Goal Differential

I've got a Thursday night free again, which is great, primarily because it soothes the restless, twitchy, caged beast of anxiety the way only compulsivity and the illusion of control can. Well, "beast" is a little strong for any aspect of my personality really. It's more like a terrier: talks a bigger game than it brings, known more for its blinkered tenacity than its actual threat level, often accidentally adorable when attempting to be fierce... Actually in trying to make a half-hearted word-picture of a joke, I'm getting uncomfortable as I legitimately describe the way many aspects of me seem to work: my anxiety, my temper, my charisma, my libido... There's really nothing like attempting to be sexually compelling and having the woman for whom your display is directed break out laughing, sometimes optionally punctuated with an "awww..." But once you experience it a few times and realize these responses are in no ways dealbreakers or momentum-killers, you accidentally realize you have "game" of some description, even if it is just rebranded failure. Look, Viagra was developed as a blood-pressure medication. Sometimes when you're messing with something else, you end up with boners anyway.

I'm back at this writing thing when I'm supposed to be and my week feels like it has structure and breathing space again. It's been a weird, trying week in a lot of ways, with the news still mostly ranging from the horrendous to the absolutely enragingly absurd to also the pleasantly hopeful, sometimes in the same space. Work stuff has been eye-rolling but not back-testing. It certainly hasn't been anything but a sort of prosaic workday stress, producing the odd grunt of effort, but manageable, livable. And through it, some real positives like the pollenating onslaught of spring, some positive turns in the personal life* and now, as I reach the end of the paragraph, I suppose on reflection "weird" and "trying" were both terrible word choices, neither really apt at all. It was a regular, livable week. Huh. Boy I've been out of therapy for a while. I forgot what a brainflop reversal like that felt like.

I'd say it's an excellent week where your biggest stressor is a sportsball thing, but let's not downplay it. For the thing I'm waiting for tonight, the anxiety is alive and the anticipation is warranted. Four years in the making! Eight years if you count the fact that the last time we were awaiting something like this, Americans fell on their dumb faces into a puddle on a pocky field in Couva, Trinidad & Tobago, and promptly drowned in two inches of water. We missed a whole World Cup. It stings slightly less in retrospect knowing we didn't participate in any Putin sportswashing by hosting the thing is corrupt-ass Russia, but there aren't any World Cups that don't have the trademark FIFA branding of bribery and human blood. I mean, I'm excited about my team trying to make the next one and the whole process of bringing it to Qatar 2022 is a definitive global how-to for future purveyors of graft. They'll teach classes on it, but you'll only be able to sign up in response to an unsolicited phone call that has your phone's area code and prefix but is still somehow from India. And you'll have to pay for it in Google Play gift cards. Good luck.

So yeah, I'm talking about tonight's match between the US men's team and Mexico. I don't really organize my life around sporting events, even big-time ones where my teams are involved. The team I root for won the whole-ass Super Bowl this year and it mostly just felt weird and confusing. I'm sure I'll figure it out emotionally sometime around the start of next season, but I like sports with a little bit of an emotional remove. I can watch it and get good stuff out of the experience without a crushing amount of chest pain since I tend not to make the mistake of thinking the fortunes of these women or men I've never met, who as far as I know live in my television, is somehow tied to my value as a human.

This healthy separation does not always remain in place when it comes to international soccer and the US teams especially. There will be pacing and muttering and (situationally appropriate!) howling. But don't worry, I do it right. Even if it goes badly, it still feels pretty good. I like the story and sometimes the story is that your team sucks. And they lose badly, in heartbreaking fashion. But it's the safest heartbreak you'll ever endure. And unlike relationships, you know you'll just be able to do it all again the next time the situation reforms and presents again. Sports isn't like love or your family because it's a cycle. You can lose, but it's never gone. It marks and defines you to some degree, sure, but everyone has an off-season. It goes away. You remember how to live a life wholly free of it. And then, if we choose to, we re-accept the fiction that it matters at all again.

Four years ago it hurt when we fucked up at this stage in the process. But I'll carry that around forever. All it does is gives context to the thing I'm about to watch tonight: depth, shape, shading, contours, a storyline threaded through the limited years I have to live and experience. Plus one of my boys will be here to pace through it with me. Even if it's a bad time, it'll be a pretty good time. I'll be miserable the whole way through it. I genuinely can't wait.

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*the kind where you end up frequenting a new part of the area you live in, with all kinds of restaurants you've never been to. So much potential!