To play or not to play

“Mine!” I called out as the setter pushed the ball into the air with a gentle but powerful blow, but I wasn't as ready as I thought. The ball came flying towards me. I felt the sting of the impact when the ball hit my arms and flew sideways. Another screw-up, I thought and my heart started to pound. I looked around to see the other players' faces after my mess up, hoping they weren’t angry at me. As I glanced around, the faces that were probably only slightly frustrated, all looked full of hatred to me. I finished the rest of the scrimmage as well as the rest of practice embarrassed and annoyed with myself and walked home. 

“How’d practice go?” My mom asked as I walked through the door and gave a disappointed look when I gave a generic answer and went to my room. Every practice seemed to go like this. I wasn't happy or excited to go to practice just to embarrass myself. I sighed, dreading tryouts. A week later my practice camp had ended and tryouts were just around the corner. I don't want to do tryouts, I thought to myself as I slipped on my shoes and tied the laces. My mom had said it was a good idea to practice with myself in the yard before tryouts, so here I was doing exactly that. Bounce, bounce, bounce, the repetition of the ball bouncing off of my wrists was boring. While I passed the ball with myself I thought about how volleyball wasn’t fun for me anymore and how I dreaded every game. I knew that if I didn't try out I would be a lot more carefree and happy. On the other hand, I thought about how I had decided with my friend that we would try out together, and how I had been doing volleyball for years and that it would be a shame to quit now, but the pros outweighed the cons so I made up my mind to not try out. But how could I build up the courage to tell my mom? After a minute of thought, I finally concluded that I would bring the topic up during dinner. After a while, it was time to eat. The food looked delicious, Though I didn't seem to have the appetite to eat any of it.

“What?” My mom asked after I had brought up the idea of not trying out“But I thought you loved volleyball?” 

I tried to explain how I was not having fun playing and that I had not been for some time, but she didn’t seem to understand. 

“This is a mistake. You will regret this later on, just play this year and see if you like it!” At this point, my dad had joined in on her side. 

“ You have always liked volleyball, what are you saying now? You need to get out and do something!” He said. Their words seemed to go through one ear and out the other because all I could think about was how I could possibly convince them. I wanted to show them my perspective on the situation and let them see from my point of view, but I couldn't seem to get through to them. I started to freak out and spilled about how I had been stressed out because of volleyball for a while. I have never been good at confrontation so I had decided beforehand that I wouldn’t bring this reason up, but here I was accidentally sharing the actual reason I didn't want to play anymore. In the end, I got the okay to not continue the sport. My parents were very hesitant and disappointed that I had made the decision to not play but they allowed me not to as long as I participated in other group events like clubs. But I had a new thing to worry about, telling my friend. I was the one that convinced my friend to join volleyball the year before and I felt terrible about ditching them to play by themselves as we already had decided to try out together. The next day at school I told them at lunch. 

“I actually didn’t want to try out either.” Those were the most relieving words I could have heard. I could breathe again. Even now, I look back on this decision a lot. I sometimes miss playing volleyball, but I do not miss playing on a team. Whenever my friends or myself are bored, we like to pass a volleyball around for fun. While I occasionally miss being able to play against opponents and play with more people, I am glad that I decided to stop playing volleyball because the decision helped me have a lot less stress and pressure. Now I know that I should not overthink and worry about confronting my emotions and that I should speak out about something that I don't want to do because most of the time, it's not a big deal.