I’ve never been particularly good at finishing what I start. Most of my hobbies come and go within a month or two; odd obsessions that consume my thoughts and eventually actions, until my interest dissipates as another potential waste of time appears.
When I was younger, it didn’t matter. I thought it was great that I could learn so many different things, that I always had a party trick up my sleeve, that I’d never run out of things to talk about because I was always doing something new. It didn’t matter until the one obsession that had withstood the volatile fluctuations of my passion ended.
It was May of 2023. I was nineteen and living in Maryland, pursuing my dream of playing lacrosse in Baltimore. My team had just made it to the national semifinal against Essex, a team that I still, and will always hate. I was cleared by my doctor the day before to play.
I had been experiencing heart palpitations and severe shortness of breath for weeks. My EKG came back fine, same with the bloodwork and ultrasound of my chest. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so they released me back into the wild.
Approximately 38 minutes and 27 seconds into the game, I collapsed on the field. My windpipe completely closed — my heart beat irregularly. I couldn’t see, hear, taste or smell anything. All I sensed was the small black rubber pellets on my tear-streaked cheeks as I lay face down on the turf, helmet thrown off in desperation.
As I lay there, choking on the blood in my throat and the carbon dioxide filling my lungs, I knew that I wasn’t coming back for a second year. For weeks, my parents had been begging me to come home once the season was over; they suspected something was wrong, and there was. I just didn’t want to tell them.
At community college, there is no housing or meal plans. I lived off campus and got my food from Safeway and McDonald’s. Still, despite consuming an abundance of empty calories, I lost over 15 pounds in two months.
My body was eating itself — ribs protruding from my sides, eyes sunken and black. But I refused to quit. I told myself that I belonged there no matter how I looked or felt. I had worked so hard to get there; I put in thousands of hours of practice just to have a chance at playing lacrosse in Maryland. And now here I was, effectively paralyzed on the ground.
The one thing that I had committed to rejecting me.
We lost the game 13 to 9. The season was over. My lease ended. I told my coach that I wouldn’t be coming back, and I moved home. I had no idea what to do after that. My only plan after high school was to play college lacrosse; I didn’t care about getting a degree, but I knew I couldn’t just sit at home, wallowing in self-pity about a future that would never be.
That fall, I transferred to NMU and immediately fell in love with Marquette. I joined the men’s club lacrosse team and met some of the best people I will ever have the pleasure of knowing. The community that I had been craving returned to my life, and I realized that finishing what you started doesn’t always look the way you thought it would.
Now I’m in my final semester, co-president of the lacrosse club, pursuing a career that I’m passionate about, and surrounded by people I love. For me, finishing what I started meant committing myself to things that I loved, even when there was the possibility of failure.
A real loser is somebody that’s so afraid of not winning they don’t even try.
