there was one random day on the mrt, when i had a moment of realisation. i finally understood why leaving cheer was good for me.
it wasn’t so much to do with the sport itself, but rather, when i finally had time for myself, it forced me to rethink many things in my life. when you don’t have much free time, only people and things that fit into your limited schedule can be in your life. i didn’t really need to think about why i spend my time the way i do, because it’s so much easier to rely on the convenient excuse of being busy. when you have a lot of free time, suddenly you need to have real reasons for the way you choose to spend your time. i can no longer tell myself i don’t want to meet up with a certain group of friends because i don’t have time, it was because i just didn’t have anything in common with that group of friends anymore. i realised that there were people i wanted to keep close, there were people i wanted to keep in touch with, and there were people i wanted out of my circle. and there were goals worth chasing, and goals that I needed to grow out of.
that said, i don’t mean that busy people can’t develop that clarity. it’s just that for me, i needed to be stripped of all my usual excuses and be left with no choice before i could re-organise my life and decide what mattered and what didn’t. so yes, cheer and being busy was an excuse. it was an excuse i hid behind to avoid new responsibilities, to avoid the discomfort of making new friends, to procrastinate abt returning to church, to drift along aimlessly, to mask my lack of enthusiasm abt life.
two years after leaving cheer, i think i now understand myself a little better and i’m definitely more comfortable with myself, than before. it’s probably also age la haha. in view of my upcoming 24th birthday (yes next week is my bday whee!) im glad i finally understood how and why my perspective of myself and of life has changed.
