If I Am Not an Athlete, Then Who Am I?

Fellow former athlete, Isn’t it crazy that in a minute everything that you filtered your life through is suddenly just a non-factor?

Who you hung out with, where you spent your time, what you studied, what classes you took, what you ate, your social calendar, how much you ate, and your bedtime. Everything was viewed through the lens of how it affected your athletic potential.

Then your career ends and none of that matters anymore.

But the habits and ways of thinking formed over years of impression still linger. For the good and the bad. 
 

Discipline is good. But to what extent? And at what cost? Working out is great but for what motives? 

You should watch what you eat. But how strict is too strict and truly how much is too much? You’re not an athlete anymore, you don’t need to fuel your body the same way. But if we are being honest, 5 years post-college athletics and I still don’t know how to feed myself. 

I write this in the midst of one of my harder weeks in regard to internal wrestling.

My post-college mental health landscape is rocky, to say the least. I would venture as far as to say disastrous. I quit football in an attempt to mitigate the effects of an eating disorder birthed from a perfect storm of circumstance and disposition.

Navigating a life of a former-athlete poses issues in and of itself with the stripping of your identity and the journey of discovering who you are without your sport. But being the overachiever that I am, I decided that wasn’t hard enough and I added the additional layers of a completely warped relationship with food and exercise. Both of which fueled my disdain for myself. Go big or go home, I guess. 

Attempting to describe who I was without mentioning sport was nearly impossible.  “Athlete” was woven into my identity and attempting to unwrap it from the fabric of my being has been tedious, painful, and stretching. Tedious because this process has been relentless.

But there is growth in stretching and pain provides the opportunity to pair itself with purpose, if viewed from the right perspective.

A perspective that took me a long time to learn! 

I sat on this topic for a while. I did not want it to be this heavy article that doesn’t provide any value in taking one step forward in your post-athlete journey. But after crossing out a handful of cliche bulls%#t sentences, I landed on this after seeing a post on Instagram titled “cure your anxiety in 5 easy steps” 

First off — Shut up! 

Second — There is no quick fix to the internal wrestling that comes with the stripping of identity because no one story is like another. I can’t prescribe the exact next step because we have different plots carried out by different main characters.

I can, however…

A) Encourage you in the fact that you’re not alone in this journey. It isn’t something that will happen overnight. It could take years. Shoot, I am walking through it today and the most frustrating thing about it is that a lot of times there are no measurable results created by the process. Athletes like measurable results.

B) Share what I have learned in hopes that one word might help you take one step closer to a healthier post-athlete life. Something I work every day towards.

I have learned through my eating disorder that all of the reps that I took to create muscle memory shooting free throws or taking my first two steps off the line of scrimmage were just skill development for things I would need to use later in life. Repetition and grace. Literally, every time I look in the mirror is a rep. I crush it at times and other times I force myself to line back up and do it again. Just like I have done my whole life. 

The stripping of my identity goes hand in hand with my worth. This lesson has been two-tiered. I have had to learn that I bring more to the table than what I can do for you. I am worthy of being loved leaving with my sport being used as an adjective. Or to take it further and say worthy of love regardless of performance.

I have been forced to look at myself.

This is scary because I associate that word with not enough. I have had to implement a practice of identifying things within my character that I am proud enough of to be included in my description. It’s uncomfortable but how often have we been told to be comfortable being uncomfortable. 

To be honest I am thankful that there is no quick fix or easy solution to the mental rewiring that comes with retirement from the life you gave everything. 

It is hard. 
It does suck at times.
It is tiring. 
You shed tears. 
You want to give up.
You fail. 
You feel silly. 
You will have to do a lot of work when no one is watching.
But haven’t you done that your whole life preparing for your competitive events?

And isn’t it worth it when you turn around and see how far hundreds of baby steps have taken you? 

You’ve been training your whole life for new seasons. What makes this next one any different?

Mitch