Wambach - Forward: a memoir

T here are so many people in my life that inked the words to these pages. Your love and teachings and support are not lost on me. Thank you is wildly insufficient when it comes to my true, deep feelings for you all. I love you ALL.

My Family, My Body:

To Mom, Dad, Beth, Laura, Peter, Matt, Pat, Andy, Brooke, Tracy, all my in-laws and nieces and nephews... I have learned so many beautiful things along the way, and have felt your love and support through all my life adventures. Thank you for letting me go wander, yet always having a place to call HOME.

My chosen Family, My Spirit:

To Sarah, Are, Dena, Kara, Syd, Breaca, Audrey, Al... There are actually NO WORDS! You have carried my heart in yours, and the space you have allowed me to BE myself, and the learning and love I have felt in you, has shaped the person I am, but more important the person I want to become. My love for you is unending.

My work Family, My Mind:

I want to thank my editor Julia Cheiffetz and the team at HarperCollins including Lynn Grady, Sean Newcott, and Katie Steinberg. Writing this book was an intense process and I am indebted to Karen Abbott for her patience and brilliance in helping me tell my story. To Dan, all my teammates and coaches... I have spent most of my adult life with you all, and I have learned a great many things. Ive learned what hard work actually looks like, and that it sometimes isnt always pretty. I learned that no matter how badly you want to achieve anything in life, that the way in which you go about achieving it is actually the most important thing. Having this fierce integrity will always be with me for all of my life.

To THE love of my life...

Here is to the next 1,000 years.

ABBY WAMBACH is an American soccer player, two-time Olympic gold medalist, Womens World Cup Champion, and the 2012 FIFA World Player of the Year. A six-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year award, Wambach has been a regular on the U.S. Womens National Soccer Team since 2003, earning her first cap in 2001. She is the highest all-time scorer for the U.S. Womens National Team and holds the world record for international goals for both female and male soccer players, with 184. A true leader on and off the field, Wambach is dedicating the next chapter of her career to fighting for equality and inclusion.

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I have scored more professional soccer goals than anyone in the history of the game, 184 to be exact, but I never once witnessed the ball hit the net. Although my eyes were open and aimed in the right direction, as soon as leather met rope the picture went blacknot a slow fade, but a swift guillotine chop that separated the scene from my ability to see it.

My mind celebrated while my vision, blinded from adrenaline, lagged a beat behind, and by the time the two equalized there was a party on the field: high fives and hell yeahs , upraised arms and pumping legs and bouncing ponytails. I thrived on these brief blackouts, these zaps of instant amnesia. For thirty years scoring goals was my currency, the one skill I could barter for security and acceptance and love. Rarely did my frenetic brain pause long enough to consider what might come next, and how the shape of my life would look without soccer to fill it up.

Now its November 2015, two weeks after I announced my retirement, and my life is in no shape at all. President Obama recently called me and my teammates badass and I feel entirely unworthy of the term. I either sleep for 12-hour stretches or not at all, roaming the hallways of my hotel or impulse shopping online. The only time I break a sweat is when I hustle to the minibar. I am at my heaviest weight, my hibernation weight. I am cultivating Olympic-caliber love handles. ABBY WAMBACH HAS A SERIOUS BAKED GOODS ADDICTION , reports espn.com, and its a charge I cant deny. Room service delivers at least one basket of muffins per day. In an effort to carb-shame myself, I Instagram every one that touches my lips, accompanied by self-flagellating hashtags: #cantstop. #socialpressure. #onedayatatime.

It doesnt work. I remain unashamed. The muffins keep coming. I study old pictures of myselfAmerican flag draped over sculpted arms, face tipped up to the cheering crowdand marvel not only at my physique but at my expression; I look much happier than I was.

Theres a good chance that last nights mixed drinks amounted to a half bottle of vodka, chased by red wine and garnished with some Ambien. Five months ago, at the World Cup final, my wife Sarah and I made international news with a celebration kiss, and now she isnt speaking to me. Wed renovated a beautiful, sprawling house tucked in the hills outside of Portland, Oregon, and I cant even consider it home. Im thirty-five years old and had planned on being pregnant by now. My body feels like a foreign object and I am desperate to escape my own mind. My two prime dueling emotions are misery and terror. If my life were currently on the roster, I would force it to do suicide runs up and down the field. I would make my life ride the bench. I might even cut it from the team.

I argue with myself: Youve been here before. Youve had your heart broken. Youve been depressed. Youve been afraid. Youve faced change. And the unspoken response comes: This time is different. This time theres permanence. This time you dont have soccer waiting for you, and youll never have soccer again.

I have relinquished soccer, but it has not relinquished me. I am still an ambassador of the sport, called upon to extol its virtues and translate its language. Today Im scheduled to speak at a fundraiser for childrens programs. I am expected to be fun and upbeat and inspirational, qualities that, once upon a time, came naturally to me. When the driver picks me up I realize I dont even know where I am: it could be Milwaukee or Nashville or Houston. I stare out the window, watching the streetscape blur past, and think, These are kids; I dont want to lie.

I am a terrible liar.

The field house is dimly lit. A single spotlight aims its beam at my head as if to illuminate the mess within. This moment is the opposite of instant amnesia, that thrilling shot of adrenaline that temporarily blinds me; this is anti-adrenaline, and I can see the kids all too clearlyhundreds of sweet, earnest faces and compact bodies squirming in anticipation. They are lined up in neat rows, looking like shots Im bound to miss. The host introduces me with words that seem to apply to someone else: two-time Olympic gold medalist; FIFA World Player of the Year; winner of the Womens World Cup; record breaker; leader; legend.

I dont memorize speeches or even write them out, much to my mothers perennial dismay, but I have a rough chronology at the ready, a tour through my childhood and club career and time on the national team, a quick dip into challenges and triumphs, a hint at my future. But the kids dont want to hear a detailed exposition of my rsum. They want to know how they can be just like me when they grow up.