My Longest Situationship

Was with my identity

I called one of my best friends Pete, crying about how I’ll never be an Olympian.

Was in the middle of another one of my meltdowns, and I’m saying it to him and I’m crying and I’m embarrassed, and as we are on FaceTime he’s making me yell that I will never be an Olympian out of my window for everyone walking by to hear (exposure therapy?).

Part of me wonders if the embarrassment I feel is because I never accomplished that dream, or if I’m embarrassed I didn’t have the bravery to figure out what I was really passionate about years ago after I got injured and didn’t make the team the first time?

Why didn’t I have the courage to get to know myself better, or the strength to believe in myself more? You know, like how I ferociously believed in my ability to become a pro athlete?

Why did I think I needed to be the best in the world at something to prove my value as a human?

And it’s not even that I necessarily believe that wholeheartedly, but in a lot of ways, it’s the closest or easiest way for me to feel seen. To feel special? Whatever the fuck that means. But I think there’s something to it.

I had spent the past 15 years of my life confidently telling people that it would happen — that I’d be an Olympian.

Even before I ran track and played soccer, I had the same dream. I’ll spare you all the details of how I got into track and field, but it included a hate for off-season soccer training, a broken shin, a trip across the world, no college scholarship to the school I wanted, and a delusional 19-year-old Maya that found herself at UCLA every morning at 5 AM trying to get somebody to notice her and put her on the team.

Well, guess what? It kind of worked. I didn’t get on the team, but going out there every day landed me my first track sponsor. I ended up becoming a pro, and in the first few years getting to run for my country, becoming a national champion, and competing in the European Games.

A legendary track coach even took me under his wing, and I trained alongside some of the best athletes in the history of my sport.

BUT… you guessed it — no Olympics. Not even close.

So, because of this and the fact that my career in the sport was very far from what I expected, letting go of that part of me feels similar to when a situationship ends.

It’s always so much harder to get over than a typical breakup. Because maybe you were never really yourself 100%, or at least not completely honest with yourself about how you feel.

And how do you let go of something that was never fully yours?

You start to question if it was ever even real. Cue imposter syndrome.

That’s how I feel about the athlete and creative side (for lack of a better description for those other parts of me for now).

And I think I was always way more afraid to show the non-athlete side of me in a serious way to the world, because it’s what I feel most connected to and proud of — like when I write and what I photograph.

It always felt safer sharing it in the shadows of “I’m training for the Olympics” / “I’m a pro athlete”… but here’s a silly, vulnerable thing I wrote. That way, even if that version of me wasn’t accepted or loved or appreciated or seen… being an athlete would give me the easy validation card that would get me back in.

Around five years before this, I had already stopped running because of some health issues and was pursuing other things I had become passionate about, but I ended up returning to the track.

Yes, partially because I do genuinely love sport. And any athlete, no matter what level, can attest to how hard it is to just “let it go.” So at a certain point, after the millionth injury and setback and season gone without racing, instead of walking away, I forced myself to continue.

I thought I was honoring this dream younger Maya had — but the dream got distorted.

So last year, I was desperate because I knew it was my last shot.

I was seeing this guy whom I was painfully in love with. The reason why this is relevant is because there were moments where I genuinely convinced myself that somehow becoming an Olympian would make me worthy of the love and respect I wanted — from him, from the world, from my relationships.

So, because of that sick mindset, I was willing to sacrifice anything to be there in that stadium. And I did.

I was desperately trying to get healthy in time for my national championship. I was spending 6-10 hours a day, minimum, working on my mind and body in preparation. Pushed myself to levels I didn’t know I was capable of. I barely had time to think about or give energy or time to anything outside of that.

So when it didn’t happen and I was sitting there alone — approaching end of summer, single, broken knee, broken heart, sponsor-less, no identity — processing my reality… my reality that not only will I not achieve that dream, but I neglected myself and everything I cared about in pursuit of it.

The feeling of regret that followed was the start of this painful realization that maybe I didn’t want it for the right reasons anymore. I had lost track of why I started all of this in the first place.

I know there are so many worse problems to have, in the big scheme of things, I am truly one of the luckiest girls in the world — but the past year, especially in that moment last summer when my whole world flipped upside down, I felt like I was going to die.

I mean, really, I’m not just throwing out that phrase casually. I did not know how I could possibly keep breathing, how my heart was able to keep beating. I felt worthless.

I was googling if you could die from a broken heart. (The answer is yes, according to Google btw 😂)

I’d wake up in the middle of the night, hysterically crying from my sleep. I couldn’t even escape the pain there.

One year later, I can’t say I’m fully healed, or have any clue what I’m doing. But the more I listen to myself, and slowly find the courage to focus on what I love and am passionate about without the safety blanket of being a pro athlete anymore, the more I realize maybe the whole point wasn’t to reach that specific goal.

Maybe the health problems, injuries, and losses were the universe pushing me toward where I was actually meant to be. Teaching me things I couldn’t have learned if everything had gone as planned.

That possibility has brought me so much peace and opened a whole universe of opportunities and hope for me.

As painful as it was (and sometimes still is), it took losing so much at such a pivotal moment of my life to realize how far out of touch I was with myself. How lost I had become.

And thankfully, it forced me to come back to myself again ♥️

So… I’ll end my rant (which I hope resonated with you even a tiny bit) with this quote, which, funny enough, I wrote when I was 21 in one of my blog posts (need to start taking my advice):

“We have this picture in our head of how our life will be, and throw away beautiful things that pop up in front of us just because we are afraid that it will change the image we so carefully drew out for ourselves over the years. Don’t let that be you! Don’t let our society brainwash you into thinking your life should look a certain way.”

21-year-old Maya might have been onto something…

xx

Maya