You Are My Home

Alex

After graduating high school I decided to tell my family I am gay. I don't really
want  to get to into details because it's still really painful when I think about it, but since then I have accepted their decision. As you can imagine losing a whole family takes a lot out of a person. It broke me.

When I went off to college I was determined to forget about them because that was the only way I thought I could survive. I promised myself I wouldn't let anyone become too close to me, because if I didn't care about a person they wouldn't be able to hurt me. So I became this chill aloof kid who focussed soccer, but at any opportunity I partied and trust me there were plenty of opportunities.

   After a first few weeks I really got in the groove of college. I figured out how to go the bare minimum of classes while still getting credit. Mostly because I got girls to take notes for me. I guess I should probably explain that. I decided that if I was going to be kicked out of my family for liking girls then I was going to be with girls and I definitely with a lot of girls.

It was almost too easy for me to get girls to sleep with me. I was known throughout the school for the star soccer player.

Apparently I was pretty good looking too, especially since soccer has become way more serious I was in great shape, plus I had recently discovered my own style. It usually consisted of jeans, a teeshirt, my favorite leather jacket, and a snapback. Girls in college, were always looking to experiment and I was very willing to to give them that experince. It worked out for the both of us because I was not looking for anything serious either. I went through girls pretty quickly.

But every once and a while I would seriously break down. Usually it was after having to much to drink and those days were the darkest. I started to cut myself. Sometimes drinking and sleeping with random girls wasn't enough to help me forget and when the pain of past memories was too much I would cause myself more pain on the outside. Because I could handle that.

When I was called up to the national team and after college I got drafted to the Thorns, I couldn't help but think that this was it for me this is going to be my life. Soccer always soccer. It would give me an excuse to never be around any where for too long, the problem was my team mates started to become my family. I had teammates like Allie Long who has some how wormed her way into my life and Lauren Holiday who is probably the most intuitive and sarcastic person I have ever met and I loved them both. They saved my life to be honest.

And then there was Alex...she turned my whole world upside down. One national team camp she just showed up. It was my third year being there so I was still in college  and I found out she is a sophomore in college. She was everything that I pretended to be and being around her made me feel alive again. Not to mention she was absolutely gorgeous how could I not fall in love with her. After college I stopped messing around with other girls because no one captured my attention anymore. It was always Alex for me.

But I promised myself that I could never tell her how I felt about her because when I tell people that's when I lose them and I couldn't lose them, I couldn't lose anyone else. So we were best friends we were always together. We played on the national team together, after college we played and lived in Portland together. When we were together I couldn't be happier. I loved everything to do with Alex. Whether that was doing conditioning together, arguing and oh god we argued it seemed like we didn't agree on one topic,  playing monopy deal to even just sitting on the couch watching netflix together. And sitting still for that long is a real challenge for me.

I knew everything about her. Her favorite foods her favorite tv shows, how to make her small after a tough loss, I knew her family and I even knew stuff like what her childhood room color was. She knew me so well, I never really told her about what happened specifically with my parents, but she knew about what I was willing to tell her about my childhood and all of my crazy college stories.I was her best friend and she was mine and I was okay with keeping it like that, no matter my feelings for her.