Once upon a time, in a lifetime far away, I used to write about women’s soccer. I was pretty good at it, too. I had my own site with a roster of writers, and I wrote for other outlets, SB Nation included.
I covered NWSL games and United States women’s national team games, and people who wrote for my site covered the Women’s World Cup from the press box. Some of the friendships I made and the experiences I had in those years are an important part of my story.
But I don’t do that anymore. I haven’t for nearly as long as I did it in the first place.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I feel about myself and that time in my life. Frankly, I don’t have many good feelings about who I was then, even though I have a lot of good feelings about the people I met, the friendships I built, and the writing I did.
Without getting too deep into how we remember our past selves, I was in a transitional period. The person I wanted to be and the person I was were in near-constant conflict.
In a lot of ways, I’m still at war with myself. That tension between who I am and who I want to be has never really gone away; it’s just changed shape as I’ve gotten older.
What’s different is that I try to be intentional about who I am now. Even on the days it doesn’t work out, I try harder than I ever did before.
It’s a bit of a running joke that I like airport lounges more than most people do. I think part of the reason is that a lounge is a transitional space. People come and they go, and yes, they eat sad salads. But it’s a place you pass through. You arrive, you stay a while, and then you move on. That feeling of moving on, whether to somewhere new or back home, calls to a part of me that I don’t think will ever stop looking for those transitional spaces.
There are plenty of good reasons to dislike layovers and to avoid lounges like the infectious disease centers they sometimes prove to be. But I don’t think I’ll ever stop going to them, or stop sitting for a little while on every trip and thinking about the people around me who are coming or going. And I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking of myself the same way: coming and going, from who I was, to who I am, to who I might be.
Am I feeling sentimental? Absolutely. But now and then, we’re all allowed to be a little sentimental.
Leave a Reply