“What if I’m not good enough?”
You’re going to be a person lots of kids want to be.
“What if I’m not good enough?”
You are as good as people say you are.
“What if I’m not good enough?”
I want to be.
You think I’m like the guy who escapes and sees the sun?
You’re better than any of them, Gabi.
I need air. Again. More.
I wipe the tears off my cheeks, do a dirty sniff, sucking up the mocos in my nose, and wash my face before heading out, grabbing my keys and a towel, rushing down the stairs, telling Nguyen I’ll be back later tonight when he looks up at me while in the middle of playing FIFA. And I start driving, home and school and my city getting small behind me. And I keep driving for about thirty minutes, finally turning into the lot of an empty, hidden beach.
It’s windier now, months later than my last time here. Colder. But I still take off my hoodie, my shirt, my pants and shoes and socks, leaving the chonies on this time.
And I start walking. When my feet hit the water, I keep going. My knees, my waist, my stomach all go under.
I want to be good enough.
I want to be whole.
And then I dive in. I go under water, this time alone. No teammates with me or cheering me on from the sand. But I need to do this by myself. I need to do this without any of the people who have my back. I need to come in and out of this having my own back. Believing in myself. In all of me. Being a person I can be proud of.
Last time, I dived in and came back up as a real member of the A&M Corpus Christi Islanders Men’s Foot—Soccerteam. This time I want to come up as the real me. As the me who has nothing to be ashamed of. As the me worth fighting for. I don’t want to lose this part of me that has never, for one second, felt wrong, even when it scared me. It’s not broken. I’m not broken. I’m me, more completely.
Maybe my story doesn’t have to end like the guy in the Allegory. Maybe I don’t have to stay chained. Maybe I actually could write that part two. Maybe I can be like that Australian player. Maybe all I have to do is want it, and I’ll realize there were never any chains in the first place. Maybe I can stand in the sun again. For me. All of me.
It’s not impossible. I’m good enough to.
Finally, just as it’s getting almost too hard to keep holding my breath, I come back up, breathing in the salt with a loud gasp that turns into a yell that no one hears except me. That no one needs to hear except me. I yell again, louder, fiercer, with as much passion and drive as ever. And I walk back onto the beach knowing one thing for sure.
34
I’M GOOD ENOUGH.
I believe that.
If I’m going to win a championship for this team, I’m going to do it as me. As all of me.
I pick my head up, looking at Kat at my desk chair, Pérez next to me on my bed, the two of us freshly back from winning our quarterfinals match. Finally, I’m playing like my old self. Not one goal attempt got past me. I was blocking balls left and right and up and down.
I’m 99 percent there. And now, I want nothing more than to grab the rest.
“So, Vale and I broke up.” I start. “Y’all know this. But I … the truth is that I let myself give him up. We got found out. By Barrera. And he told me that I either end things with Vale or I get benched the rest of the season. Even if he had to make sure to give Coach a reason to bench me.”
“Shut up,”Pérez nearly yells, his eyes going big, getting a“Shh!”from Kat, not wanting him to wake up Ahmed and Nguyen. Honestly, if they hadn’t crashed the second we got back home, I’d have brought them into this now too. Told them the truth. My truth.
If not now, then they’ll find out soon enough.
“He really said that? When?”
“Yeah. He did. It was after I got injured. Before y’all got back to the house. Looking back on it, I should’ve stood my ground. As hurt as I was, I should’ve done more. But I was so convinced that this was always going to happen, and I was always going to have to choose and, when that time came, I’d have to choose football. And everything he said just reinforced everything I was already believing.”
