Sabrina Z.
Photography by Andres Troncoso.
If you’re reading this, remember that time, when combined with patience, kindness, and hard work, can help you heal.
I. Childhood
When I think back to how I was as a child–and I’m sure everyone can relate–I remember feeling free. Each day was exciting because I was captivated by the vibrancy and richness of life. For the first few years of my life, I was raised by my grandparents. As I spent more time with them, I found myself looking forward to the crispness of the air in the morning, the sight of dandelions floating in the wind, the taste of fresh honeysuckle, and the sound of birds chirping. I relished each new experience like a sunflower turning to the sun.
My grandparents taught me two main things: 1) how to see beauty in everything 2) the importance of having a dream. They always told me I needed to have some sort of skill I could use to contribute to the world and to take care of myself and my loved ones.
I’ve since noticed that the biggest dreams belong to the youngest children. In fact, when I was younger, I felt like I could do or be anything. Why? Because dreams were just that. Dreams. I didn’t see them as holding much weight because I knew that who I wanted to become could always change. I gave myself permission to dream but didn’t hold myself to anything. And naturally, kids like me would say something and forget about it the following day.
II. Growing Pains
As I grew older, that changed. The idea of having dreams changed into fulfilling expectations, something like a promise I had to keep. Dreams needed to be justified; I had to have an important reason or motivation to have such dedication to something. This led me to think: what was my why?
This might seem like a great thing for a girl growing and trying to find her place in the world. After all, she’s learning about what’s important to her. What her goals in life are. What her values are. How she wants to make her mark on the world. These are deep and important questions everyone should ask themselves, and what better way to explore that than by chasing your dreams?
She decided, one day, that she would commit herself to a sport. Making the choice was quite simple; she wanted to learn exactly what her brother, her role model, learned. Her view towards the sport was initially one of pure admiration and curiosity, but things took a turn relatively quickly. Training sessions became more intense, and she soon found herself spending more and more time trying to improve. Practices would sometimes end in tears, with coaches yelling as she tried her best to correct her form the way she was instructed to. Other times, it would be her mom’s continuous corrections and watchful eyes that made her anxious. However, it was mostly still fun.
As she continued improving, though, she found herself more and more isolated from her peers. She started to feel lonelier. She felt like she had no one to turn to; no one was going through the same experiences as she was or saw the world through the same lens. It didn’t help that she was one of the only girls training at her level in the entire state, and one of the small handful in the entire region. On one particular day, talk of table tennis, as it often did, traveled with her as she and her mom left practice, drove home, and stepped in the house. A raised voice followed her as she climbed the stairs and into her room, and she ended up locking herself in the bathroom for the good part of an hour. If she was feeling this pathetic while crying after her mom reprimanded her for her poor performance, how could she just go to school and bring it up? She would only ruin the mood. Because she never wanted her friends to see her like this, she never talked about it.
The truth is that most times, the words that stick with us are not the most thoughtful and insightful ones. Instead, they’re the ones uttered on a whim, an outburst in response to a strong emotion like frustration or anger. The speaker won’t ever realize how deeply their words cut us, but we’ll always remember them.
To this day, one of the most memorable lines my mom ever said to me was “我真的服了你。” It’s hard to translate this in English, but she meant something along the lines of, “I’m done with you. I give up.” This hurt me more than all the mistakes she pointed out; those all blend together now. What I do remember is that one line and the guilt that came after, that feeling of disappointing someone I looked up to and cared about.
Now, back to the timeline. The burden of expectations disguised as “support” surrounded her; she couldn’t escape it. By forcing herself to continue chasing a dream she decided, almost impulsively, to pursue years ago, she now felt like there was no turning back. It was as if by the time she realized the depth of the waters she had treaded into, she was already chest deep. She had no time or energy to learn to swim; the only option was to use whatever means to stay afloat. She kept telling herself that once she consistently made the national team for a couple years, she would have proven herself and that she wouldn’t feel this pressure anymore. This arbitrarily set standard became a mantra she uttered to herself every day, and she desperately hoped that it would all get better someday, somehow.
It did not. For a lot of high school, she was living life on autopilot under the guise of “hard work” and “passion” for her craft. Other coaches and parents would compliment her work ethic and would tell other kids to be more like her, but what they didn’t know was that she didn’t feel all that passionate about what she did anymore. Every day would look and feel the same; she stuck to a fixed routine, going to school while masking whatever happened the previous day, then going to training like it was a chore. In fact, in some ways, it was worse than a chore. During practice, she couldn’t make too many of the same mistakes because that would mean she was being careless. However, this became a cycle, where one or two mistakes of the same kind would lead to anxiety; the more mistakes she made, the more discouraged she became and the more she feared her mom’s feedback and disappointment. Eventually, she felt like she physically couldn’t execute certain shots, that she couldn’t control how she played. This loss of confidence would stay with her for years to come. Even worse, she knew she had to play matches after finishing her drills. She feared losing so much that at times, she would briefly consider making up some excuse to avoid playing them. Even practice matches, which should have no stakes and be the perfect environment to try new things, made her heart race in her chest and her palms sweat more than usual. To her, losing symbolized failure. All she could think about were the mistakes she would have to reflect on during the car ride home. The drive home each day after practice was a designated time for her mom and her to summarize her performance. Each day, as she sat and closed the car door behind her, she hoped that there wouldn’t be any traffic. She hoped she played well enough. Sure, she had her good days where she would happily listen to her mom’s commenting on the good shots she made and the good tactical choices she executed. Those days, she hoped there was traffic. However, those were far fewer than what she would have liked. Most of the time, she thought she wasn’t meeting the expectations of those around her. At this point, her worth depended on her performance, and she wasn’t good enough.
Going to tournaments would raise lots of interest among her classmates. Sure, she had accumulated some accomplishments over the years, but honestly, there were more terrible matches than decent ones. In addition, after every tournament she played, she would revisit these matches. Objectively speaking, combing through competition footage is a great way to analyze weaknesses in your game and develop a training plan to improve upon them. However, she only felt dread. Each point she watched was accompanied by a nervous glance as she watched her mother’s reaction. After many late nights of watching her past matches, she would have to write a summary and propose a training plan designed to address whatever weaknesses she showed during that tournament. Each summary consisted of multiple sections analyzing how she could improve her mental game, tactics, and technique. This entire process was really difficult for her to do because she had such a hard time coming face to face with her mistakes objectively; she only saw how she was continuously disappointing herself and those she cared about.
It was hard to feel like she was a talented and promising athlete when she really felt like an imposter who wasn’t living up to everyone’s expectations. While all of this was going on, she started resenting her mother, but as soon as that thought entered her mind, she forced it out. She hated herself for thinking that way. How could she resent someone who spent so much time, energy, and money on her? That same sense of guilt would consume her when she entertained the possibility of quitting. Who had spent late nights analyzing competition footage with her? Who took her to and from practice every day? Who had been there at every competition without ever complaining? Her mother was the one person who stood by her side since the beginning, all while still having a full-time job. And what about her coaches, people who always believed in her and even told younger students to strive for the same focus and discipline she had? The hopes and dreams she once had… where had they gone? Her predicament choked her; she didn’t want to play anymore, but she also couldn’t muster the courage to quit.
What she did know was this: she resented what she had once loved, and she felt guilty for feeling the same way towards those close to her. She didn’t even know how she felt about herself and didn’t know how to talk about all of these feelings. Was she happy? Did she even have the power to change her circumstances?
Although everything was for her, it all felt like pressure. She didn’t want to feel this way, but she also didn’t know how to change it. When she watched interviews with professional athletes, she felt angry; they’d always sincerely thank their loved ones, teammates, coaches, and supporters. They showed genuine love and passion for what they do. Her heart would ache because she didn’t feel the same.
III. Time
A saying I hear a lot is that time heals all wounds. For a long time, that wasn’t the case. That’s because I wasn’t trying to heal; I was trying to avoid. I avoided talking about the sport; I avoided watching any videos of me or anyone else playing the sport; I avoided writing and reflecting about my experiences because I didn’t want to relive them. When meeting new people, I avoided telling them I was an athlete at all costs so I wouldn’t have to talk about that part of my life. In my ideal world, no one would know what sport I played, and no one would ever watch me play. That way, no one would expect anything of me. After coming back from a tournament, the question I dreaded most was, “How did that tournament go? How did you play?”
In high school, every time I had to be excused for a couple days to go to a major tournament, I didn’t want people to know where I had gone. After finishing one of these particular tournaments my freshman year, I had to go straight from the airport to school. To my dismay, I was still wearing my national team competition tracksuit, which had “USA” printed on it in big letters. Luckily, the day was going well. I only said a few general things to my close friends and wasn’t asked about the competition by anyone else. That is, until I got to my last class. This teacher is known as one of the best teachers at our school. He deeply cares for his students and is someone I admire very much. I distinctly remember each class being filled with lots of energy and excitement. With that added on top of his jokester-like personality, it was no wonder that everyone, including me, looked forward to his class.
After the day was about to end, he suddenly asked me, in front of everyone, “How did that tournament go?” I replied with my usual vague statements, saying that it went okay. He proceeded to ask what place I got. I wasn’t sure how to answer. I could already feel my face getting red. I said that I got around 10th, hoping that this would be the end of it. It was not.
He then asked, “But out of how many people?” By this point, my face felt scorching hot, and without having to look around the room, I knew that everyone’s gaze was on me. The chatter that had previously filled the room was replaced by a sudden, awkward silence. I told him that I wasn’t sure exactly how many people played in the tournament, but if I had to guess, maybe around 20 people? He replied, “Wow, that’s pretty bad!”
In that moment, I thought I was going to cry. At first glance, someone might think I was being dramatic, but I genuinely remember feeling devastated. It felt like my world was falling apart because this was a manifestation of my worst fear. Even my teachers, people who didn’t know anything about my personal life, had their own standards they expected me to meet. Anyone who was interested in what I did only wanted to hear about how I placed or how I performed, not how I was feeling. Perhaps the worst realization of all was that my best wasn’t good enough, and the pain I was suffering through wasn’t enough of a price to pay for success.
I think that my reaction startled him because he asked, in shock, “Are you okay? Are you crying?”
Although my eyes were watery, I gave him a huge smile. Praying that he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes if I smiled hard enough, I told him, “I’m fine!” and laughed. He started to apologize, but I kept telling him that everything was fine! After all, he was just teasing me. Soon after, the bell rang and everyone left.
He later apologized to me individually as well. He genuinely didn’t know that his questions would have that strong of an effect on me, and I can understand him. As a sensitive person who takes everything to heart, I never realized that he was joking. One of the kindest and funniest teachers at our school was teasing me, like he did with all his other students, but I genuinely thought he was disappointed and upset with me.
For that entire afternoon, my face felt hot, and I couldn’t stop replaying that scene in my head. For the first time, I began to wonder exactly when everything started to go wrong, and I couldn’t come to an answer. I had spent too long bottling up everything I was feeling, and things were finally starting to spill out. However, I still ended up shrugging it off simply because I didn’t know how to fix it. I chalked it all up to the fact that I was probably a bit too sensitive after the disappointment of that tournament. It must have been too fresh in my mind. I convinced myself that with time, I would forget that this ever happened.
Around two-and-a-half years later, during AP Statistics in my senior year of high school, my friends and I sat next to some classmates on our school’s fencing team. Every day, as soon as they sat down and before class started, they would talk about fencing. I would eavesdrop on their conversation, at first intrigued by the sport. As I heard these types of conversations day after day, though, I began to grow envious. Envious and frustrated to the point where I somehow found myself shedding angry tears on the floor of my room after school. The immense desire I had to feel the same way they did about something I’d spent so long doing was overwhelming. I wanted to have a team like them, people who understood what I was going through. People I could share my worries and burdens with. Friends who could stay by my side while I fixed this mess I was in.
At that point, I could see there was no avoiding it. I had to change something, even if I didn’t know exactly what to change. It started with a journal. Ironically enough, keeping a journal was something I never wanted to do because I associated it with my tournament summaries. Journaling meant facing my failures, and I was scared of the guilt that accompanied it. Up until this point, I never journaled on my own accord. However, I forced myself to write down my thoughts and feelings towards the sport as well as the experiences I remembered most. This was the only thing I could think of to make sense of my thoughts. Over time, as I looked back on past entries, I realized I was writing a lot of similar things again and again, and I couldn’t see how this was supposed to help me. I was worried that writing about my feelings was just making me fixate on them more, and that did happen for some time. However, I stuck with it just for the sake of continuing what I started. Looking back, I like to think that during this time, I was finally allowing myself to actually process these thoughts and feelings (something I neglected to do while I was on auto-pilot), even if that meant that for a period of time, I was just writing about the same things and feeling as if I would never move on.
When I was discouraged, I would read memoirs to gain more insight into other people’s experiences. I would write down meaningful quotes and think about how they applied to me and my story. Many of these books comforted me, and as I read more of them, I realized that everyone has gone through or is going through something. It’s comforting to know that I’m not alone.
As I entered college, I set a few goals for myself. I wanted to open up to my teammates about my relationship with the sport and wanted to tell others about my experiences. I wanted to find a solid support system and feel more comfortable talking about my feelings with my friends. Thankfully, some of the teammates I play with are people I have known for many years, either because we’ve trained under the same club or because we’ve always seen each other at tournaments. Opening up to them, however brief and vague it was, was a giant first step for me. I’m looking forward to continuing that process with time.
Gradually, I found myself fixating less on my negative feelings towards table tennis. Now, that’s not to say that I am never upset or emotional about it. Before playing matches, I’ll still worry about disappointing other people and will still dread tournaments a little. I’ll still find myself using negative self-talk during practice, and I still sometimes genuinely believe that I can’t control how I play or that I can’t make certain shots.
In fact, some time ago, I stepped up to the table to start a match and was surprised that my chest felt tighter than what I considered normal. My hands were shaking as I held the ball, and for a moment, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even move. I stood frozen in my serving position, and started panicking internally. I knew I had to start the match, but I couldn’t control my body. Even now, I couldn’t tell you how long I stood like that, paralyzed. I remember asking myself, “How can I play when I can barely even breathe?” After what felt like forever, I finally willed my mind to take back control. I focused on deep breathing to calm down. The match definitely didn’t go as expected, and I was startled by my own body’s reaction to something I thought I had mostly gotten over. However, as a close friend likes to say, that just goes to show that I have an endless amount of potential for growth. It’s better to have room for change than no room for anything at all.
I’m working on other things, too. I’m still reminding myself that people showing interest in what I do is how they show that they support me; they’re not trying to put pressure on me. I have to encourage myself to smile on the court and not take things too seriously. I have to tell myself that now, I’m playing for me, that this journey is my own. Admitting to new people that I play on our school team still makes me a little uncomfortable, but it’s getting easier and easier to talk about the sport with other people. Having my story out in the open like this is terrifying, but I want to actively push myself out of my comfort zone every day. My hope is that sharing my experiences with mental health can provide some comfort to others, even if our journey is still our own and even if we might not understand exactly what others are going through. Now, I can now confidently say that talking about my experiences and listening to my friends talk about their own are some of my favorite conversations to have.
As for my relationship with my mom, I’ve been able to reconcile the conflicting feelings of love, resentment, and guilt I associate with her when it comes to table tennis. My mom and I have always been close, and I’ve always felt like I could tell her about almost anything (just no details related to my relationship with table tennis). Whenever something funny or completely random happens between my friends and I, my first thought will be to call her to share what made me laugh. I’m comfortable telling her when I’m having a tough time at school, too; when I told her how difficult a midterm season was for me last semester, she reminded me not to base my worth on my grades and that down the line, no one, including me, will remember that one score on that one exam. I’ve grown to realize that I can have an immense appreciation for someone while also acknowledging that they can’t be perfect. I’ve accepted my past self’s feelings of resentment towards her, but I also know that this is her first time living life, too. Being a parent is hard, and she was really just doing what she thought was best for me and my development as an athlete. Now, I’m at peace with the fact that what’s in the past stays in the past. This might have to be the one thing I keep from her, but I’m okay with that. In the same way I shouldn’t feel guilty for feeling the way I did, I don’t want her to feel guilty when she was just doing her best.
Of course, I still have a long way to go on this whole journey. I’m still battling my emotions every time I step up to the table to play a match. However, because I’ve been able to better understand where they come from, my stress is becoming more manageable. By admitting to myself that this was a problem, allowing myself to accept my emotions, and being patient with myself as I actively worked on healing, I can finally say that I am content with where I am. Not because I am fully healed, but because I am trying. As I’m spending more time with my teammates, I’m realizing how much more there is to life than the results from a tournament. The team has only been growing closer and stronger with each semester, and I’m so incredibly grateful I finally found a team that supports and accepts me. Instead of feeling the need to hide how I’m feeling, I’m now comfortable voicing my fears and even joking about them. Nowadays, I’m pleasantly surprised to see myself spending more time and energy looking forward to the memories I’ll share with my teammates rather than stressing about how I might be a burden to the team if I lose my matches. At the end of the day, I’m in no rush to “fix” everything. It turns out that time alone does not heal all wounds, but when combined with patience and kindness, will.
Sabrina Z. (she/her), Georgia Tech
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