Over the weekend, my wife and I decided to go out to see a movie for Valentine’s Day. We are both Marvel fans, and the new Captain America movie had just come out. Throughout the film, I started noticing my body tensing more than usual, and my emotions rising as certain scenes played out. Then Sam Wilson said this line to Sgt. Torres.

If I’m not on point,
I let everyone who wants a seat at that table down. 

That line hit me harder than I expected, and I haven’t been able to shake it ever since. It is exactly how I feel. Expectations are a brutal thing when you are the one living underneath them. 

I grew up under a legacy that most people can’t even imagine. My father was a multi-event PRCA All Around Cowboy and a former Marine Recon Sharpshooter. My mother was an Olympic hurdler and a saddle bronc rider. Athletics wasn’t just encouraged—it was expected. But I didn’t follow their path.

I rebelled. . .

I didn’t look up to them the way people might assume. Inittially I played the sports they wanted me to play, had extreme success in them and then just gave them up and moved on. It frustrated my parents to no end.  Each time I moved on I picked more aggressive sports than I had previously played. Then when I entered High School, I ran straight into the most violent, dangerous sport I could find—football—because I had a lot of rage in me, and it gave me an outlet where I could beat the hell out of people legally.

At the time, I thought it was just who I was. Now, I know better. That wasn’t just anger. It was PTSD. I didn’t understand it then, but I can see it more clearly now. Football wasn’t about the love of the game. It was about surviving my past. I was reliving the traumas of my past, and taking them out on whoever wass infront of me. It was a way to unleash everything I couldn’t express anywhere else.

I was good—damn good.
But not good enough.

I made it to an NFL practice squad, but I never broke onto the roster. And to me, that’s not success. That’s being the first loser. I don’t think about the millions of athletes who never even got as far as I did. They didn’t live my life. They don’t carry my expectations on their shoulders. They don’t have my genetics. I was supposed to go further.

I was supposed to have a full pro career like my Dad.
. . . and I didn’t.

That decision—to choose football over the other sports I could have dominated—was the wrong one. I didn’t have the body for the sport. I wasn’t built to play football. I definately did not have the genetics to play on the O-Line. But I did anyway because I had a rage that no one else seemed to have. I hurt a lot of people in the process. I was a great football player because I was a horrible person. And even though I’ve moved past that part of my life, I still feel the weight of it.

Now, I find myself at a crossroads.

My daughter just got invited to try out for competitive cheer. I want to be over-the-moon excited for her. I am so proud of her—but there’s this hesitation inside me. I don’t want to push her the way I was pushed. I don’t want her to carry the kind of pressure I did. I want her to love what she does for the sake of loving it—not because she feels like she has to prove anything to me or to anyone else.

I may not have lived up to the expectations I was born into. I may never feel like I was enough in that world. But I am a good father.

And that’s enough for me.

She doesn’t have to carry my burdens. She doesn’t have to prove herself worthy of a seat at the table. She just gets to be her, and I get to support her without the weight of my past shaping her future.

To me, that’s a win.
That’s the legacy worth leaving.

It also allows me to keep fighting the fight that I have inside of me. I may never know what I was supposed to become, but I know where I am today. Life has chosen a different path for me, one worth fighting for.

I guess it’s time for me to find out who I truly am and who I want to become.