A good, long shower helps scrub off a little of the maddening memory of the afternoon. It’s also a welcome break from the nonstop texts from Sage and Morgan that I know are meant to keep me in the loop but are starting to depress me. Ordinarily I’d appreciate Morgan’s LARPing drama and I’d be there for Sage’s venting about her parents fighting, but all it does is make me miss everything, and I can’t afford to miss anything.

I can’t afford to miss the inside jokes and knowing exactly where my place was in the cafeteria and who I’d be hanging out with on Friday nights. I can’t afford to miss the old movie theater with reclining seats and the most horribly watered-down sodas and playing Dragon Age in Morgan’s basement and swimming in the lake in our sports bras and throwing the ball around with my brothers in the cul-de-sac, nothing but wide-open space except for the Hecker kids driving their bikes around the flat circle. I can’t afford to miss having my own room instead of sleeping on a pull-out couch in the living room with flimsy blinds that wake me up with too much sun.

I can’t afford to miss any of that because I made my choice and it broke my family in two and took away Morgan and Sage’s best friend and changed everything for everyone I love and I am grateful I am grateful I am grateful.

I am grateful, is the thing. I’ve poured my heart into football for so many years, even though there was never a space for me on the team at Butler. As soon as it became clear I was better at throwing, catching, and running than your average kindergartener—hell, than your average elementary school kid—my dad doubled down on the drills, bringing in my brothers as soon as they got old enough to join. Whatever self-consciousness I had that I wasn’t “growing into” liking dolls and princesses and playing dress-up melted away with the knowledge that there was somewhere I belonged, even if it wasn’t where the other girls were.

Then it became a Sunday morning tradition, our version of church. A gathering of us, neighbors, and cousins playing every week, no one saying shit about a second-grade girl playing QB for one side. Summers were filled with football camp, open to everyone because it meant more funding that way. I kept on failing at liking what I was supposed to—the right clothes and hairstyles and music and gender—but it was okay, because I liked something I was really fucking good at.

And then high school hit, and with it the reminder that this wasn’t a sport for me, even if it felt like the most Me thing in the universe. Maybe the only Me thing in the universe.