Bit worried about Ashlyn Harris actually
Aside from all the drama that's been going on lately, I've got to confess that for the past few months (or years?) I've been wondering what the hell is up with this woman.
I was such a huge fan back when she was just this Satellite Beach goalkeeper with a humble head and the love for skate-boarding and surfing and you know, family & friends first and her work with To Write Love on Her Arms. And I get people change and that none of us ever really knew her, but I've seen I'm not the only one who can't believe what she's turned into. Like, can we recognise her any more? Or was the completely playing out to be an entirely different person ten years ago?
I think it started when she came out with Ali and suddenly she was like, this attention-seeking, uncomfortably loud (as in literally screaming) person with the weird, rather cringey fashion, only talking about gay things and nothing else, behaving like the complete soccer start that to be entirely fair she wasn't... Even on her wedding video I couldn't believe that Ashlyn was the same Ashlyn of 2011, 2012, 2013... It's not even that many years to change so much, let alone in your thirties. It's like there were no remnants of the surfer, the skate-boarder, the humble butch from a small town who valued the little things... Like she was adamant on transforming into this massively public, loud, "fashionable (?)" celebrity. Even when giving interviews she was expressing herself like she had no intellect any more, you know like male footballers speak, like it's all looks and no brain, no sign of the person who got a uni degree and who gave an amazing mental health talk with TWLOHA years back.
And then when they were celebrating the WC, I was thinking, since when is she this loud and arrogant? Since when is she so attention-seeking? When did she turn into this whole other person who makes such a huge effort to ignore her lack of National Team performances and pretend like she deserved her world cup as much as Ali or Pinoe? I get subs deserve the medal and all too, I mean, they made it so far and if they weren't there training with the rest, the rest wouldn't be as good. You're only as good as the worst of you, after all. But none of the others was bragging so loudly and calling themselves x2 champions so much without having played a minute of those games, were they? Even Alyssa Naeher doesn't have world cup champion in her profiles, nor does AD Franch, nor PINOE, but you know who does? Hope Solo. And you don't want to have THAT personality. I feel like when you're confident on your victories, you don't need to brag, everyone knows who you are, your work speaks for itself.
What worries me about AH (sit down here comes my Psychology Grad analysis) is that in the past few years she's been more and more behaving like someone with no self-esteem, who's desperately afraid of being forgotten and needing to shout left and right look at me! i'm a champion! I'm a soccer star! And then she stopped getting called up for the USWNT, got stuck in the Pride (and I love them but bunch of losers tbh), and all she had left was Ali. And then Ali's doing better than she is. And then Ashlyn gets these horrible injuries and that's story of her life (injuries effed her up from day 1 and seriously impacted her career) and she's forced into an abrupt retirement with no glory.
And then emerges this Ashlyn who only cares about rubbing elbows with celebs, who believes herself to be some fashion mogul (that's all she's got left) and who is deeply satisfied with how her life turned out to be and how she's ended up being nothing but a footnote in the history of American women's soccer, specially compared to her wife. We know they've had issues for a while, that has been hinted at before, and I can only imagine there must've been a growing resentment/bitterness towards Ali because she gets everything Ashlyn won't in terms of soccer. In fact it seems to me (and maybe it's just me), that she seems to be ferociously resentful to soccer in general, like, suddenly she wants nothing to do with it and wants to pretend like soccer is not a big deal. How many times as she stated quite firmly that she's now happiest she's ever been and acted almost as if soccer was actually holding her back? as if her soccer career is nothing compared with what she has now, when we know it isn't true, because she still feels the need to remind us she's a twice world cup champion all the time?
So from a psychology point of view I think she's very bitter, very hurt, very pissed off, very resentful, that she hasn't processed her forced retirement and her not so good soccer career in a healthy way, and so she has to pretend like she's super happy and better than she was before so as not to look like the failure she feels she is. She has to use social media all the time and brag about the celebrities she's meeting, the trips she's going in... She's got nothing else but to pretend she's still as successful as all her friends she has to constantly see in social media showing off with the accomplishments she wishes she had. It's the classic game of getting depressed comparing yourself to others so you take to social media to constantly pretend you're as good as them or better, we all do it. And she's gone, in my humble opinion, off the rails, she's unrecognaisable, and if she has really had an affair and hurt Ali this big, as rumours have it, then that only strengthens my opinion. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if she's abusing substances again, if she's in some spiral downhill as it looks like. And what's Ali going to do? She can't focus on looking after her, she's got work, she's got two small kids, at this age Ashlyn needs to see she needs help and seek it on her own, not expect Ali to mother her.
That's part of why I really don't like people going on and insulting her left and right, because we really don't know what's going on, but to me it seems like when someone's not well, when someone's spiralling, they start to really go off and the first people to get hurt are those closest to her. And we must remember she is a human being, even if she makes mistakes, even if she does bad things (IF she has), and she doesn't deserve billions of people judging her and making her life miserable. And none of us would like it in our consciences if she actually is struggling with her mental health and gets worse because of generalised mass bullying. She's still Sloane and Ocean's mother, and they probably love her very much, and Ali's probably struggling a lot, so we need to remember supporting one person does not have to mean stooping so low as to have to become horrible bullies. Let's stay human, y'all.
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