The basketball hoop had been lying on the court for months — and not just the rim. Everything. The pole, the backboard, the rim, the net — all the pieces that should have been more than enough to stand up to all of life’s storms.
It wasn’t.
A few teenage boys and a violent windstorm were all it took. I was sitting in the kitchen when it happened. I didn’t see it, but I heard the metal-and-plastic thud when it hit the court. I imagine the fall as a kind of slow-motion arc — years of corrosion I couldn’t see finally giving out all at once. The pole had rusted from the inside, water pooling for years where I hadn’t sealed it or given it a way to drain. I should have known. I should have seen it coming. But from the outside, it looked fine. A little weathered, maybe, but still standing.
Now it’s not. And I didn’t move it for a long time.
I’d stare at it, day after day, lying there on the cement. The pole at the base was completely broken. All I needed to do was disassemble it, cut up the backboard into chunks small enough for the garbage can, and be done with it.
I did drag it away, but the whole structure is still sitting behind the shed, waiting indifferently for me to get rid of it.
I talked to my fourteen-year-old about ways we might put it back up. Perhaps some kind of metal collar to secure the pole from the outside. But I know the piece cemented into the ground is slowly breaking down, and it would be only a matter of time before it toppled again.
I suppose, in a way, taking it apart is admitting defeat — another problem I should have foreseen becoming another problem I can’t solve.
Honestly, I still don’t know what to do with things that are broken but familiar.
There are a lot of memories of playing basketball with my kids on those hoops (we actually lost both of them to corrosion and wind).
The hoops are also a metaphor.
The truth is, I’ve been that pole — corroding from the inside while looking mostly functional from the outside. I’ve stood through a thousand windstorms thinking I was resilient. That if I could just keep standing, I’d prove my strength and my worth. That eventually, the weather would calm down.
But weather doesn’t calm. It just keeps coming. And standing tall isn’t the same as staying whole. Often, it’s the opposite.
I’ve spent years internalizing stress, guilt, overcommitment. Letting it pool in the places no one could see. Telling myself I’d deal with it “when things slow down.” They never really did. So I kept going. Working. Providing. Proving. Performing. Until my whole structure started to feel… wobbly.
It wasn’t a breakdown in the Hollywood sense. I didn’t have a day where I was throwing things around the office, cutting my own tie off with scissors, or screaming at my boss. It was just a slow unraveling. An exhaustion that settled in over years of self-neglect — making even small things feel like enormous decisions.
Like dragging a fallen basketball hoop off a court.
In the last four months, something in me has started to shift. I’ve been writing more. Thinking more clearly. Naming some things I’ve been afraid to name for years. Acknowledging that I carry more than I need to. That I “perform” strength when I don’t feel it. That I mistake silence for peace. That I have a pattern of hoping “new” will fix what’s actually just… unprocessed.
Every day, I’m still tempted by the old rhythms.
I doomscroll. I eat like I’m 19 and training for a marathon I’ll never run. I still spin in place when the to-do list outpaces the available hours and mental capacity. I still bottle things up. I still walk past that broken hoop and think: “One more mess to clean up.”
Then, I walk away. It’s for another day.
There’s a kind of grief in realizing you’ve outgrown something, but you’re still holding onto it anyway. Not because it works — but because you don’t know who you’ll be without it.
We read zero-to-hero stories that make us believe change is a switch you flip. You see the problem, you fix it. But that’s not how this has gone. It’s been slower. Messier. Like learning to walk again with shoes that almost fit. You trip on things. You limp. You go barefoot for a while because at least that feels — I don’t know — honest.
I’m not who I was. But I’m also not quite someone else yet. And some days, that in-between state feels like progress. Other days, it feels like failure with different lighting.
I thought about getting rid of that basketball hoop last weekend. I really did. But I got to have a colonoscopy instead. Then, I got distracted by other things — client work, car shopping with a teenager who has waited “so patiently.” Life, in all its usual and inconvenient timing.
The hoop’s still there. And maybe that’s okay.
Maybe there’s something kind about letting old things rest where they are until you’re ready.
Maybe that’s where I am too.
Not stuck. Not broken.
Just almost changed.
And that is enough.
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