"My honest thoughts about retirement from competitive sport". I've been struggling to come up with writing something about it, especially the "honest" part, for... probably more than a year. 

For the longest time, I attributed the growing and lasting restlessness in me after quitting the national team to my loss of identity. I thought that I lost my identity as "someone" to just become "anyone else" because I no longer belong to an elite group in a certain field. I felt that after years of being better at something than everybody else, I am just a commoner in a sense and I couldn't handle it. Koinophobia. The fear of being normal. Or at least that's what google told me. I was convinced that it was the koinophobe in me that's driving my mind so restless. The constant feeling of frustration at the end of a day, the constant agitation that never used to exist during my sporting days. To be fair, I was definitely not depressed, just extremely frustrated. 

A year in, as I grappled with the same questions again (yes, ridiculous I know), I'm starting to understand myself better. I don't know if its the right answer, I might arrive at a different conclusion the same time next year. I think what frustrates me endlessly is the inability to strive for greatness in whatever I do nowadays, the lack of opportunity, capability, or simply belief to pour my heart and soul into one thing that I will make me as good as what I was in Water polo. "too old", "too little time", "too little money", be it reasons or excuses, they exist as impediments to me taking the step forward into the unkown pit. Nobody is afraid of stepping into a small pit that they can see the ending of, but they are afraid of jumping into the deep, dark one. One with a falling time that they cannot even be certain of.