are they really that bad?

I saw an interview with Soleil Johnson after a bad loss (and she played real bad too) and the interviewer asked how she was going to move past this game and she said something that really stuck with me, she said: You can’t find your identity in the game or you’ll forget who you are. You can’t identify as a player first or you’ll lose track of who you are. Or worse: you’ll think you’re nothing when you’re not playing the game.

But as much as I love Soleil Johnson, you know what I think?

I think it’s okay to identify with anxiety. I think it’s okay to say this is who I am. And I can work on it as much or as little as I want, but this is who I am. Know what else? I think it’s okay to identify as a player too. Because the pride I find in the game is so big, and the lessons I’ve learned about myself and my friends, all that is what shapes me. Where am I supposed to find my identity if not in what I do, in what I love?

Hey, you, reading this rock, YOU, standing at the Spirit of Samhattan, where do you find your identity if not in what you love?

Is there anywhere else in the world?

Oh, Jolly. I don’t know if I could live without Daphne at this point. I don’t know if I could live without the constant drum of horror. You wanna know real fear, reader o’ mine? Tell yourself you have nothing left to do and nothing left to feel. That’s right. I’m Daphne because I’m anxiety, Jolly. I’m an attack. This whole fucking time…

It’s ME I was scared of.

How would I react?

Who would I be?

Who would I become?

But you know what’s scarier than the Coming Doom, Jolly?

Thinking you know how to beat it.

And I’ll tell you a secret, YOU:

I think I know how to beat it.

Because I think that’s the point. I want Daphne to come

because I want

to fucking

win.

So let’s see if I do.

If this is my last journal entry, the last thing I ever write, I’d like to say thank you, Jolly. For listening to me. I’m reading the rest of the rock right now, all our signatures, all the super-hyped stuff we wrote the night I made the game winner. I was already nervous then. We all were. I can see it in our handwriting.

I was nervous long before then too.

And that’s part of it, right?

I was nervous.

But I made the shot.

Where can you possibly look to find more of yourself than right there?

Are you brave?

Because isn’t that what life is literally, entirely about?

Bravery?

Wish me luck, Jolly. Because I’m going to face her now. I’m going to face the thing I’ve been afraid of my whole life, since the first time I heard her name on the wind of Samhattan and just as quickly forgot it.