Counting to eight as I slowly raise one of my leg to do a “ballet leg” in the water was something that 6th grade me never imagined doing. Tossing a ball up to serve and trying to keep the ball in play to win a point was another thing that 6th grade me never imagined doing. What’s another thing that 6th grade me never imagined doing? Running with a pole down a straight path to get my whole body over a bar. So you can maybe already guess that 6th grade me wasn’t fond of sports.
The reason why | just didn’t like sports wasn’t because I didn’t have an athletic ability or found it plain stupid, like most people do. The real reason why I didn’t like sports was that anxiety has taken over in me. Anxiety made me believe I didn’t have an athletic ability. Anxiety made me lose the confidence in myself. And the thing | hate the most about having anxiety? Anxiety ruined the things | have always wanted to achieve as a younger child. Back at the school I was at before the 5th grade, I really didn’t have any “go-to” friends.
The reason was probably because I was just quiet and preferred to be alone. But when I started a new school in the 5th grade, I apparently decided that I didn’t want to be the quiet kid anymore. I wanted to be known and have friends. Of course going to a new school bought up some nerves, but at least my anxiety wasn’t huge to get in my way to make this new school be a new beginning for myself. Making friends was an actual breeze. But I’m just going to say this ahead of time; your first friends aren’t going to be your forever friends.
The thing that probably made it easy for me to make friends was that there were a lot of Asians at that school (back at my old school I was the only Asian kid in my grade). So you can kind of tell how narrow-minded I was, when I was a child, when it came to making friends (if you can’t tell, I didn’t want to be friends with anyone that wasn’t in the same race as me). Like the way I made friends, 5th grade also went by with a breeze. By the end of 5th grade, I actually had more friends than my goal for the 5th grade.
But I was stuck in between two different groups. One group was a group of poc girls that were all just like me (personality-wise). The other group were all Asian girls and they were only a bit like me. So when 6th grade rolled around, I decided to stick with the group that was all Asian. That is where I made the mistake that will lead my anxiety to grow. Don’t get me wrong, all my friends are all wonderful in their own little ways, but their personalities just made me sick. They were more focused to maintain their “popularity status” than school.
As I would consider to join the other group of friend | had, they would manipulate my mind that popularity was a key to success at school. And by the time I really wanted to join the other group of friends, the anxiety grew and took over my mind. My anxiety made me stay with my current friends because I was afraid on what they would do to me if I just left them for another group. My anxiety made me become a weak person that doesn’t want new beginnings anymore.
6th grade came to an end and 7th grade came around next. th grade was the beginning of junior high school. Junior high school means a new school. And with my luck, none of my friends were at this new beginning of my life. Because my anxiety has grown since the beginning of 5th grade, I wasn’t excited on going to a new school to make new beginnings. The first few days of junior high wasn’t great. I had no friends and had no intentions on trying to get any. But on the 4th day of school, I was actually getting pretty bored of the no friend thing and decided to hit up with these 2 girls in my gym class.
And from there I started being excited of this new school for new beginnings, but there was still anxiety flowing through my mind. Most of the friends I made in 7th grade did at least one sport. The most common sport among them was tennis. I have thought of playing tennis when I was younger. But with anxiety, I thought I didn’t have the athletic ability (since that was what made me quit on sports I did as younger child). These friends believed I had the ability for tennis though. They tried to get me into doing lessons to get the gist of the game. Eventually I did take lessons and joined the team at my high school.
Thanks to them believing I do have an athletic ability, I’m currently on the varsity tennis team at school and the anxiety making me believe that I don’t have an athletic ability is now long gone. Even though one part of my anxiety is now gone doesn’t mean my anxiety is gone altogether. Anxiety used to be a huge part in my personality. Anxiety is still part of me, but it isn’t that huge as it was in the past. I believe that one day my anxiety would be back to what it was like at the beginning of 5th grade. It will be a long journey, but I have confidence in it.