Last night I didn't think I was feeling up to a movie with my movie HusFriend (this is our new made up name for our movie watching buddyship) but I really did want to see 'Call Me By Your Name' So I went any way. I've been a super on the sad side of things since Monday when a whole bunch of my favorite soccer players got traded. I was sad they were going, but even more than that, as it reached the point nearly half our team were gone, and our old coach, it felt like everything I had grown to love and become familiar with with the Reign was being mercilessly torn from me at once. I had decided to sit with those feelings and just let them be, but I also was feeling a little bit of shame for feeling that torn up over soccer players, and a soccer team.
I am incredibly glad that I went to 'Call Me By Your Name.' At the end of the film the dad gives this epic speech that was so validating and life changing for me.
He said "In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!"
I don't remember anyone every giving me permission to feel things like that before. I sat in that movie theater and grabbed my friend Rick's hand and just cried. It resonated so deeply with me, having a moment to just sit and remember life defining experiences and people that have helped shape and change you, giving them a proper place, so that you are prepared and able to properly let in new people and new experiences.
It was something that I had been trying to put words to and explain to another friend, that was concerned about new soccer players coming in not getting the welcome they deserve because everyone was so heartbroken about those leaving. But to give the new ones a proper place, we must also give the old ones a proper moment. As I have looked at threads of Orlando fans and seen some express such sorrow and rage about their old players going, what I see are people who have created ties, who care, and who have invested. I have no doubt that they will take care of my players I care about because they invest and they care.
This morning, When I went to work, I was determined to do what the dad said in the movie. To feel my pain, my anger, my sadness, to remember the joy, and experiences that brought me that pain, to face it down and not be afraid of what I might find. So I started the day listening to a lot of Green Day, because that is where I was angry, sad and alone. By lunch time I realized that I needed to go outside and I needed to go for a walk. At this point, I was starting to remember the words of the wisest book I have ever read, The Little Prince, By Antoine De Saint-Exupery.
"And when you are consoled (everyone eventually is consoled), you'll be glad you've known me. You'll always be my friend. You'll feel like laughing with me. And you'll open your window sometimes just for the fun of it... and your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you're looking up at the sky. Then you'll tell them, 'Yes, it's the stars; they always make me laugh!' And they'll think you're crazy. It'll be a nasty trick I played on you... And it'll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of tiny bells that know how to laugh..."
And the I thought of when the Little Prince was about to leave his friend the fox. How when it was time for the Little Prince, to leave he said "I shall weep." and the Little Prince told him, basically that he never meant to bring him sorrow. But the fox told him it was worth it "because of the color of the wheat." which was the color of the Little Princes hair, and would always remind the fox of his friend.
Thinking of this, I knew that I had to take a very deliberate walk in my own 'wheat field'. Haley Kopmeyer (Reign goalie) left me a gift that I will never cease to treasure. When I first heard word of the transfer, I thought this was a curse, that it would just remind me of how sad I was, until today. You see, two Stops With Kops episode were filmed right by my work. In fact, in one of my most sacred places on the earth, and has been since I moved here nearly a decade ago. Stops With Kops were some short YouTube videos that helped introduce the world to some of the soccer team in a non-soccer setting. I highly recommend watching them if you haven't, even my non-soccer friends adore them.
So this wheat field I had to walk in was metaphorical. It was to go take a walk to these two stops, very intentionally and deliberately, feeling my feelings as deeply vulnerably as I possibly could, remembering that this would be my 'field of wheat'. As I walked I felt such deep peace and connection to my surroundings. It shocked me, because I didn't feel sad or angry any more. I began to be consoled, and it began to be a gift. I had a few tears build up in my eyes, but for the first time in days they weren't angry or hurt, or afraid tears, they were peaceful tears, and I laughed a time or two, and people may or may not have thought I was strange or crazy.
I am incredibly glad that I went to 'Call Me By Your Name.' At the end of the film the dad gives this epic speech that was so validating and life changing for me.
He said "In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!"
I don't remember anyone every giving me permission to feel things like that before. I sat in that movie theater and grabbed my friend Rick's hand and just cried. It resonated so deeply with me, having a moment to just sit and remember life defining experiences and people that have helped shape and change you, giving them a proper place, so that you are prepared and able to properly let in new people and new experiences.
It was something that I had been trying to put words to and explain to another friend, that was concerned about new soccer players coming in not getting the welcome they deserve because everyone was so heartbroken about those leaving. But to give the new ones a proper place, we must also give the old ones a proper moment. As I have looked at threads of Orlando fans and seen some express such sorrow and rage about their old players going, what I see are people who have created ties, who care, and who have invested. I have no doubt that they will take care of my players I care about because they invest and they care.
This morning, When I went to work, I was determined to do what the dad said in the movie. To feel my pain, my anger, my sadness, to remember the joy, and experiences that brought me that pain, to face it down and not be afraid of what I might find. So I started the day listening to a lot of Green Day, because that is where I was angry, sad and alone. By lunch time I realized that I needed to go outside and I needed to go for a walk. At this point, I was starting to remember the words of the wisest book I have ever read, The Little Prince, By Antoine De Saint-Exupery.
"And when you are consoled (everyone eventually is consoled), you'll be glad you've known me. You'll always be my friend. You'll feel like laughing with me. And you'll open your window sometimes just for the fun of it... and your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you're looking up at the sky. Then you'll tell them, 'Yes, it's the stars; they always make me laugh!' And they'll think you're crazy. It'll be a nasty trick I played on you... And it'll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of tiny bells that know how to laugh..."
And the I thought of when the Little Prince was about to leave his friend the fox. How when it was time for the Little Prince, to leave he said "I shall weep." and the Little Prince told him, basically that he never meant to bring him sorrow. But the fox told him it was worth it "because of the color of the wheat." which was the color of the Little Princes hair, and would always remind the fox of his friend.
Thinking of this, I knew that I had to take a very deliberate walk in my own 'wheat field'. Haley Kopmeyer (Reign goalie) left me a gift that I will never cease to treasure. When I first heard word of the transfer, I thought this was a curse, that it would just remind me of how sad I was, until today. You see, two Stops With Kops episode were filmed right by my work. In fact, in one of my most sacred places on the earth, and has been since I moved here nearly a decade ago. Stops With Kops were some short YouTube videos that helped introduce the world to some of the soccer team in a non-soccer setting. I highly recommend watching them if you haven't, even my non-soccer friends adore them.
So this wheat field I had to walk in was metaphorical. It was to go take a walk to these two stops, very intentionally and deliberately, feeling my feelings as deeply vulnerably as I possibly could, remembering that this would be my 'field of wheat'. As I walked I felt such deep peace and connection to my surroundings. It shocked me, because I didn't feel sad or angry any more. I began to be consoled, and it began to be a gift. I had a few tears build up in my eyes, but for the first time in days they weren't angry or hurt, or afraid tears, they were peaceful tears, and I laughed a time or two, and people may or may not have thought I was strange or crazy.
But as I walked a new question began to pop into my head. How did these soccer players come to matter so much to me? Its not like we were friends. They didn't really know me, I didn't really know them. How did this happen? In the Little Prince it talks about creating ties. In the original it was said "You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed" tamed meaning 'to create/establish ties'. The fox also teaches the prince that it was the time he spent on his friend(the rose)that made his friend meaningful and important to him.
I thought about this, and I had to wonder how I had managed to create ties deep enough to care this much. It wouldn't come from no where. I thought about my first time at a game, I wasn't invested at all. I sat in the supporters section and I felt lost, I didn't know who anyone was on the field or in the bleachers, but they seemed to know. by the end of the game it started to mater to me. There was some person named "Fishlock" that was the first name that stuck, easy to remember. She seemed important to them. I loved being there, so I came back for more. I went for about 4 games and then decided I needed to get season tickets for the next season.
The next season I saw a request looking for volunteers to help set up the stadiums on game days. by this point, I just wanted to do anything I could to help this league survive. They were really amazingly talented players, and this thing needed to be seen and respected by more people. So I volunteered. I mostly worked up in the retail area, setting up the clothes. I got to know the people there, I started to make friends. I became more invested. A time or two I helped set up the field. I learned about the effort it took to put out the goals, and to unfurl the advertising tarps. The volunteer coordinator left at the end of that year, and I was as sad for her to go as I was anyone that retired or was traded at the end of the season.
I also had made a friend from Kuwait that year. The entire season I sat with her in our spot. It was an amazing spot. She always went to the fan zone after the game. I had no desire to go there, I didn't want to be some uncool adult waiting around for autographs from soccer players, and I also just didn't feel comfortable taking up these players time or chatting with them. My friend from Kuwait did though. So after every game she drug me down there, and I stood back while she shared laughs with these people as they signed her shirt, or her flag. I was impressed at how down to earth they were, how willing to engage and connect with the fans. I started to let the players into my heart a bit. It started to become personal. And I started to bring more people with me to games. We grew to a group. and then my friend went back to Kuwait, and my girlfriend and I broke up. The season ended and I found myself very alone going into the next one.
I bought season tickets again, and hoped it would be as magical as the first full season. I no longer had friends to go with me, but once again opportunities to volunteer came, and I took my season ticket and gave it to different friends so I would hopefully not have to sit alone. I found that some of the retail people I knew the year before were around again. I also found I that the new match day experience coordinator was actually pretty awesome. I quickly started to make more friends among the volunteers as we worked side by side on game days, moving heavy things, and setting up the field.
We would pass the coach or some of the players on the field or in the locker room as we went about our day. I always just tried to keep my head down and do my job, and stay out of their way. Every so often I would be completely disarmed with a hello, or a wave. I started to care even more. Stops with Kop came out, and through it the community started to know who these players were. It connected us, I think in a way that hadn't happened before. It was easier to get friends to come to games, and when they did I remembered how going to the fan zone with my Kuwaiti friend had "created ties" and made it a very personally invested experience for me. I decided even though that still wasn't really my thing, that I would copy her example and try to share that special experience with people I brought to the game.
The strange thing was that it usually made it more special for me doing it that way, and it continued to create and deepen ties to the team, to the stadium and surprisingly to other fans. I had some amazing conversations with complete strangers down there "fan girling" it out together. I also had a few moments from a new volunteer roll. Hesitatingly I agreed to help out with will call a few times this year. I met some of the players family and friends this way. One of my volunteer friends was always chatting and friendly with some Australian that knew one of the players. At first, this was a player I really didn't even care remotely about.
I remember thinking Who is that? and why should I care? but every week as my friend got excited to talk to this woman about their Finding Euphoria shirts, it just made me curious. I would think "Who is this 'Nairn'? If He thinks these people and their shirts are so great, maybe I should also get to know more about this. So I did. I started to follow people more on social media. Some of the players were very interactive. I eventually bought a Finding Euphoria shirt, and then I started to learn the meaning behind it.
I remember thinking Who is that? and why should I care? but every week as my friend got excited to talk to this woman about their Finding Euphoria shirts, it just made me curious. I would think "Who is this 'Nairn'? If He thinks these people and their shirts are so great, maybe I should also get to know more about this. So I did. I started to follow people more on social media. Some of the players were very interactive. I eventually bought a Finding Euphoria shirt, and then I started to learn the meaning behind it.
As I walked around today and realized that the reason I have been sad, and scared and crying over some soccer players, a coach, a team, a stadium, who should probably be nothing and no one to me, it was because of the time I spent on those players, that coach, that team, that stadium.
Game by game, heavy gate by heavy gate, smile by smile, Stop w Kop by Stop, every goal, every game won, every game lost, every tweet read, and every tweet they replied to, every smoke bomb, every taco I ate, every chant I tried to join in with I "spent time on (my) rose" and it became important to me. They became important to me.
Game by game, heavy gate by heavy gate, smile by smile, Stop w Kop by Stop, every goal, every game won, every game lost, every tweet read, and every tweet they replied to, every smoke bomb, every taco I ate, every chant I tried to join in with I "spent time on (my) rose" and it became important to me. They became important to me.
In the off season, I finally broke down my resistance and through twitter had become friends with the Royal Guard, the supporters group. That started to happen as I helped one of my volunteer friends hang Tifos before games, but twitter sealed the deal. I don't remember how it happened, but there was talk of needing/ wanting more player specific chants. So I invested some more of my time and my heart and I wrote a bunch. Perhaps part of why I cried is that now we don't get to use most of those (if any of them were even good enough to use) because the players are gone.
When it came down to it today, I found peace in my walk because I realized that the reason I couldn't yet support the new incoming players in the way I wanted, was because I know that to do that is to create ties. And to create ties is to risk tears. In the midst of those tears, I was afraid to take that risk again, because I am in the middle of pain,and tears, and it scares me to put that much heart into it again.
But as I walked in my "field of wheat" over to the Top Pot, and over to the water front and the aquarium, I heard what the Little Prince would have called the singing of the desert pulley. I saw the wheat of the Little Princes hair, I remembered, that you are forever responsible for the things your create ties to. And I remembered that the Little Prince left in the end, but that it was OK because of the gifts he had left behind for the aviator. I saw those gifts, in my most sacred Seattle spot.
As I hit the water front, it was no longer just the Stops with Kops moments I saw around me there, I saw my ex-fiancee and the night we had got back together after our first break up, the moment she held my hand, and the many beautiful moments me and her daughter spent on that waterfront. I looked over to the Seattle Aquarium, and I remembered Corsie and Kop's episode there, then I remembered my own friends there. My friend Amanda having lunch with me, my friend Jon and I in the little touching tide pool area. My parents, on one of their visits. All people I rarely see, but always I have these little things with me.
I realized that moments of deep joy were etched in this area. And moments of deep pain. Months and months of coming to the water, just trying to learn to breath again after Brandi and I broke up, both the first time, and the second time. All those days struggling with my religion and my sexual orientation, painful faith crisis that I sorted through on that dock. It was all there, all at once, and it was exquisitely beautiful and mine.
In that second, a question was answered that I have been asking myself for the past months. Do I really want to volunteer again? Do I really want to go to these games any more? Do I want to be in that stadium again? It might be painful, it might be sad. It may remind me of happy days past, and it might not live up to that nostalgia. What if I go again and its all ruined and tears?
In that moment on the waterfront, one of two sacred spaces I hold in Seattle, I realized that all I have to do when I get to Memorial Stadium this season is walk in that wheat field again. Let myself connect to it, both the joy, and the pain, and the sadness. In doing that, Memorial Stadium will always live in my heart, and in being in and connecting to those moments, my whole history with it, every tie created, every drop of sweat I gave it, its beauty can only grow. And when it is gone, it will be a piece of my soul.
As I was walking I thought of one more thing about the Little Prince. When he talked to the fox about HIS flower, the fox had him go meet with a whole bush of rose. I always thought perhaps he was a little unfair to them. Yes, he realized his flower was special in that moment, because he had spent time with that flower. But he was horribly rude to the other flowers and told them they weren't special or important at all. But they were. They were to someone, just not him. Why? because he was hurting so much over his own rose, which they reminded him of, that he refused to create ties with them.
I have gained friends wide and far that are fans of NWSL teams (that's the professional Women's soccer league that the Reign are in.) A lot of my friends didn't just have their favorite players transferred this season, they had their whole team transferred, and some (Boston) lost their team and all their players, staff, everything completely. We now have some of their players on our team here in Seattle. That is their 'roses' that they spent their time on, that they created ties to. They are important people to someone, even if they are not yet important to me. They are probably amazing people. So I am going to do what I hope others will do for those that became important to me. I'm going to open my heart again, I'm going to follow the rituals, and I'm going to create the ties.
Game by game, heavy object by heavy object, tarp by tarp, chant by chant, goal by goal, loss by loss, win by win, fan zone by fan zone. I'm going to take a chance on a new coach, on some new players in an old stadium that means everything to me. And I don't even have to question what it will be like to risk those tears, because I am still crying them for the ones I risked before.
I have taken many people with me, to this sacred space Memorial Stadium. I plan to do so again. It was my dream, before all my favorite players were transferred, to fill my section at memorial stadium with my friends. It is still my dream. If you do not like soccer, come with me any way. JUST one game. Do it for the sake of human connection. I have brought many people that didn't like soccer. I have never had any of them leave the game not wanting to come again. Come with me. Just one game. I promise you, there will be a piece of magic for you if you will risk the tears. By the way, Fishlock is still there, and we all still think she's pretty amazing.
For my friends that already have risked tears, that have invested deeply in the this league, in this team, in players that are now scattered far and near, I say to you, lets do this again. Lets create some ties. The most important things are invisible to the eyes. They can be seen only with the heart. Lets bring our hearts, lets risk it. Slowly, game by game, we will gain the color of the wheat. These humans are talented, and they are worth that risk.
If you live in Utah, please go take a chance and go see Laura Harvey, and her team. They are other peoples 'Roses' and since we are now far away, it would do us good to know they are being appreciated. If you live by any NWSL team, go to one game. Its the same thing. If you don't live by any check out one game of the week on Lifetime, or any games on www.go90.com when the season starts. If you live outside the US, watch on NWSLsoccer.com. See if for just one moment, its not worth the risk that investing a little bit of your time can have.
If you don't like soccer, and you really don't want to do any of this, I hope that you will get just one thing from this post. In life, change happens, and sometimes that is very hard. To have the things that we have created ties to feel distant from us can be painful. To have things change, can be painful. Let yourself feel it, and then when you are consoled, go take a walk in your field of wheat and remember.
One last thing before I end this incredibly long post. As I walked today, I also thought of Phoenix Festival. This last season it didn't really connect for me, because I wasn't in a state of "Ashes" but this past week, I watched my team that meant so much to me basically finish burning to the ground. I sat in the ashes, and I lived there for a moment. Today I felt myself start to rise from that. I thought of Harry Potter, and that Phoenix tears have healing powers. I realized that each time in life, when our everything burns to the ground, when change happens and we have to leave the past behind, when we rise again, we rise stronger because those past ties we created live in us and create those healing tears.
Ever since my lunch walk, my tears have changed from angry, sad, painful tears, to healing tears. I feel that it was because of the process I went through to feel everything I felt completely and intensely, to let things burn and rage, and walk in that moment, connected and unafraid to face all the things, beautiful and painful as they were.
again:
"In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!"
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