Touchdown Tears

A young man remenices on how is bad actions have shaped him throughout his young athletic career.

Sweat runs down my cheek and a roar from the crowd echoes in my ears like a wave slammiung onto the shore durring a storm. They’re here. I can feel their presence, like ghosts, silently looming, on top of the pressure that is building and making it hard to focus. College scouts loom over the field, watching their prey like hawks ready to pounce and drag them away. However, this is different. I want to be hunted. Hunting is good if you do what I do. I am the quarterback. I carry the team and they carry me. However that is only until this time in the season; at this time its every man for himself. Everyone is competing for the full ride. Everyone wants to play under the big lights and on the big field. Everyone wants to live the big dream. Being the best on the team, my scholarship is basically guaranteed. Except for the secret that haunts me and never leaves my side, that, I can’t stop thinking about. After the game. Meeting my guy. That’s what I look forward to.

 

Everyone remembers the first time they tried it. But not everyone remembers how they got to the place I am now. The drugs control me. They dictate my every move and tell my brain how to react to everything I do. Half of the time I cannot focus. I am sort of in love with them. It’s all I can think about and it haunts me like a shadow that can’t and never will leave. The shadow follows me everywhere. It is there the most when I’m in school and when I know I cant have it, but at night it slowly backs away and lets me feel that high that makes it all worth it.

 

If I ever told anyone I’d be screwed. Dad always talks about me being the next Brady, which is actually quite possible. That’s what I want, its who I was born to be. Every since second grade its all I’ve hoped and dreamed of. My parents want it to be me. My town wants it to be me. College scouts want me to be theirs. The drugs want me to be theirs. Everyone counts on me like I am a piece of meat an they are my predators.

 

I wasn’t always like this. I still have straights A’s with a few B’s scrambled in, but for the most part, I’m the “perfect” kid. I have the hot girlfriend, scouts on my tail, great friends and a new party to go to every Friday. Until sophomore year, I was always looking forward to my career, grades, and the game on Friday. Yeah I drank a few times after games, but only once a week and no more than one or two quick and quiet shots. However, by the time junior year rolled around, I was always stressed. I had colleges down my back and parents who were still trying to control a 17 year old with the crack of a whip. Those two don’t mix well with my stress capacity. One night that burns in the back of my mind, I was at a party with Don and Ty. With all of us being on the football team, we had basically grown up together. They were my brothers. We were all drinking but never thought it would go beyond that, but that night the worst thing was pulled out; Marijuana. Don told us it was a stress reliever and since we all had so much s**t going on in our lives, hey why not right? But that was the worst thing I’ve ever done. That night I looked back. That night I met my shadow. It greeted me with a cruel smile on its face; happy that I finally turned around to properly meet him. More shadows consumed me and begged me to be theirs, pills, liquids, and even powders, who created messes with more intense consequences than I could even imagine. 

 

But tonight was my night. The only thing i needed to focus on. My night. My night. My night. The hunters sit in their perch, high in the bleachers. How do they not see it? The thirst in my eyes for pills was bigger than my hunger for the scholarship. The lights beat down and heart hurts. My conscience argues with itself and tugs me left to right, back and forth. The reff blows the whistle signaling kick off. Don, Ty and I walk on the field together, playing the part of the town heroes, when in reality; we have the most haunting shadows looming over us.