Finding My Purpose
By Lily Parker | IG: @laxbylilyparker2024
I have been playing lacrosse for the majority of my life. It’s a difficult sport requiring extreme amounts of concentration and skill. As a goalie, I put myself in danger every time I step in goal but I love it. I love the feeling of making a save, the rush of energy you get from throwing yourself in front of this tiny yellow ball hurling at you at 70-80 miles per hour. It’s my favorite thing in the world. It’s how I find happiness.
I stopped playing lacrosse in 7th grade and didn’t pick a stick up until 9th. During those two years, my mental health plummeted. I developed anorexia, which then became a binge eating disorder, which then went back to anorexia. My weight became an obsession, fully obscuring all other parts of my life. I was only focused on what I had eaten or what I was going to eat. When I started playing lacrosse again, I discovered that I had completely lost my love for it. Practice became an obligation or just a way to burn calories. As my weight dropped, my performance suffered. But it didn’t matter to me, at least not at the time. I didn’t want to be an athlete. I wanted to be beautiful.
My entire 9th grade year I never made a single friend. I was distant from both my club and high school lacrosse teams. Despite telling myself I didn’t want to be an elite athlete, I always felt as though I had to perform like one at practice. I also felt as though I had to make perfect grades, which given my state I was completely incapable of doing. I even felt as though I wasn’t “sick enough” to have an eating disorder because I never quite reached the number I idolized. I felt like an imposter.
Eventually, I was asked to leave my private school and finish the school year online. It was clear that I needed help, so my parents immediately put me on the waiting list for a partial hospitalization program at Center for Discovery. After around 2 months of waiting, I began treatment there. Coincidentally, this was around the same time that my club coach recommended that I find a college level goalie to coach me. She recommended Ashley Lapp and I began working with her multiple times a week. Both my therapist and dietitian at CFD recommended that I should not play lacrosse unless I was eating enough to sustain exercise. For the first few months of treatment, I admittedly ignored them. I gained the reputation of being belligerent pretty quickly. I enjoyed lacrosse but primarily used it as a way to burn calories. This all changed when my therapist recommended that I go to a residential program in Dallas. I would lose everything if I went there.
It was at that moment when I realized just how much I loved lacrosse. It wasn’t just a way for me to get rid of whatever I ate, but a way for me to feel like I had a purpose. Most of the time, I felt as though I wasn’t good enough to do anything. I could never succeed or improve. I was stuck indefinitely in a state of failure and I hated it. But, as I improved at lacrosse, I started to realize that I wasn’t a failure. I can improve and grow. I can change and succeed at whatever I wish to succeed in. To keep from losing lacrosse, I made a deal with both my therapist and dietitian. I would prove to them that I was capable of recovery without a residential program.
Recovery was not fun. It isn’t fun losing control. It isn’t fun watching your body slowly change. It isn’t fun relearning how to eat. But, I did it anyway. All the while, I was practicing lacrosse. I made the American Select team. I began making saves in tournaments. I was actually getting good! The allure of becoming a great goalie pushed me to continue in recovery. I decided I wanted to play Division 1 lacrosse and you can’t have an active eating disorder and successfully play Division 1 lacrosse. That October, I was officially discharged from Center for Discovery, ready to start a new chapter of my life.
Starting the recruiting process and preventing a relapse is difficult to say the least. There is always the pressure to perform, to make every save, to be perfect. If I’m not perfect, what coach is going to take me? As I juggled schoolwork and lacrosse, old behaviors started to slip in. For a while, a relapse seemed inevitable. That is, until I saw the US National Team play in an exhibition game at the President’s Cup Tournament. I sat directly behind Taylor Moreno and I was absolutely mesmerized. She was incredible, possessing a skill that I could only dream of having. For a moment, I was able to push away the desire to relapse. I didn’t want that. It’s eating disorder or lacrosse and I chose lacrosse.
I don’t think the pressure a goalie faces is really talked about enough. We are the last line of defense. It’s extremely easy to get in your head, to think about how you should have made that save. I often blame myself if my team loses. I remember playing games where the sideline was packed with college coaches where I started to get in my head. I didn’t make enough saves. There was nobody who would take me. I would be a failure. Everything would have been for nothing. I know those thoughts are never going to get me anywhere, but I can’t just make myself stop thinking them. The best thing I can do is try and regain focus. I usually walk or run around the back of the goal and then set back up. It’s not a perfect strategy, but it does the job. There is also the subtle pressure to look like an athlete. This isn’t unique to goalies by any means, but it is something I’ve encountered a lot while competing. I remember hearing the phrase “light and fast” so many times, which usually wasn’t meant in the context of weight. However, that’s what I always interpreted as. There were days when I told myself I didn’t look athletic enough to be a good athlete. I wasn’t fast because my body wasn’t small enough and I wasn’t strong because my muscles weren’t big enough.
To help my body meet the demands of an athlete, I ate more than I ever had in my entire life. Some days, I would compare what I was eating to what I was eating in my eating disorder. I started comparing myself to others in almost every way. How does my body match up? How does my athletic ability match up? I started to feel inadequate again. I desperately wanted to return to my eating disorder, but I couldn’t. My sophomore season, I was told by a coach that I would never play Division 1 lacrosse. I just wasn’t good enough. I had to prove her wrong. If I relapsed, she would be right and I could not allow that to happen.
Eventually summer rolled around. It was the summer before junior year, my recruiting summer. I went from clinic to camp and hardly ever came home. I worked harder than I had ever worked before. I got really good at lacrosse. It was exhausting. I had numerous bruises and my muscles constantly ached. I still compared myself to others. I even compared myself to myself when I was at my thinnest. Constantly, I reminded myself how miserable I was then. That summer, despite how hard it was, was the happiest period of my life.
September 1st changed everything. Every coach that I thought would email me didn’t. The two schools that did contact me took other goalies. I went to every prospect day I could find and it was terrible. I would have to leave school immediately just to fly off to some college across the country. I would get there and get the same response every time. There just wasn’t anyone who was interested in me. I began to drift apart from my friends. I began to resent lacrosse because of how grueling the recruiting process was. Nobody wanted to give the goalie from Texas a chance. I don’t blame them. My GPA took a massive hit freshman year and I struggled to recover from that. In addition to that, I was often playing while slightly sick or injured. I had never felt more inadequate in my life. Everything changed when I went to a prospect day at La Salle. I let myself have fun and I performed extremely well! That camp was the first time when coaches had actually seen some potential in me! Soon after, I went to a prospect day at Longwood. I was given an offer around a week later and committed soon after that. I made it.
I consider myself to be very lucky. I never suffered any long-term health effects due to my eating disorder and was able to bounce back very quickly. I never had a major relapse. There are many people who cannot say the same. Eating disorders are complex illnesses and usually sports are not recommended as a way to recover from them. However, that’s how I recovered. My eating disorder was my purpose. All I wanted to do was be thinner, to be sicker. I wanted to prove to everyone that I was actually sick. What lacrosse did was take my eating disorder’s place as my purpose. Instead of wanting to be the sickest person in the room, I wanted to be the best goalie on the field. There are days when disordered thoughts pop back up but over time they’ve become more quiet. Sometimes, your eating disorder will want to pull you back in. It will tell you that you’re nothing without it. When those thoughts come up, remember what you could lose. The worst days of the recruiting process for me were better than the best days in my eating disorder. I still have a long way to go until I’m fully recovered, but I know that lacrosse will help me get there.
