I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but one of the things that has been causing me the most anxiety lately is basketball (that is, aside from my constant #1 stressor: grades). When the season started, I didn't watch the games regularly, and I didn't try to get tickets regularly. After about a month, however, it became one of the only things I could think about.

I always have one thing that never leaves my mind, and currently, it's basketball. I watch every single game that my team plays, no matter how inconvenient the timing. During the regular season, I signed up for every single student ticket lottery that I could. I wrote down reminders of when the lottery opened so that I would not forget. I wrote when the games were, even though I have a poster with the schedule on my wall.

Most fans say that they love close games; for me, those are the worst. I will sit there shaking, almost in tears if we are not ahead by a significant amount. It's inevitable that teams are going to lose, and when we do (luckily that hasn't happened too much), it feels like part of me dies. We lost a really big game in February, and that actually caused me to have a full-blown anxiety attack. It happened three days after the actual game, and between the game and the anxiety attack, I was a complete mess; I couldn't focus on anything to save my life.

Since I go to a school with a big basketball program, there are quite a few people who love to see us lose. I am friends with plenty of these people on Facebook, and it's terrible when they post bad things about my school. It feels like everything is directed toward me. Instead of saying "I think the team is terrible," to me, it reads "YOU are terrible." I hate these thoughts, and these posts on the internetwere partially what led to my anxiety attack mentioned above.

So I guess my main point is that I have a love/hate relationship with basketball. We made the NCAA tournament, which is good, but I'm just not sure how I'm going to deal with that. It's going to be so stressful; I hope I can manage. Reading over this again, I realize that I sound like a weirdo, but just getting all of these feelings out there has helped me feel a little better already.