For reasons unknown to myself, I decided to write a long Day One journal entry about how hurt I was when I didn’t get any play time my senior year in high school on the volleyball team.

I had what felt like a years long, close personal relationship with my coach that shattered. Neither of us were ever direct and honest about the situation. She never told me I wasn’t going to get play time or gave me feedback on how to improve. She never seemed to even consider that my senior year, even our last game, I might want to take the court. We lost every game that season and not even when a match was clearly forfeit did she put me in.

Not once.

Its one of the few things that I look back on even nearly 20 years later that still feels raw. Writing about it in detail helped a little, but as I write this follow on public post I can still feel how raw it is.

I stopped playing volleyball for 17 years after that. I did not even allow myself the thought of playing in the most social of recreational leagues. Volleyball and rejection became synonymous. I’m glad I have spent more time playing volleyball the last couple of years while I still physically can. I love it just like I did before my senior year. But I still carry some pain, dulled though it is, about the whole thing.