THE WALL I BUILT
- Dec 9, 2025
- 3 min read
SHARE YOUR STORY SERIES: How Breaking Down Helped Me Finally Break Through
MY NAME IS aspen garrison & THIS IS MY STORY
DII Basketball Player | TAC Ambassador
For as long as I can remember, I believed success meant one thing: pushing myself past my limits. Grinding harder. Ignoring the pain. Tuning out the noise. Winning at any cost.
That mindset fueled me as an athlete. It made me a successful player for a while but eventually became my biggest downfall as an athlete and a person. Over the past couple of years, life has forced me to learn a different definition of success; one that has nothing to do with stats or scoreboards and everything to do with resilience, healing, and mental health.
Because the truth is, taking care of the human behind the athlete isn’t weakness. It’s the foundation of strength.
Growing up, I carried anxiety and depression quietly in the background of my life. But instead of facing it, I buried it. I built my identity entirely around being an athlete, throwing myself into the game. Where I could find value in myself as an athlete when I couldn’t find value in myself as a person. When I wasn’t competing, I couldn’t find my self-worth.
When emotions came up, I shoved them down. When anxiety showed up, I hid behind a tough exterior. I wanted to live with compassion and kindness, but instead, I built a wall around myself, protecting my feelings, pretending I was fine, even when I was so far from it.
Everything changed when I had to redshirt after shoulder surgery. Injury is brutal; the physical pain, the endless rehab, the uncertainty of what’s next. But the hardest part wasn’t the workouts or the waiting.
It was losing the part of me I thought defined me. Without basketball, I didn’t know who I was. Without success in sports, I couldn’t find love or appreciation for myself. My mental health spiraled. I fell into depression, and my anxiety began to show up physically. My body broke down right alongside my mind. I physically getting sick and throwing up daily with anxiety; I stopped caring for myself and fell into physical illness because of my mental illness.
And finally, I hit the wall. I couldn’t outrun myself anymore. I couldn’t keep killing my body because I refused to take care of my mind.
That’s when I realized getting help wasn’t weakness — it was courage.
I turned to therapy. I leaned on my family. I began to rebuild, not just my body, but my relationship with myself. Slowly, I learned that my worth wasn’t conditional on minutes played or numbers on a stat sheet.
I started to see myself as more than an athlete. More than performance. More than results.
I struggle every day with mental health, but I am beginning to find power in owning it. I am finding love and compassion for myself by taking care of mental health.
I used to believe that I was fully control of my mind, if I was feeling unhappy or down it was in my control to fix alone. The hardest lesson for me to learn through my mental health journey was understanding that I could not rely on myself to fix things and that it was out of my control. It was hard for me to accept that I needed help in areas that I couldn’t fix myself. I learned I was not alone; not alone in feeling the way that I was, I was not alone walking through life, and I alone could not fix me.
____________________________________________________________________________
I was always scared to own and share my story because I thought it made me look weak, but if I can help one person who sees themself in my story, I want to use my power and make an impact.
If you see yourself in my story, I want you to know this; your worth is not tied to performance, you don’t have to wait until you’re broken to ask for help, strength isn’t pretending you’re fine it’s allowing yourself to be human, and I want you to look to find your identity outside of your sport- find what inspires you to live a life through self-love and compassion.
Because one day, the game ends. But you, the human being, will still remain. And the way you care for yourself now will shape who you become long after the final whistle.
You are not your stats. You are not your sport. You are human first. Athlete second.
Comments