Sports saved me from ending my life
Daily Titan
With tears coming down my eyes, I looked for ways to do it. After searching throughout my uncle’s room, I finally figured it out. After my cousin had physically assaulted me and with my family all downstairs, I was going to kill myself.
It seemed like the right time to do it. I was struggling with myself, having a hard time keeping friends, and my cousin deciding to throw me to the ground and choke me seemed to be the final nail in my eventual coffin.
Growing up in a family that preached rainbows and sunshine, it was hard to talk to anyone about the fights I had with myself. Whenever I did, it got somewhat dismissed, or I was scolded for feeling that way. At that time, there was only one way out.
Up on my uncle’s bed, I looked up at the ceiling fan and got ready to do it. With all my emotions out of control and ready to face the consequences of my actions, an absolutely crazy thought ran through my mind.
“It would suck if I did this and the Dodgers went to the World Series. If I did this, this means no more UCLA football games and what if they someday win the national title too?”
I immediately thought of all the connections I had to sports. Starting with the numerous trips to Dodger Stadium, my UCLA football season tickets and my wishful thinking of the Clippers being THE team of Los Angeles.
The tears suddenly went away and a smile soon appeared. Basically, sports saved my life, and what I learned was that for my entire life, sports was pushing me along.
When I was a toddler, I grew obsessed with the sports world. I would be crawling all over the floor but would stop once SportsCenter was on. I went to my first UCLA football game before my first birthday and have been a season ticket holder ever since.
When I was 5 years old, I stormed out of the Rose Bowl calling for UCLA to fire head coach Bob Toledo after UCLA suffered a horrible defeat to Washington State. The next day, he was fired.
I ran out on the streets of Fullerton when the UCLA men’s basketball team completed a miraculous comeback to defeat Gonzaga in the NCAA Tournament in 2006 and screamed at the top of my lungs when Eric McNeal intercepted John David Booty’s pass to end USC’s chances at a national title that same year.
Leading up to high school, all of my favorite memories happened because of sports and I did not want to miss out on that. I was happiest when I was part of a crowd, yelling on third down.
