July… Pre-season friendly

I have the world’s worst luck. I am the ancient meme of bad luck, a knight in full shining armor getting an arrow through the practically microscopic eye-slit of his helmet; that’s how lucky I am.

I was feeling good, you know, completely and super hyped? Okay, homesick as hell, and I found myself getting lost with how much I missed home and my old routine; I missed controlling my own training schedule and what I ate and what I decided to binge on. But this is something else.

Yeah, it’s all I ever wanted, sure, but I thought there would be something…more? I thought it would be better?

Why did it feel like any other training day when I was supposed to be hyped that I was finally going to debut for Southgate for the upcoming season?

I ignored the sick feeling in my belly, the queasiness that made me uneasy, stomach lined with lead weighing me down, dragging down to my legs so I felt like I couldn’t move my feet fast enough, couldn’t get to the ball fast enough in my first game with the team.

I even got an elbow to the face as I was going after the ball, half-muttering to myself to go faster when this bitch clocks me one and I end up losing my bearings, and hence, the ball.

I shook it off, because what else was I going to do when it was nothing more than an exhibition game to find my feet, my stride instead of doing it all in the season opener?

I just kept nosediving though, being brought down like quicksand as I realized with every chance I got to shine, I just couldn’t, that my spot was going to be taken by someone else because I just couldn’t bring my A-game to the exhibition match.

So I pushed too hard, I overextended myself when I shouldn’t have been doing any of that.

But this moment? This very moment here on the field, where everything feels good and right? It’s been fifteen years in the making.

All the blood, sweat and tears that I’ve left out on the pitch, my favourite place on the planet, all the heartache that made me realize that I don’t have that golden talent that would make me the greatest player there ever was, that wouldn’t lend me the chance to make my name known across football history, and I had to work twice as hard as anyone else to get what I wanted felt like it wasn’t worth shit.

And now it’s slipping away, like sand sifting through my fingers.

I’m going to blow it. I know I’m going to blow it, even as I run full-out.

You have to risk it to get the biscuit.

I’m tired, panting enough that I’ve got a stitch in my side and my pores yawned wide open so that I’m drenched in sweat, huge stains under my arms, under my boobs and across my back. It feels like I’ve never sweated so much in my entire life, but it’s fitting, isn’t it? Like a movie scene where the athlete protagonist is broken down by physical exertion only to rise up one more time and make it.

That’s how this was supposed to play out.

I was going to have a Rocky moment running up those steps to that museum in Philadelphia after running around the whole city, arms raised high in triumph when I earned my spot on the team.

Except life isn’t a movie, and I didn’t pay enough attention when I messed up my leg—my first injury in professional football, the whole thing a blinding haze of pain.

I vaguely remember screaming, holding onto my quad and knee like I was trying to hold them together as I collapsed ass-first onto the turf, howling while the team started to crowd around me. My foot rolled over the ball and I wasn’t paying enough attention and I killed my leg. I killed my leg.

I had a dream to become a great professional footballer, and I was so close I could taste it, so close I could feel the official jersey with my name on the back of it, crisp and ready to be seen by the audience who pay for the regular season games, by those who are as fanatical about football as I am.

I was ready to be known; I was ready to make my mark.

And then this happens.

Torn meniscus, thigh strain, and something that ends in ‘itis’. With those words, I’m out for the count for six to eight weeks, with all the other injuries combined.

Six to eight weeks feels like a goddamn lifetime, an eternity.

God, I let everyone down, I let the team down, I let my coaches down. Worst of all, I let myself down ’cause I was too deep inside my head. Shit, shit, shit!

Giovanni di Laurentis would never have gotten hurt like this, over something so stupid like my foot rolling over the ball and falling awkwardly enough that I think I ripped an important muscle group in my leg.

Through a haze of tears, snot, and blubbering, I see my dream dissipate into smoke by looking at my coach’s eyes, his face grim and pale like he’s gotten the worst kind of news.

I was supposed to debut in next week’s first official game of the season, I was supposed to be on the field for the first time and I was supposed to score a goal as a striker.

All I’m going to be doing is warming the bench.

I might as well call it quits right here.

All the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men couldn’t put Madelyn Chase back together again.

No one’s going to be seeing my name in lights on the big screen over the field after I score. Not for the next little while anyway.

My heart breaks a little.

Two days after surgery and I’ve been instructed to not move my leg at all. That means no training whatsoever. Zero training. An undetermined amount of training that I am not allowed to participate in.

I haven’t not trained in a single day in forever. I don’t even know what to do with myself.

What do normal people do when they’re not conditioning or weight training? What are normal people doing when they’re not practicing strategy on the field? Christ, what the hell do normal people do?

I know there’s Netflix and a bunch of other streaming services that I’m not subscribed to. That’s a thing where people binge hours and hours of shows in one go, but I never have the time for that. I’m so tired after a long day of training that I’m barely able to feed myself before cleaning up my tiny apartment, changing into pajamas (which are usually ratty sweats proclaiming one football club or another that I’ve fangirled over in the past), and heading to bed, phone in hand, barely able to make it past a single page in whatever kissing book I’m reading at the time.

Football is my job, and I work twelve to fifteen-hour days, turning my body into the best footballer it can be.

Until today, when I can’t.

So what the hell am I supposed to do with myself now?

I have this stupid fiberglass brace encasing my entire right leg, from hip down to ankle, and I’m supposed to be walking with crutches. I hate the crutches, but I don’t want to prolong my injury or my healing because I was afraid to look like a little wounded bird, but it is what it is.

Now I’m walking around the field with my crutches, keeping pressure off my injured knee and leg, to the men’s side of the training center where they do everything we do but manlier—or so I’ve heard. The Southgate FC won the league championship last year, and they’re still riding that high—again, so I’m told.

The two teams don’t really mix, since the women’s team doesn’t have as much clout, even though we’re gaining in popularity day by day. Soccer is soccer, no matter who’s playing.

I don’t really like the men’s team, since they think that winning the League Cup makes them hot shit, and they walk around like they’ve each permanently grafted a portion of the cup up their asses.

Assholes, every single one of them.

Which has no effect on how easy it is to watch them practice, though. Their team play, their speed, and general camaraderie has been a whole season in the making and makes my teeth ache with how much I want to be with my own teammates like that—friends, sometimes out of necessity, but a weird kind of family nevertheless.

I’m the weird Canadian outsider that upended her entire life after getting scouted from playing in the Women’s World Cup and one of my goals got Team Canada to defeat the defending champions, Team U.S.A.

But, like, was I supposed to say no when Coach Erik Hansen came to see me after we lost in the semi-finals? Before I knew it, we were in discussions to come to play for Southgate FC, in England, where football is everything.

Yeah, no, I wasn’t not going to come here, try my hand at playing professionally in one of the coolest countries (no, really, I haven’t seen the sun for days), making a living at doing something I love. How many people can say that?

It doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been a horrible wake-up call—lonely out of my mind, exhausted out of my body, and no matter how much I talk to my old roomies, Aria and Raleigh, we all have our own lives and it takes some real kind of coordination to get us all free at a time when we’re not busy, across three different time zones.

There are girls here from across Europe, not to mention some of the girls that came through the academy, the highest level of football for women with slim as hell chances to make it professionally, even if they’ve been at this training center longer than I have.

And now?

I’m still getting flak for being a pro footballer, because I apparently have a uterus and tits. I thought you only needed a quick pair of feet to score a goal. My tits have nothing to do with it.

A lot of the guys on the men’s team like to talk about how the talent pool is much smaller for the women, how we don’t train as hard or what-the-hell-ever.

We all know that if the guys were bleeding from an orifice, they’d be staying home right quick. Please.

So while they’re fun to watch, they’re complete dicks to try and have a conversation with, shoving their awesomeness up my nose if I get within a four-foot radius, because that’s who they are. Footballers are akin to celebrities in this part of the world, and I always wanted to be a part of this world, so I have to take it.

And now I’m here, on the sidelines. I want so badly to get on the field, to show them what I can really do when I’m not fighting a mental battle with myself; I want to show them that I can be the best striker in the league if given the chance.

But I’ve got about six to eight weeks to kill, and killing time is always something I’ve been bad at.

The men’s team is currently drilling with a simple game of monkey-in-the-middle, one guy in the middle of a circle, while the ring of guys surrounding him pass the ball to each other in simple and complicated ways to stop the monkey in the middle getting the ball. A simple drill, but one you’ll always find in a game. I want to be part of that ring so bad my teeth ache.

Hell, I’d settle for being in the middle, swinging my crutches like they’re an extra pair of legs.

And then I notice another guy standing on the sidelines, by himself, practicing high knees and kicking out at the air in controlled movements like he’s stretching out his groin and inner thigh muscles, breath puffing out in the cool air because it’s raining ninety percent of the time here, and damp, too. And they say Canada’s weather sucks.

I don’t know why he catches my attention, maybe because we’re in the same injured-footballer boat, and usually that’s a good thing. But I have to remind myself that he plays for the men’s team and therefore thinks I am a weaker player by the fact that I’ve got a pair of tits and a vagina.

I’m about to call out a hello since he’s seen me, looked me practically dead in the eyes, even at this distance, and I’m getting ready to lift up a crutch in my odd version of a hello, when he gets called back on the field when his name is called, and then I realize who it is.

Jesse Windmeier. Jesse freaking Windmeier. The phenom who’s a couple of years older than me, breaking hearts and signing big, hefty contracts to destroy the entire football universe. The phenom footballer that everyone’s losing their minds over.

He’s hurt, too? When did that happen? When did he get signed to Southgate?

God, to play with a guy like him, one-on-one, that would be the best way to get better once my leg’s fully healed. The only way you can get better is to play with somebody who’s better than you, learn all their tricks.

I can picture it in my head, pulling dekes left and right, getting around Jesse Windmeier and scoring on him, impressing him with my incredible footwork. Now that would be an awesome story.

Now I’ve gotta watch him, see if he’s anything at all like Giovanni di Laurentis.

And he is. Jesse’s even better.

Shit, now I’ve got a crush on him, too.

To all the players I’ve loved before… I’m sorry?