31 Chapter 31: Santos

After ten years of playing professional soccer and fifteen years of my life before that, I thought cleaning out my locker would be hard. I thought it would be full of nostalgia and memories. Of course, I also thought it would be complete with pomp and circumstance from younger players congratulating me on my retirement and a career well done.

Instead, it was just me, myself, and I tossing out old deodorant, notebooks of plays that have long since been revised, and team-owned gear to be disinfected and passed on to the next guy.

It's an extremely underwhelming send-off, but it's right this way. Soccer had been my obsession for the majority of my life, but somewhere along the way, it had become my downfall. For that reason alone, I don't need it to be celebrated.

Just like an alcoholic doesn't have a big drinking party to celebrate sobriety, I don't want a big party celebrating my attempts at rearranging my routines and patterns.