Not What It Seems

It was my junior year of high school. I was doing well in school having all A's in my classes, I was still playing high school soccer, and I had a great energy coming into school as I was able to see my friends. Then during my winter break my dad gotten a call: it was from Pablo. Pablo is elderly person who I have meet the first time I went to Peru. We talked and he was interested in me to play soccer over there in Peru as he had a lot of contacts in the soccer industry there. I was pretty excited about how many professional soccer players he scouted to go up to the dream I want to accomplish. I then went to Peru for a second time for the end of my sophomore year. It was another opportunity to play soccer again in Peru. I was able to play with the club I played with previously before, but the new thing is that they brought players from Ecuador as well. This was nice as I was able to meet other players from other countries as I wasn't familiar with the culture of Ecuadorians. When we were going to play the soccer matches though is where I saw the harsh reality of soccer. I noticed that the club had now put only the Ecuadorian players to start and brushed aside the American players including me. I wanted to play but I wasn't able to due to where I was born basically. It made me pretty sad knowing that they did and didn't even give some American players a chance to showcase themselves. I was met with hope though as Pablo came by to see me. He wanted to talk about how I can play in a professional clubs' academy for a bit and see how it goes. This wasn't any academy though; this was one of the biggest clubs in all of Peru: Alianza Lima. This is the club my dad would love to see ever since he was a little kid; this wasn't only my dream, but the dream of my dad as well. Learning about this I was really excited to see how it would go. When I got there it was something really different as I saw some really gifted kids playing there. I was able to play against many national team players and learn on what I could do to improve. I stayed playing there for another month until the club said they didn't want me to keep training with them. It was a great experience though and I learn a lot of what I can accomplish if I keep it up with the work.  

 Fast forward to winter break, my dad gets a call from Pablo telling him that he has gotten in a new position in his previous professional soccer club and that he would want me to join him to play soccer in Peru. I was excited to hear this as it was one of a lifetime opportunity for me to be able to play soccer for a professional soccer club academy in my dad's home country. After hearing this I was so onboard; I wanted to pack everything and leave the same day to do this. My parents were wanting me to do it as well, but there was one big problem that we had to fix which was school. My parents didn't want me to do schooling in Peru because they believe it would cost a lot and as well it would be stressful for me to understand the subject that I would be studying since I wasn't that fluent in the language. I then gotten the idea of going fully online as I was already taking some online college classes, and it was the best option I could pull of if I wanted to go to Peru. I went to school in person to meet my counselor to tell her about putting me fully online. She told me that online classes that I was required to take have already started and that I would be two weeks behind when I joined. I didn't like that at first, but this was the only decision to do if I wanted to go and play in Peru. I decided to do it, and I went to Peru to experience the soccer environment there... is what I wish I could have told you.

During this time COVID was still happening in Peru and there were a lot of protests about how the government in Peru was handling things there. It became worse as the year went by to the point that violence started to emerge from the police to the protester which killed innocent protesters. This also affected the professional soccer league academy games which halted them as they deemed it unsafe for kids to go out. My parents felt unsafe for me to go to Peru and made the decision to keep me here and wait until the summer for me to go. I was devastated about hearing this as I thought I was going to be a step closer to achieving the dream I wanted to accomplish. I was now stuck staying home while doing online classes, but I was starting off strong as I was catching up with the work for my online classes. The thing that was wrong though is every time I would get done with one week of an assignment, I would get assigned another week of assignments after. It started to get tiring and unmotivating as time went on. When I also started, I noticed that at times I would feel lonely that I wasn't with my friends to talk to. One example was I missed lunch time as it was a time where I can relax and socialize with people around me. When I was doing online school, I wasn't able to have that opportunity anymore. Another thing that was stressful is that I really didn't have a schedule for myself. As a former high school student where the school has already implemented a schedule for the student it was hard to be disciplined with establishing a schedule. I would usually plan out what I needed to do in a certain time, but I would get distracted or tell myself "I can do it later I got plenty of time" which made me delay my progress even further.  These factors have made me unmotivated and have affected my mental health as I was always thinking to myself on why I wasn't the person I used to be.