mikersI've spent the entirety of my time playing this game in any form of competitive being an absolute shithead to everyone around me, whether it be via being a toxic asshole or blaming others for shit I do wrong constantly. Anyone that's played a Lobby or season with me knows that I'm a piece of shit, and it sucks because it's far too late for me to apologize to anyone for it. I want to get back into competitive and actually try this time, but I'm convinced my reputation is permanently ruined.
I feel the worst about ESEA S26, I got picked as Medic for an open team, I don't remember what it was at the time but it's now known as "Simian Aggression" on there. There were several losses in scrims and matches where I was definitely a good part of the reason why we lost and despite being told I need to find a mentor and practice more, I just kept going off the notion that "lmao no, xyz is the problem, I'm doing fine, look at muh logs!" - I became a total asshole and in the last couple of games and scrims I played with them I put zero effort in, and then got cut for it. I'm sorry to the people on that team for not listening and being a dick.
I don't think I've ever brought anything good to any "team" I've been a part of. It took until years after quitting all competitive based play to realize that. Years of blaming others and being a toxic asshole, and now I realize that for the vast majority of it, I'm to blame, that my toxicity and inability to try and stick with a team for more than a short season has led to me having zero friends left that play TF2 regularly or competitively. I regret it all.
This is more of just coming to terms with my stupidity rather than actually ranting, but oh well. I've been needing to open up about it for a long while now.
Though, at least I learned through maining medic to appreciate medics a lot more.
A true sign of growth is to fully acknowledge mistakes from the past, able to understand what you did was wrong/not the best thing and being capable of apologizing and fully understanding it's not a path you should take in the future. I wish more people did what you are doing right now.
I grew up in an extremely toxic environment and got bullied every day just because some elitist group liked to make fun of me and everybody else just followed along because of their status. Some years later some of them came to me to apologize for the behaviours they had towards me and even though I still felt a lot of remorse and doubted whether I should just block them away, I had to value how brave they are for acknowledging their mistakes and looking back to what they did, which is not an easy thing to do and as I've said earlier, it shows a maturity sign.
Words are just that, they mean nothing. Time showed me those people genuinely changed because their actions spoke for them, so that's what actually counts. I'm 100% percent sure if you want to start over in this game and keep playing competitively, even though it will be hard as fuck to (re)gain the communinty's trust and be able to make everyone see you in a different way, if you're truly commited, over time your actions will speak for yourself and people will see that. Good luck.