João Félix

Fragmented memories are those traumas where pain speaks louder than common logic.

And his trauma was divided into 3 parts.

Some people believe that changing location is enough to start over.

He believed it too.

When he arrived, everything seemed different. There were different faces, a different uniform, a different crest. No one knew about his sleepless nights or the burden he'd carried for so long. He thought that, finally, he could be the boy who played for joy, not out of obligation.

It was repeatedly said that this was their opportunity.

A new city. A new beginning.

But the wounds travel with you.

Every training session was a test. Every match, an exam. He didn't play for enjoyment; he played to prove everyone wrong. And when you play with the need to convince others, you stop listening to yourself.

Expectations were enormous.

His even more so.

He tried to remember who he was before the noise started, but he could only find fragments. A boy running after a ball. The thrill of making his debut. The first time he heard his name called in a stadium.

Everything seemed so far away.

And when things didn't go as planned, he felt that the opportunity wasn't slipping away from the club.

She was escaping from him.

The voice wasn't his.

He never knew when the comments stopped being on a screen.

Now they lived inside his head.

"It's not enough."

"It's no good."

"He wasn't up to par."

At first I could ignore them.

Then they started appearing before touching the ball.

Each mistake seemed to confirm what thousands of people had been saying for months. As if they had all written a destiny from which there was no escape.

She began to distrust him.

If I missed a pass, I thought they were right.

If he played a good game, he believed it was just luck.

If they praised him, he waited for the moment when they would stop.

It was strange. It felt strange.

People believe that criticism disappears when you turn off your phone.

They don't know that some find a way to stay.

He started training more.

I slept less.

I was overthinking things.

And yet, it was never enough.

The word "insufficient" began to define him more than his own name.

There were days when she wondered if she really still loved this or if she was just afraid to admit that she couldn't stand it anymore.

Silence.

The most dangerous thing about fear is not that it made him cry.

He managed to convince him to abandon what he loved most.

Nobody saw that part.

They watched ninety minutes.

They didn't see the previous hours, when he was trying to gather the courage to go out into the field.

They didn't see the constant struggle against a voice that kept repeating that it would never be enough again.

Sometimes I imagined what it would be like to disappear.

Not to disappear from the world.

Just from the noise.

That they should stop expecting anything from him.

That they stop comparing him to the player he once promised to be.

I thought that, perhaps, if I quit football, those voices would disappear too.

But he understood something too late.

The voices had never lived on the networks before.

They lived within themselves.

And that was what hurt the most.

Because the real rival was never there.

It was always on his mind.

Perhaps she will never be able to erase everything they said to her.

Perhaps I'll never play without fear again.

But there is still a part of that boy who keeps looking for a ball to remember that, before the millions, the headlines and the criticism, there was a dream.

And no comment should have the power to destroy a dream.

Thought. He clung to that idea.

There were days when she wished she didn't hear his name. Not because she hated the place, but because she no longer knew how to be there.

He sat with the others and feigned composure, but inside he felt he was occupying a space he didn't deserve. He gazed at the fields, listened to the voices, saw the joy of others, and wondered when what he had loved since childhood began to frighten him.

The strangest thing was that I still wanted to be there. It was just that I no longer knew how to do it without feeling judged even before I started.

The problem was no longer going out into the countryside. The problem was staying close to something I loved and feeling, at the same time, that I no longer belonged there.