I tried everything to find salvation in 2024. The ringing bells of religion didn’t save me, nor did a reformer pilates class.

I had just moved home after two years studying in Brisbane where I had cultivated a failing herb garden and learned a new bus route. It was only when I returned to Adelaide that I realised I had no idea who I was. I thought it was a quarter-life crisis, but the friendly psychiatrist in her powder-blue scrubs said it was complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD).

The psychiatrist suggested yoga (I am preposterously uncoordinated), journalling (I am devilishly self-censored) and going to group therapy. What I really needed – I came to learn – was adrenaline and strangers working towards one beautiful, ceremonious goal. A sporting team.

First quarter

I am inarticulate when it comes to sports talk. I am a woman with expensive running shoes that I barely use; I don’t know the difference between football teams. Even though Tristan Thompson and Lamar Odom were fixtures in my reality TV mind palace, I wholeheartedly did not care about basketball.

My partner suggested going to an Adelaide 36ers NBL game because we were approaching 30 and had reached our threshold of attending artistic events on the weekend. When I first sat in the nosebleeds, surrounded by families in white-and-navy jerseys eating $30 burgers and trying to get on the Jumbotron, I did not think this would be a long-term thing. It was so distinctly “un-me”. But what did that even mean any more?

The doctor had said that joy can be found in the most unexpected of places. For me, that turned out to be during the first quarter, when the heat was starting to build on court, sneakers yelping to attention, the net making a feather swoosh as the ball went in. It was the shared purpose of everyone in the room. It was the collective grimace as the defender failed to block a goal. It was the joy when the referee signalled it was our ball.

For the first time in a while I felt I could let myself go without someone else taking advantage.

Second quarter

Before I moved back to Adelaide, I promised myself I wouldn’t stay there for ever. Coming back felt like moving into your parents’ house after losing a job or breaking up with a partner. Because of the dark place I was in, life moved slow.

Watching the court, 10 minutes can feel like 10 years if your team’s losing. I watched the clock obsessively. I tried to remember what my doctor had told me, that beauty comes when you don’t expect it, and then a point guard reached the rim and changed my misery to a swell of joy. In basketball time, anything could happen, and there was no point trying to anticipate the next move.

Time out

When I met a friend for coffee a couple of months after the NBL season started, they asked me how I was doing. I told them that if I didn’t have basketball to look forward to every week, I probably would have crumpled into an even bigger heap than I was already in.

“What is it about basketball?” they wanted to know.

It’s heat from the lights warming my skin, it’s tears welling up and thawing the lump in my throat, it’s the feeling of sitting beside strangers and being intimately connected.

“I dunno,” I said.

Third quarter

The Sixers have just found their feet, then one of our players is knocked down and the stadium starts to scream. I love this. It’s like group therapy – expensive and loud – but better.

In the third quarter, things can get difficult. Players stumble, there are stray balls and turnovers, and sometimes it seems as if they’re ready to throw in the towel.

The tidal waves of my 2024 felt like a third quarter. The buildup, the disappointment, the uncertainty and apprehension. In childhood, I was scared of everything and never took the shots I should have. Mum said I was vaguely Asian enough to have been in the Adelaide production of Miss Saigon. I ran off the stage during a ballet recital because I couldn’t make the final leap.

“The thing with CPTSD,” the kind doctor said, “is that it can get you at any moment.”

The words “get you” made me look for signs and shadows, but it was more subtle than that. On the court myself, my mind stolen elsewhere, it was a snap of the ankle, then wide-eyed stares, my coach signalling a time-out, a tumble of emotions as the buzzer sounded like a shrill alarm waking you up from a bad dream.

Fourth quarter

This is it – the pointy end. The fans contract to a collective strength I have never felt before. As the team scores, so do we, and when they fumble, we fall too.

It makes me realise that there’s a way to exist with other people unselfishly and without intent, no matter how much I want to be loved or seen.

In the last 30 seconds, life – and the year behind me – becomes a blur, because nothing matters more than the ball hitting the backboard.

And when it does, I can finally breathe again.

I went hunting for stability and community in a lonely world. I never thought basketball would help me see that home doesn’t have to be a place, it is a feeling.

• Olivia De Zilva is a writer based in Adelaide. Her novel Plastic Budgie and novella Eggshell were released in 2025