's what i need to do if i'm ever going to do anything with my life. because the reality is, i can't keep having this child-like attitude towards my life and my future - keeping all my options open, whilst simultaneously wasting away. i feel bad for my parents - two incredibly intelligent, nurturing, and accomplished individuals, watching their child do nothing with their life. wasting their intellect on futile, unrealistic dreams.

they say it's good to have options, but i disagree. sometimes you can feel burdened by choice. paralysed by an inability to commit to any one thing. and that's where i feel i am right now. i don't just have one interest; i have many. i don't just have one hobby; i have many. but perhaps it's time i start closing some doors and focusing on what will actually provide me with a stable future and direction. perhaps it's time i grow the fuck up.