`My parents got married in 1994 after meeting at Ohio State University in 1987, where they were both working towards their pHDs in psychology. My mom decided to keep her last name, Feinstein, partly because they both were doctors and didn’t want confusion if they ever worked at the same practice, and partly because she was a feminist and didn’t believe in taking her husband’s name. When my sister was born, 2 years before me, they decided that their kids would have my dad’s name, Dyer, but that my mom got to choose our middle names. She named my sister Matilda Rose, after her favorite childhood novel and her great grandmother, but decided her name was too fluffy by the time I was born. My parents named me Eleanour Monroe Avery, after Eleanour Roosevelt and the character Elinor in Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility. My middle namesake was my mom’s favorite aunt, though she died before I was born. 

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When my parents had me, they decided their two-bedroom apartment in downtown Cleveland was too small, and we moved to a three-bedroom house with a big backyard and a white picket fence in a city called Fairview Heights, just outside Cleveland. The proximity to the city meant that my dad could commute to his office, and my mom decided to open her own practice in our new little town. We were walking distance to the elementary school, and less than a ten minute drive from the middle and high schools in our area. My dad was on his school’s baseball team when he was in high school, and he was drawn to our school district by the amazing emphasis on fostering and supporting student athletes. 

From the time I was little, I exhibited the traits of a textbook younger child--they could’ve done studies on me. I walked, talked, and learned how to read at least a month before my sister had when she was a baby. I was always reading at least 3 grade levels ahead of my own, and had the “take charge” kind of attitude that often got me described as bossy by my elementary school teachers. When I was in first grade, my teacher recommended to my parents that they get me involved in some extracurricular activities to try to keep me a little more stimulated than first grade was keeping me. After a nasty run in with a local dance studio, my mom signed me up for rec soccer, and I was drawn to the heavily competitive atmosphere and quick pace of the sport immediately. I wasn’t very good, because I was seven and largely uncoordinated, but I was dedicated. Matilda had been playing violin practically since she was born, so she had no interest in kicking a ball around in the backyard with her annoying little sister. My dad had never played either, but he was eager to bond with his younger daughter and offered to drive me to all my games and help me practice my skills in the backyard. Through the Blossoms, I became closer friends with several girls in my grade, and began to meet other girls who went to private school. 

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My dad and I bonded quickly over soccer, and he pushed me to go to all three practices a week, all of our games, and to spend half an hour a day practicing juggling and ball control in the backyard. My mom and I had always been closer, but as my dedication to my sport grew, I began 

spending more and more time with my dad. The fall of my third grade year, my coach suggested I try out for indoor, so I could continue training year round. I was super nervous, though likely not more nervous than my father was for me. I made the team, and thus began my infatuation with indoor soccer. It was faster, more brutal, and required more quick thought than outdoor ever could. We chose numbers on our third day of practice, and I only had to elbow a couple people out of the way to get to the jersey with 11 on it. It had always been my favorite number, as the first double digit with repeating digits (perhaps not great justification but it worked for me). It didn’t hurt that it was also the number 1 twice. 

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Many of the girls on my indoor team, the Wolves, went to my school, and over the next couple of years, I bonded with a small group of teammates who were also in my classes at school. Our coach always referred to us by our numbers at practice, which made me feel like a real soccer player, and my friends and I took to referring to ourselves solely by our numbers at school, much to the chagrin of our teachers. Quickly, I became close with #13 on our team, who lived just three blocks away from me in the section of the neighborhood with slightly smaller houses. She was a couple months younger than me, but something about her slightly rough upbringing and lack of filter made me constantly want to impress her. 13 had an older brother in high school who skipped school all the time and, if the rumours proved true, did drugs. I thought her brother was the cool rebel who would rescue me from the monotony of our small Ohio town. I quickly learned that he wanted nothing to do with his little sister’s twelve year old friend with the skinny arms and skinned knees. I resigned myself to my fate, deciding at a young age that boys were just going to get in the way of my success in life. 

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As I moved through high school and into early middle school, I maintained my stance on dating. Despite my mom constantly trying to convince me that boys didn’t approach me because they were intimidated by my intelligence, I distanced myself, trying to pretend that I didn’t care that all of my friends started to get boyfriends. 

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As I got older, I started to become more aware of how my upbringing was shaped by the fact that both of my parents were licensed therapists. While many of my friends reported that they barely saw one or both of their parents, we had standing family dinner between 3 and 5 times a week, with a required family movie night on Sunday. While I grumbled constantly about it, I was secretly glad to have such a stable relationship with my parents. 

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I maintained my friendship with 13, but by the time we were 16 I had realized it was mainly a friendship based on obligation rather than anything else. As I reached high school I began to get out of the upper middle class bubble that my parents had sheltered me in from the beginning of my childhood. I started avidly reading the news and participating in debate team as I tried to make sense of the chaos and destruction in the world around me. 13 was not interested in having conversations with me about the moral implications of the death penalty or about our role in society based on our innate privilege. I didn’t have very many close friends on my team, because I was so competitive with all my peers. The captain of our team and I had an uneasy friendship, but it was based around competition and a constant attempt to one-up the other. 

After complaining to my mom about this for weeks, she finally told me that I’d just have to suck it up and try to engage with my peers for the next couple of years, assuring me that it would get better in college. 

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College. The 7 letter word that I was sure was going to save me. I joined the newspaper as a columnist, started going to Amnesty International meetings (though I was never as active as the girl who played as #2 on our team) and worked my butt off in school for the grades that would get me into the east coast school of my choice. I knew that a soccer scholarship was the best way to know I could afford the private liberal arts school of my choice, so I continued to play indoor and travel, even as my passion for the sport itself dwindled a little. Even though I didn’t love soccer as much as I had when I was younger, my intensely competitive nature and (slight) superiority complex kept me engaged as long as the Wolves remained the best time in the league. I couldn’t see why the other girls on our team couldn’t see the same things about our coach that were so clear to me, but I kept my eyes on the prize--getting to play in college with girls who would be just as socially conscious with the same desire to debate moral issues as I was.