Five years is a long time to give yourself to something. Long enough to change. Long enough to be humbled. Long enough to realize that what you thought this journey woud be... isn’t what it ended up being. I can’t believe this is my fifth and final year of college softball. I don’t think the weight of that hits until I really sit with it. There were so many moments along the way where I questioned myself, where I wondered if I was enough, or if I was even where I was supposed to be. I learned that growth doesn’t always look like progress. Sometimes it looks like waiting. Sometimes it looks like staying when everything inside of you is telling you to walk away. There were times I felt invisible. Times I felt like I was falling in ways no one else noticed. I tried carrying disappointment and anger quietly because I didn’t want it to harden me. But the truth is, it did harden me. I became guarded, angry, and closed myself off because it felt safer. I built walls where there used to be t...