Fútbol

Escapism is one hell of a drug

I suffer from a chronic disease called escapism. Some days, I blame nature: a birthday in March that assigned me to the fate of an elusive daydreamer. Other days, I blame it on nurture: a turbulent childhood. And both roads lead to a coping mechanism that was established far before I could ever identify it. A default setting of completely immersing myself into something, to the point of needing an external source to pull me out. But that was something everyone did, right?

First it came from teachers, flagging concerns that while I seemed bright, I had a presence problem. It’s like she’s in another world. Then, came the boyfriends, all of whom delivered some variation of the same sentiment: are you even here right now? Well, depends what you mean by here.

In my head, there is often a very different story than the one in front of me. It’s why I’m a writer, creative, able to see paths of innovation that others can’t. It’s also served as a consistent source of disappointment and pain. Because, if you can believe it, most of the time reality doesn’t play out like the fantasy running through my head. It’s much nicer up there.

Being present is a practice I’ve been working on for almost a decade now. It started with learning yoga, connecting my breath and body for maybe the first time ever. Then came meditation, where I learned that it’s possible to notice my thoughts. For years, nothing seemed to change, until all of a sudden, my awareness shifted. I could recognize feelings, rather than act on them. Huh! I could pull myself out of an anxiety spiral rather than digging in deeper. What! I could even decipher the difference between a thought being real and it being true. You’re joking!

But nothing dials up your default settings quite like incomprehensible grief. And after I lost my dad, I chose to enter back into a fantasy world: The World Cup.

Less than a month after his funeral, the world’s biggest sporting event kicked off just weeks before Christmas, a weird rescheduling thanks to Covid. I had spent the last month in Amsterdam and decided it was finally time to return to where I was living, albeit in a state of complete dissociation. That is, until the first Netherlands match. Who, I had decided, would undoubtedly become the champions. Days after my return, we took on USA, quite literally an identity crisis for this half Dutch / half American lady. But in that moment, I didn’t even consider Team USA as an option. In that moment, I was only Dutch. Because so was my dad. And that was the only truth that mattered.

The elation I expressed after their win raised significant concerns for those around me. Me, someone who up until that point, could not have given less of a fuck about sports of any kind, now making Netherlands football the center of my world. I saw the are you okay look in their eyes as I rambled on. Of course I’m not! I may never be again! But look, hope! Can’t you see!

Then came our match against Argentina, the team that would ultimately take it all. We crawled our way from 0-2 to level things out in the last seventeen minutes. It was a truly incredible feat, the final shot sliding in with only seconds left on extra time. No one around me in this cold depressing city could even possibly understand the magnitude of what was happening! Then came overtime, and we held our own. It was a sure thing in my head. Not fantasy, reality. If we had already pulled off a miracle, then of course we were destined to win.

Oh how quickly that fantasy slapped me across the face. Penalty kicks resulted in heartbreak that was deeply disproportionate to what I was experiencing. For weeks, I couldn’t get over it. How could it have happened that way? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go! There must be a way to adjust the outcome! It was almost as if something else was the source of my grief.

Fast forward nearly four years later to last week, when I found myself faced with a similar story. A nail-biting Netherlands match that took us to overtime and then into penalties against Morocco. It was a story that I knew the ending to before it happened. It was a reality I wasn’t ready to face yet. For weeks, I had been hyping the team up to anyone who would listen. Emphasizing how they were always overlooked, but would no doubt make it to the finals this year. You’ll see. Here comes my proclivity to exit reality and double down on fantasy in moments of stress. Instead, another round of penalty kicks that left me with heartbreak.

I was too tired to feel much of anything in the moment, it was 6am by the time the game ended, having started at 3am. I immediately fell asleep in the same bed at the same hotel I slept in the night my dad died. The next morning I woke up with a familiar feeling rising with urgency. A panicked state, anticipation that the loss of this match was destined to trigger a wave of grief that would knock me on my ass all day, if not all week.

Instead, something unfamiliar happened. I noticed. I felt the pit in my stomach. I recognized the feeling as disappointment. And I could see that anything beyond that feeling, wasn’t about a game. Or a team.

It gets even better — I chose to move past it. I felt my feelings and kept things moving. Riveting stuff! Quickly, my disappointment morphed into joy for Morocco. For the political impact that a win over The Netherlands would hold beyond simply entertainment. For the elation that thousands of people would wake up feeling as a result of that.

I don’t take it lightly, my ability to chose to move forward in the face of a trigger that still has the power to take me down. To fight my default setting, the one that says: quick, run to your nearest fantasy! A world that is oh so easy to access. We can deal with reality another day! Maybe never, if you don’t want to! It would be easier, sure. And I think it will always sound incredibly tempting. But nothing hits quite like the present.

xoxox Merel