> Boarding school was supposed to be my break.
My freedom.
My escape from a house that echoed with silence and stung with reminders.
And for a while… it was.
I finally had my own space.
Even if it was shared.
Even if it smelled like wet socks and soap and the dreams of too many girls squeezed into too little room —
It was mine.
And for the first time, I got to choose something.
Not a lie.
Not silence.
But netball.
---
I don't remember how I found the court.
Or maybe… it found me.
The dust.
The running.
The rush in my chest that had nothing to do with pain,
and everything to do with living.
I was the youngest on the team.
Just like I was the youngest in my class —
thanks to skipped grades, quiet focus, and an early hunger to please everyone.
But the netball court?
> It didn't care about my family.
Or my real father.
Or whether I belonged.
It just cared if I could run.
If I could catch.
If I showed up.
And I always did.
Because out there, I was enough.
---
At least… for a while.
---
My mother would visit, from time to time.
Not often. Not always warmly.
But enough.
She didn't like the netball.
She said it would distract me.
Said I needed to focus on my books — on my grades — on "my future."
She never saw the way the field was the only place I didn't feel like a mistake.
The only place I breathed without apologizing for it.
---
My dad though… he believed I could do both.
He knew the scholarship depended on balance.
Netball for opportunity.
Books for security.
> But no one saw what the pressure did to me.
They only saw the decline.
From top 5…
to top 20.
From "the girl with potential"
to "what happened to her?"
---
> And slowly, I faded.
Not just in performance.
But in presence.
I didn't fit in my class — too young, too quiet, too… me.
I didn't fit in the dorms — the jokes didn't land the same, the laughter felt distant.
Even the friends I tried to make felt like they had other homes to return to, while I had none.
Except for the court.
That red dust.
That sting in my thighs.
That whistle in the wind.
> That was the only place I felt like a whole person.
---
But when the grades dropped, no one asked if I was okay.
They only told me to try harder.
Be stronger.
Focus more.
And every time they said that,
I failed harder.
---
> It wasn't that I didn't want to succeed.
I just didn't know how to survive while being everything to everyone.
---