Advanced Essay #1

Hi, my name is Christopher Jacobs; my goals for this essay were to describe my theme and explore the personal struggles that I have had, and the struggles that I and others go through. My theme was complicated but also simple due to it being very versatile in how you could explain it, but I decided to make my main focus something I am really passionate about, sports. I wanted to tell about my experiences with my self doubt while playing and how much it affects me on and off the court. I am proud of how descriptive I was and how I really let myself go and let myself be vulnerable here. I took a lot of notice off my classmates work that helped give me a better idea of what I should write. I would use my time a little bit better next time and plan out each scene better if I could do this again though.

All my life I have been told that I wasn’t good enough, that I won’t do good at this sport or that I don’t deserve my “gift” of height or that no one needs me on their team.  Well, for a while I believed them, my self-esteem was killed and even now I still don’t believe in myself when it comes to any sport I play. But no matter what, no matter how much I don’t believe in myself, no matter how many times I doubt myself I always persevere and I always pushed through. You see when I was younger I always told myself that no matter what everyone else said or what my mind itself said, that I would keep going, keep pushing, keep persevering and never give up. 

I remember getting up that day and looking outside my window and sighing as I remembered the big game later today and how without most of our players I will most likely be forced to play way out my comfort zone and most likely, and just thinking about this gave me anxiety levels that ached and plagued my mind. I quickly erased all of those negative thoughts and went about my normal routine before grabbing my gear for my game later on. I went and grabbed my gear and headed out. 

When I got to the game I felt extremely nervous more so than I did anytime earlier and felt as if the world had its eyes on me and the nervousness built up inside me like a volcano dormant for years suddenly becoming active with fears I never knew I had before. I felt like an emotionally derailed train and was feeling so many negative emotions in me that I didn’t even notice the amount of time I held my breath as I put my hand on the door handle. I thought as I took a deep breath, “I could simply not come, I could call in sick or fake an injury or just go home couldn’t I.” I took my hand off that door handle and was about to turn back and hop onto the bus home before I stopped in my tracks and thought to myself. “Chris, you can’t do this to your team, they need you right now, we are down so many players and this would be extremely selfish, and it would go against your own morals.” I sat there for what felt like forever having an internal turmoil, before I sucked it up before grabbing that door and walking inside to be greeted by the sounds of screeching feet and a basketball game, I smiled and took a deep breath, relieving the stress off my shoulders before walking over to my teammates gathered together and joining them to do the most important ballgame of my life up to this point.

    When I first started playing football, I hated it, I absolutely hated it, it was a sport I had never played before, a sport I was never interested in watching, and especially the fact that it was a contact sport my dad forced me to do instead of letting me play basketball made it worse. I was always the kid who was out of place while I was there, the kid who would get pushed around by everyone else at practice, and never even got to play in any games. My coach sat me out all the time saying the same excuse, “You're not ready yet.” I remember it was 4 games where I was reduced to sitting on the sideline as a water boy while my teammates went and played their hearts out. I hated every second of it, it had kept killing my self-esteem and each time I had to sit out, my morale to keep pushing and persevering would just deplete even more over and over till I felt empty, till I felt like a black hole constantly being sucked in together with no escape. Then I remember the day my coach said that I could finally play, I felt so excited but so nervous at the same time, I was scared, scared that I would have wasted the hours of training and ruin my opportunity. But I did what I had to, I put on my pads, put my jersey and gear and hopped onto that field. When the coach told me “Go play your heart out, kid.” Those words felt like something that I needed to perform well that day, I felt empowered and that experience is still the one I can look back on and be truly proud of myself for once.  

Some people don’t get it though, they simply say,” just get over it, it’s all in your head and that it isn’t real.” What they don’t know is how real it truly is, how it does so much against you physically and mentally, how it always plagues your mind and hinders you so much to the point of you physically feeling sickly because of it all. They think that these issues are just simple and I don’t get it. Why are these issues looked down upon, why are they so ignorant to these feelings that not just I have, and that ignorance is what hurts me the most. “No matter what, I think, no matter what everyone else says and no matter what stands in my way, even if my own mind goes against me, I’ll keep going.” Those are the words that I live by, the ones I die by and my morals.