Facing fears....

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Today is the alumni game of the softball league I used to play for...Apponaug Girls Softball. It's been over 10 long years since I've played...and for a reason. Though I love softball and it was a major part of my childhood, I was injured during one of the last years I played and it changed me indefinitely and irreparably. One of the last times I told the story of how this happened, I burst into tears. Today is a scary day.

So what happened to change the love of my life into the fear of a lifetime? I was playing shortstop and my friend, Jen, was playing third base. Like so many times before, a fly ball comes our way. I call her off...she calls me off...I call her off again...and she again....we both back off thinking the other one's catching it. Before I knew what happened, the ball had landed directly on my face...my nose more precisely. My nose bled...and bled...bled some more...it just wouldn't stop bleeding. An ambulance was called and I was carried out on a stretcher. On that stretcher also lied all the confidence I had in the sport I once loved.

I tried to return to the field for a year or two after the injury. I had been playing for school for 2 years and was about to head into high school and try out for the fast pitch team. I had played softball for almost as long as I could walk, but never fast pitch. Now I entered this smei-foreign sport with a fear in my heart I could barely contain....and it showed. The cling of a bat, a ball in my peripheral vision, among many other sights and sounds, would have my flinching and wincing. The strong, young woman who used to throw herself at any ball that came in her direction had been replaced by a weak, cowardly girl who might not throw like a girl...but sure did catch a ball like one. My fear had completely overtaken any confidence I had. I ended up making the team my freshman year of high school...and riding the pine. Even as I sat on the bench, I would wince at those aforementioned triggers. It was unbareable...I quit.

Flash forward over ten years later and I am an hour away from the alumni game...trying to talk myself down. I've dragged my softball bag out of my parents' basement. The bag, ironically, is from the high school softball team...the last team I made an attempt to play for. The experience of pulling out my dirty, dusty gloves and the most impressively dinged bats was bittersweet to say the least. All at once, I thought of my childhood, which was made that much better by summers spent at tournaments and learning new cheers in the dugout....to that one day that changed it all. I sit here wearing one of my old allstar t-shirts and dingy sneakers and sweatpants contemplating whether or not Katie (not Casey) will step back up to the plate. Though it's only an hour away, I'm still on the fence about walking onto that field. Up until the minute I drive into that softball complex, I think my mind will be playing the ultimate ping pong match between gracefully bowing out...or facing my fears.