When who you have identified with is no longer, you have to search for a new way to see yourself, to create yourself anew.

Date:   6/20/2005 10:50:04 PM ( 19 y ago)

It was difficult for me to be in an environment where I was no longer the athlete, the guy on the team, the football player. My identity was shaken, I felt deep depression and despair. The way people treated me was different, my whole environment was different, I felt accutely aware that how people treated me previously had nothing to do with who or what I was, and everything to do with who they thought I was. It image that I had created or that had been created of me.

I no longer had this image and things were really stirred up in my life. So I drank, I smoked weed, I lusted after women. What better ways to keep your attention from within, where it needed to be, to cut through the thick cloud of illusions, falsehoods, misconceptions that existed within.

I found myself back on a sports team, around the same type of people, go figure. This was in a rugby team that I played for at SDSU. I was on the B squad, which was tough for my ego to take, but then i'd never played before and I was able to deal with it, just for want of being apart of something again. To have a gang of guys to hang around and identify with in a sports fashion. Without that, who was I? What did I stand for? Ever since I got involved with sports in my early years, this had become my identity. Nothing else was nurtured, no other skills developed, except COMPETE AT ALL COSTS, and WIN or be a FAILURE. All you ever hear these days is "second place, is the first loser". This is what we learn, this is what we are conditioned to believe.

After one season, one semester playing rugby, I remembered why I had stopped playing football, that urge to use violence and anger and play agressive sports which teach the art of self mutilation to gain victory are barbaric, and my thinking had transitioned enough to the point where I began de-identifying with this line of thinking. So at this point, I had truly walked away, I had turned down several invitations to re-join the team. I had severed a large part of who I was, onceand for all.

The search for a new identity begins........



 

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