softball

Sitting on my desk is a notepad with the words, ‘I’m sorry for all the ways I hurt you when I was anxious’ scribbled in my new favourite pale purple marker. I feel like I could make a really cool tee shirt with the design.

Last week was a hard one but every astrologer I read is saying this month is absolutely wild. I feel like I’m picking up on a lot of that energy from people around me during the day and it’s draining and it feels frantic and uncertain. I drove by a church yesterday with a sign that read, “We are living in uncertain times” and it felt weird to read because when have we ever been living in certain times? Have there been certain times? Ever? I’m confused. But maybe they’re right and now is somehow more uncertain than ever, I don’t know.

Last week when I played softball it felt like everything about softball was just a microcosm of my life right now.

I feel great when I’m cheering for everyone else and I love how it feels to belong on a team. I love the ritual of showing up every week to do something together. I love walking onto the field and putting all of our bags/chairs/wagons in a line and practicing throwing to warm up before the game. I love the predictability of the ritual. I love belonging to a ritual more I love having one belong to me.

One thing I wished I loved more was batting. Every time it’s my turn to bat I feel like I’m sitting in a dentist’s chair and they’re putting that vacuum thing in my mouth to suck up all the spit and my lips just wrap around it and I’m sitting there unable to do anything except wait for the moment to be over. I get so nervous, I tense up, I can’t focus, I just panic.

It’s the opposite of how I feel when I’m creating something I’m proud of. I want to bask in the moment, I feel lit up, I can’t wait for people to see what I’ve done. It’s weird because I’ve never felt like that before and I was an athlete all through elementary/high school, I loved performing and knowing I was being watched while I moved. Whether it was theatrical or athletic, the thought of being watched while doing a thing was not the end of the world to me. And now for some reason I cannot get out of my head enough to be in my body and hit a ball with a bat.

I was trying to picture my parents watching me play just to try and remind myself that I’m actually real and here and not a ghost - because I just want to be invisible when I’m there on the diamond. The word disassociation is one that comes to mind every time I grab the bat and walk to the plate.

On a completely different side of things, I’m finding myself wanting to post on Instagram more for a few reasons: Firstly because it feels good to be putting effort into something semi-creative every day, but also because it’s so cool to see who you connect with from a distance. It feels oddly relieving to not feel invisible right now- which I’m not used to. I usually experience so much anxiety about being seen digitally. Traditionally I’ve found social media to be so overwhelming that I’ve shut it down and deactivated it so I don’t have to think about it ever. But now the world feels so accessible to me in a way that isn’t terrifying anymore - it’s inviting and I want to dive in.

There are basically 3 songs that I’m listening to on repeat these days and they’re all I want to listen to. I want to be seen but I don’t have an appetite for a bunch of stimuli yet. I’ll listen to my usual podcasts, but I don’t have the mental capacity to read what people are posting about, I just have the brain space to go to work every day and then I want to come home and tap into whatever creativity I can. The songs on repeat are We’ll Never Have Sex by Leith Ross, Happier than Ever by Billie Eilish and What Am I Missing You For? by The Band CAMINO. Sometimes I just listen to one of them all day. They don’t make me feel sad but they help me feel something and that feels good. They make me feel like dancing and crying and moving and that feels good.

I was saying to one of my coworkers that softball is an arena I feel completely incompetent in. I’ve never played before, I’m not a natural at it - but I feel so confident in basically every other avenue of life right now.

In reality I know I’m at a crossroads for a lot of different reasons - with work, home, school, relationships - they’re all going to change in the next little while, and a lot has changed just in the last year. I wonder how much of who I am or what I’m doing right now will prove to be concrete. The people I am surrounded by on a daily basis are people I didn’t know 6 months ago, and yet I feel so strongly that I can’t leave this place right now because I can’t imagine doing life without them. The people I spend my time with when I’m not at work are all over the place - a lot of my best friendships are long distance. I’m not sure what ties me anywhere anymore. I am my own anchor, or I’m free floating - that feels more accurate actually. I am hovering over the ground with very little gravity to keep me there. I am here because I chose to be, that is all.

But in softball there is no hiding. In softball I feel like I am completely out at sea with nothing to hold me anywhere. And maybe that’s okay - maybe I can have enough of a feeling of safety in my body to hit the ball and be fully present the whole time. Maybe the month of May is just wild and once it’s over I’ll be a little more certain of things, hovering a little less above the ground.