I stared at the blank email draft on my laptop screen, the cursor blinking like it was waiting for me to make a decision. If I didn’t start reaching out to coaches, nothing was ever going to come of this. Do I even want this? This would be a no-brainer for my teammates. They’d kill to have a bite from a D1 coach this early in the process. It couldn’t hurt to just hit send. Why can’t I send a damn email?
Maybe I should change my intended major, that would make me more competitive. No one makes it through a D1 program as a premed. Coaches know that. Katie switched to nutritional science after her second semester. Why would she pick that? She’s a nanny now. She has to go back for her master’s or something. I can’t really budge on my career. What would be the point of going to school for four years if the degree didn’t get me anywhere? Why do they let sixteen year olds make these kinds of decisions?
Is Charleston in North or South Carolina? Katie said it was pretty there but it seems like a small school. At least it’s close to the water. Coach said I need to start scheduling tours, maybe I should ask about that. That’s really far though, and I have AP exams in a few weeks. I’m not even sure that I want to go south anyway. Why do I have to start this so early? My classmates won’t even start looking at schools for another year or so. Is this really the only way I can keep playing?
What if it’s like Coach Nicole all over again? Why would I sign up for four more years of that? I know it’s just supposed to make me better. She has made me better. That’s what I keep telling myself. If I repeat it enough times, maybe I’ll believe that it outweighs the berating. I wouldn’t have made it this far, staring at this email, if she hadn’t pushed me. I wouldn’t have the numbers to put in front of these coaches either. Do I want to keep this up for four more years?
I rub my eyes and glance at the clock. 12:42 a.m. I should’ve been asleep an hour ago. I have a lift before school tomorrow, and then practice and PT after. The same routine I’ve had for years. The same routine I’ll keep having, I suppose.
The cursor blinks at me again, and I realize my hands have been hovering over the keyboard, waiting for my brain to make a decision. It’s just an email. Just one step. It doesn’t mean I’m committing to anything, not right now. It just means I’m giving myself an option. That’s all.
I let out a breath, and move the mouse to the Send button. I click it before I can change my mind.
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The narrative I constructed is a portrait of myself in my sophomore year of high school, struggling with the decision to continue my athletic career (prior to any of the influence of Covid). I wanted to confine the reader to my younger self’s internal monologue, forcing an intimate encounter with my anxiety and frustrations at the time. There is no all-knowing insight or external validation; instead, the reader experiences my hesitation in real-time. The blinking cursor becomes a metaphor for my indecision, and I aimed for the monologue to reflect the ways doubt cycles in the mind without immediate resolution.
The constraints of this perspective shape the details I included, as the focus remains entirely on my younger self’s thoughts rather than broader descriptions of the environment or other characters. The external world barely intrudes—there are no sensory details about my childhood bedroom where I was writing from, or even the light from the screen beyond what is necessary to frame the emotional state I was in. The only other characters—my teammates, Coach Nicole, Katie—exist solely in relation to the dilemma. They are not given independent dialogue or actions; rather, they serve as reflections of my previous fears and experiences. This subjective framing makes them feel somewhat distant, reinforcing the isolation inherent in decision-making.
This approach mirrors what I found in Solito, a memoir by Javier Zamora, that details his journey from El Salvadore to the United States as a child. Zamora accomplishes this by using a child’s perspective, which narrows the scope of what the reader understands as the plot unfolds. As a child, he does not have access to the full realities of migration—he interprets danger and uncertainty through his limited experiences. His perspective shapes the narrative’s emotional intensity, much like the narrator’s limited view in my piece creates a sense of internal tension. Zamora’s use of fragmented memories and internal dialogue also reflects the way the mind copes with overwhelming circumstances, much like my protagonist’s scattered thoughts when facing an uncertain future.
In Reading Autobiography Now, by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, many ways in which life narratives are shaped by memory, identity, and storytelling techniques are explored and broken down to help better interpret life narratives. They make key distinctions about how positionality, which refers to the way a writer’s social, cultural, historical, and political contexts shape their understanding of an autobiography, and memory are imperative to this narrative constraint. The act of recalling and narrating one’s own experiences is inherently shaped by personal biases and emotions, which is evident in my piece as the narrator’s struggles with self-doubt take precedence over any factual, detached recounting of the situation. The book also explores how autobiographical narratives are constructed to frame identity and experience, reinforcing how my protagonist’s self-concept as both an athlete and a student is central to their struggle.
In hindsight, that was a simple moment (sending an email that I found distressing) in a long string of events that followed. I just felt this isolated example best demonstrated my emotions and feelings at that point in time. And to whom it might satisfy, I did commit to play here, only to decommit after the summer training before my freshman year. There were years–building up a rapport with the coach, hours upon hours of training and showcases and clinics to meet standards, traveling up and down the coast to be seen by coaches and tour their schools, and lots of self-reflection as far as the direction of my life–between now and that email.
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