We are Humans, Too

Another body, in another jersey, representing some school or professional team, another number on our backs, another win or loss — infuriated opinionated fans.

How easy is it to trash Lebron James on a poor performance, or the Gator Football team loses their chance at an SEC championship and suddenly memes of a player throwing their shoe is circling the internet. They won’t ever see it right? It’s just another person behind a screen saying how they feel.

What about that athlete reading those comments? Receiving those private messages, facing the public humiliation. It’s in the job description right?

The world forgets were humans too.

Though from one athlete to the next, each of our stories might differ, but the message behind it doesn’t.

- here’s mine -

I am a division 1 basketball player at the University of Florida, competing against the best women’s basketball players in the country, in the most competitive conference. It was no walk in the park to get here. I worked my tail off and earned every moment of it all. But the public doesn’t see that. The public doesn’t see that I sacrificed my most crucial developmental high school years to learn and live with my peers, to play on 3 travel teams, the high school team, play a second sport, and head committees in leadership instead. They didn’t see me missing out on sleepovers, girl talks, proms or any of the arguably, most important times of a young teenagers life.

But what they did see — were missed layups, missed shots, poor shooting percentage, and lost games.

Just recently I underwent an immense amount of public humiliation. My following on TikTok is that of an influencer. With going viral quite a bit, I am always under the scrutiny of the public eye. One of my videos went viral, but this time not for the right reason. Another person duetted the video, paring a screenshot of my stats. Without actual knowledge of the sport, or even of me and the fact I hadn’t been playing on the team for the last 5 weeks due to a broken nose and concussion — the internet and the trolls were off to the races. In a matter of less than 24 hours, the video was in the hands of millions of people. It reached different countries, people from all aspects, and the hate was heavy on my shoulders. They destroyed me under my social media, finding me on all platforms, messaging my friends and family.

It was a hard pill to swallow when the “kill yourself” comments and death threats flooded my phone. I spends hours and days crying over my devastation. None of those people cared about the person on the other end of the phone. They just cared about the clout they were receiving.

We are humans, too.

Athletes struggle with mental health in so many aspects. The pressure of success, the pressure of our families, coaches, peers and even fans. School grows difficult when the weight of the world is on your shoulders. When our performance wavers, we start to self doubt.

Depression

Anxiety

Suicidal thoughts…

It sets in. The reality that we are no more than our sport. That we don’t matter to anyone when we aren’t in a uniform. We’ve seen countless athletes take their lives throughout the years. Successful or not, we matter, we struggle, it’s real.

I wish the world understood this more, and realized that the words they say, do matter, despite us building armor against it.

We are humans, too.