Road to Recovery: A Letter to My Younger Self

By Emma Martin | IG: @emmagmar10 | TW: disordered eating

My name is Emma Martin and I have played sports pretty much as soon as I could walk. I have gone from soccer to gymnastics to basketball and finally, I fell in love with lacrosse. I started to take lacrosse more seriously around my freshman year of high school. I began to start my journey of playing in college and it wasn't all that I thought it would be. The weight of constantly thinking, “Am I doing enough?” was held over my head for years. It took away the love I had for the sport, and with that, it took away a big piece of me. I worried so much about my performance that I began restricting the way I ate. I thought this would increase my performance and speed on the field, and if I was slimmer, there would be less to hold me back. I began losing weight and with that came more issues. Being an athlete my whole life, I only trained to increase my athletic performance. But now I was only obsessed with the way my body looked compared to the girls on Instagram. I began training differently and eating less, but not only did I not look like the Instagram girls, my performance on the field was suffering. I started to get weaker and was unable to do some drills. I had to sit out because I was blacking out every time I ran or even stood up. It became a routine where coaches and teammates would bring me food or express their concerns. I felt like I was letting everyone down and was only spiraling worse. I didn't want people to know I was struggling and I was so ashamed of myself. But I was so trapped in this thought process of eating less and training harder. This caused me to stop looking into playing in college and I overall started caring less about my performance.

With a few months of a break, I was able to realize that I do love the sport and I began working towards improvement. It took even longer to begin my recruitment process again which was a big step back for me. Something not a lot of athletes go into depth about is how much the recruitment process sucks. Getting ghosted, constantly being judged, feeling like you're not good enough, and the pressure of it all. My recruitment process was nowhere near perfect. It was nowhere near what I thought it would be. I almost gave up looking because I was so frustrated and I had no confidence in myself. I felt so alone because all I saw were people posting about their commitments and how happy they were. It is so hard to keep failing in a world where people only post their successes. It is so isolating and makes you feel so unworthy. But what I wish I knew then, was that no one has had success without failure, because failure is the biggest teacher.

Now that I am signed to play at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, I feel a wave of relief. I fought so hard for this and I kept pushing through the hardships. But now that I am here, I do still struggle with my mental health. Even though I have found my success, I still struggle to not fall back into my ways of disordered eating. I still struggle to find my worth and feel that I am worthy enough for this opportunity. I guess I thought that all of this would stop once I got recruited, but it didn't. Sometimes I still feel like I should skip a meal or two to get a faster time on my running workouts. Sometimes I compare myself to all of the recruits and feel like my best will never be good enough. I guess this whole process has truly taught me that even when I have everything I could ask for, it doesn't mean all of my struggles disappear. Mental health is a constant battle that does not go away with the success we so hope to see. No matter what our stats could be in a game, we will always find flaws and failures. But sometimes you need to take a step back and realize how far you have come. Because 4 years ago, I would have never believed that I stuck with it, I would have never believed that I have found peace with my body. I am so proud of myself for how far I have come. I have felt the pressures of sports my whole life and it feels so good to have a space where talking about it is being normalized. I wish I had a program like this when I was younger which is why I am an ambassador for Morgan's Message. As I go into my first year at UCCS, I look forward to learning more and spreading my knowledge!