EPT
:I don't think any of you guys know about this, but I play hockey. I'm a goalie, and I absolutely love the game.
I also have asthma, so I don't have as good a recovery rate nor do I have as good a lung capacity as other players.
I came to today's training expecting a light pass, since most of our players were off celebrating the holidays with their families. Oh, was I wrong.
when I was midway through putting on my gear, I found out that another goalie would train with us since our other two goalies weren't there, one who hadn't trained for about two months.
He DEMOLISHED me. During the regular drills, he saved a shitload more pucks than me. During the penalty shot practices, he saved everything, and when we played, his team always won, because somehow, more pucks ended up behind me than him.
I generally tend to try and not over-react or get angry when I play hockey, keep my emotions bottled inside me and be either a happy person, or an iceman. But I kept thinking about what had happened after the game finished. Out trainer then told us to do some skating exercises, but I just couldn't do it, I was too into thinking.
Day[9] recently talked about emotions as ninja stars and kittens, with the stars being bad/sad emotions and the kittens being happy emotions. If I were to explain what my feelings were at the time this had happened using that, I would say that it felt as if I had a whole clan of ninjas after me. I just felt that bad.
Of course, this pissed my trainer off, and made him double the skating exercises. I decided that enough was enough, and went off the ice. I went inside our dressing rooms, and threw my helmet across the room. I did this because nobody was there, and I had to take my anger out somehow. I then proceeded to take my gear off.
This is where our material manager comes in. She saw me coming out from the ice, and she, seeing that I was visibly upset, went inside to find out what was going on. She crouched down in front of me, asking "What's wrong?" I told her that it was nothing, it was just my pride that was wounded. But she persisted, telling me that it didn't look like that to her.
Then she told me "It's OK to cry"
And even though I'm 18 years old, I broke down.
I started crying. I wept like a three-year old whose Sweet-roll had been stolen.
I felt as if I had lost the GSL Code S finals to a worker rush.
I silently sobbed, because I knew that she wouldn't hear anything clearly if I spoke and cried at the same time.
And then I told her about how I felt. That I love hockey more than a lot of things, how I even though I understand that I'm not as good as the rest of the goalies still want to contribute to the team, and that him doing better than me felt like somebody was indirectly telling me "You suck, we don't need you here".
I told her that I was disappointed with myself, not angry at the other goalie. Rather, I was jealous. How can he be away from the game for months without any decay of his skills, while I can't even miss one training without losing ground towards the rest of the team? I felt like me just training with the team was slowing it down, preventing them from reaching their full potential.
She told me this: "If this is what you're feeling, then we need to help you. I personally feel as if you make slow steps forward, but don't notice them yourself. Would you like somebody to take a look at how you train and tell you what you did right, and what you could improve on?"
This just felt as if two tons had been taken off my chest. I've always been the guy being left out because there wasn't enough time to tell me what was going on. That somebody would actually offer to help me was.. like an angel had come down to erase my sins before judgement day. Again, to use Day[9]'s views on emotions, it was as if the crazy cat lady wanted to give me all of her kittens.
Of course, I was still upset, but I started to figure out a strategy to climb out of this black hole that was my sadness and make my way towards the shining sun. Now, I may never actually succeed in this, but I'll be damned if I give up before I try.
The moral of this story is: Don't keep your emotions bottled up inside you. Instead, tell people how you feel so that they easier can understand you. There's probably nothing more embarrassing than having what happened to me happen, but I can guarantee that you'll feel a lot better afterwards, when you've let your true emotions show.
Thanks for reading this, I really needed to get this out of my system.
It's been a few weeks since I wrote this, and things are turning out much better, I'm getting more and more advice which helps me from my teammates, and it's generally just looking good
/Oscar
![[image loading]](http://aotc.littleasllc.netdna-cdn.com/September-21-2011-22-10-43-tumblrlkufbnnjz01qewacoo1500.jpeg)
