cheerleading = depressed

hello. my name is sarah. i used to be a cheerleader. i'm depressed.

in high school cheerleading was AMAZING. it was so much fun. it gave me most of the friends i have today. our coach SUCKED every year, well it was the same lady, but because of her we pretty much sucked every year. we got basically last at competition all the time. but we still had so much fun, i still got to compete which is a rush nothing else can ever equal. we did cool stuff like wore our uniforms on game days and had bake sales and decorated together and dressed up for homecoming. and although we never really "went anywhere" as in doing well at competition and stuff i still loved it. cheerleading was like my high school life. it was fun, even when practices sucked and people cried and i got bloody noses. it was fun because the people i did it with made it fun and we tried our best and it was good.

in college i thought i would try cheerleading since i liked it so much in high school. but the tryouts were during the summer and i couldn't make them. i thought oh well, it wasn't meant to be. in september i saw a huge sign for cheerleading tryouts, it was so amazing so i went to them. turns out they didn't have enough people from the summer and needed a bigger team. so i tried out, but i became the alternate. the coach assured me i would not be left out and i would definately have a place on the team and be able to compete if someone got hurt or something happened. i was disappointed but decided it would be ok and i would do it. practices began. they sucked. they were soooo long and sooo boring and i didn't get to do much because i was an alternate....coach lied a bit. the team was pretty much all cliquey already and i just didn't fit in. it wasn't like high school at all where every year when new people joined the team we accepted them and eventually we became a big family. they just wouldn't let me in and so i was always shy and didn't get to come out of my shell and be the crazy person i really am which is why everyone loves me. time passed and i hated cheerleading more and more, not the actual sport but just doing it at keene state. then one night someone fell on me and i sprained my ankle. after that i couldn't do anything. i just sat there. i had to come back from winter break like a week early to practice but i still couldn't do much. it was ridiculous. and then one day when we were about to leave for an away game the coach told me i was no longer on the team (in so many words) i cried a lot but i was also pretty happy since i hated it so much.

today i look back on these two worlds with sadness. unlike the people younger then me in high school who got to have a new coach and really make something of themselves those last two years of highschool i got nothing and have only the happy memories but no fulfilling cheerleading career to look back in. in college i am like a black sheep of the team. everyone pretty much thinks i'm a slacker and they dislike me. the coach obviously dislikes me since she kicked me off the team. so i could never go back to them and even if i wanted to i doubt i would make the team.

i lost my train of thought and i'm still sad so i'm gonna go now. i'm glad i got all that out. don't know how much it helped however. i think i'm gonna go buy a cheerlading handbook.