Behind

leaving good memories behind

JOAN THYAGARAJAN investigations editor

For the past fifteen years, my life has been a continuous cycle of change: when I was three months old my family moved to Canada, when I was five years old I became an older sister, when I was eight my family moved to Cupertino. Amidst this never ending change, soccer remained a faithful, reliable and sometimes monotonous constant in my life. That is how it has been for the past nine years: I played with the Sunnyvale Alliance Soccer Club for nearly a decade and that club has always been a place where I could forget about all the other worries in life and imagine I was five and all I had to do was play my heart out. I essentially grew up with the girls on my team and the complex where we had trained is a bonanza of cherished memories. This year, I left the team. I wasn’t happy anymore and I needed a fresh start. It was only when I left that I realized how much of an impact SASC had had on my life, and how difficult it would be to leave those sweet childhood memories behind.

What really slapped me in the face when I left was the fact that I would most likely never play soccer

“Leaving soccer behind was leaving my childhood behind.”

again with my former teammates. A close friend of mine left the team this year as well. At first we commiserated about the gaping hole we felt in our lives without the childhood team, but as time progressed we began to talk less as we realized that the main thing we had in common no longer existed. We got past it, but what worried me more was the fact that I had lost touch with a handful of other girls once I left the team. I can still go and start talking to them again, but it hurt when I realized how I had let all of those important people in my life slip through my fingers. I didn’t try to save those friendships. All the memories that I treasured did not have to fade; all I had to do was keep the people with whom I made those memories close. I did not recognize that. Instead, I agonized over how I would never be able to spend nights out on the turf with the stadium lights on us as we messed around even though we had a math test test the next day which none of us were prepared for. Just because I was never going to relive those exact moments, I let all of those relationships go. When I realized that, I began to reforge those friendships. So far, it’s going well, but next time, I hope that I remember this first time.

While losing my friends was hard to ignore, another aspect of leaving was the overwhelming nostalgia. I never realized it, but the complex I played at, the jersey I wore, the nighttime practices I hated so much because they didn’t let me study for my Algebra 2/Trig tests, were such a fundamental part of my life for the past five years that leaving soccer behind was leaving my childhood behind. When the nostalgia hit me I began to think I had made a horrible decision by leaving: I missed my old team so much, and I felt as if the base that had always been there to support me had suddenly up and left. To be frank, I was miserable, but I stuck by my decision. After a month, the nostalgia hadn’t left, but I had come to accept that I might never get to make more memories with that soccer team. Instead, I would keep the memories I had made in a special place in my heart and look back on them when things get tough, but persevere because change is inevitable. When something loved is lost, there is no other option but to look forward, and never forget. Those memories make us who we are.