La Decima

"I just gonna keep trying, no?"

These words, and many variations on them, have been spoken many, many times by Rafael Nadal over the years; this particular instance refers to his runner-up speech at this year's Australian Open. At the time, it was Rafa's first Grand Slam final in two and a half years, a most pleasant surprise given his topsy turvy form over the previous two seasons. I watched him play the match that night with great trepidation: the world was entering an all new era of turmoil, with the swearing in of Donald Trump as president of the United States occurring just eight days before the match. Not to mention that on a personal level, I was in a vastly different place from where I was the last time he made a Grand Slam final. As I tried (and failed) to fall asleep the night before the big match, heart aching for both the state of the world and for my favorite athlete of all time, wondering whether or not this was a flash in the pan final chance at major glory or a harbinger of good things to come, I had but one prevailing thought: let him win, universe. Let him win. With everything else that's going on in this godforsaken world right now, give me this one thing.

Rafa and one of his familiar partners in crime on the grandest stages of tennis, Roger Federer, battled back and forth that evening in a match that couldn't have possibly been scripted with more cinematic prescience, each player alternating the first four sets in a seesaw battle. Then, quickly, the moment seemed to come for Rafa at the beginning of the fifth: a few loose errors from Roger in his first service game and, for virtually the first time all evening, Rafa was ahead in the scoreline. He dug through two more tough service holds and found himself up 3-1 in the fifth - just three games away from the title, which would secure a second career Grand Slam in the process. I turned to the love of my life, Jenna, who was brave (foolish?) enough to insist upon waking up with me at 2:30 AM, Central Time, to watch this match with me (despite taking a long and, frankly, well deserved nap during the fourth set), and said, shakily, "oh my God, he's three games away. Three games!!!" Just three service holds away from ascending even higher into the realms of tennis' veritable Mount Olympus, three games from his first major title in two and a half years, three games from a joy I hadn't felt in oh so long, three games!

Of course, the tennis gods had different ideas in mind that night: in one of the greatest comebacks of his career, Roger Federer managed to pad his already considerable legacy even further by striking back to take the final five games in the match. Using an improved backhand stroke and displaying a grittiness and chutzpah that he arguably hadn't shown in years at that point, Federer rallied to take down his nemesis and capture his first Grand Slam title since Wimbledon 2012, 6-3 in the fifth. Indeed, after being so close to tasting major glory one more time, Rafa didn't even win another game in the match. I felt deflated: happy for a great champion in Federer who had himself seen his share of hard luck and injuries since his last major title, but devastated for my favorite, who has had to overcome the odds so often in an injury-filled but still spectacularly brilliant career. I went to work later that morning not knowing quite how to feel; though I wasn't as broken up about it as I would have been in my younger days, my mind was still filled with the same doubts and fears that I had the night before the match. Is this his last shot? Will I ever see him win the big one once more?

Then...then...after work that day, I cued up the players' speeches, which I didn't stay up to watch once the match concluded - hey, it was 6:30 AM, Rafa lost, and I had to work at 11 - cut me some slack! Once I heard Rafa utter his familiar credo, somehow, some way, I knew everything was going to be okay again.

"I just gonna keep trying, no?"

It is nigh on impossible for me to talk about what Rafael Nadal means to me without spilling my guts. It would be an incalculable task for me to try and accurately sum up what this man means to me, what life lessons he has shown me through his tennis artistry, how his seemingly genuine humility has shown me the error of my own pigheaded ways, how he inspired me as a young man when I felt like I was at the absolute end of my rope. But I'm going to try - I've got to try, for without him, I'm not sure I would have ever have bothered to keep trying in life at all. If deeply, deeply personal revelations are the sort of thing that make you uncomfortable, I would suggest not reading this post any further. Nothing I'm about to reveal here is a secret, anything I'm particularly ashamed of, or feel uncomfortable talking about, but it is the sort of thing that is not for the faint of heart. That being said, to understand just what Rafa means to me, it is very important that you, dear reader, understand where I come from and what I've experienced.

I was raised in a single-parent household on Chicago's south side, with my mother; I only fleetingly knew my father and his side of the family. I was a biracial child with lighter skin and long curly hair in a very black environment, so needless to say, I always stood out, no matter where I went and what I did. I got teased a lot about my heritage, which was both upsetting and understandable in equal measures; I obviously can't help who my parents were, but at the same time, it's extremely easy for me to understand why black resentment towards whites exists to such a degree in America. Sad to say, though, that I received a great deal of teasing about my appearance, and it didn't change when I found myself in so-called "white" environments, either. "Too white for the black kids, too black for the white kids" is the way I've always termed it. Needless to say, this caused me a lot of confusion and uncertainty about my identity and my place in the world, despite the best efforts of my loved ones.

I always knew there was something "off," for lack of a better way to put it, about my mother. I never knew what it was until I was well into my adulthood, but I knew growing up that she wasn't exactly the sanest of women. She was a devoutly religious woman who eventually became an ordained Baptist minister and was adamant about following the teachings of the Bible to the letter, yet my older brother and I are the product of wedlock, a relationship she had with a man who was already married. She could be unpredictable and volatile even at the best of times; sweet one minute, ready to fly off the handle at the next -- often using physical violence when words weren't considered enough. I've often termed my thoughts about life for many years as feeling if I was walking through a minefield, afraid to step in any one direction or say anything because I was afraid of any potential negative reaction I might get. I realize, especially in hindsight, that this is largely because of the experiences I had from growing up in a house with my mother. People who met her thought she was the sweetest lady and couldn't fathom why I was so lukewarm towards her, because she was extremely genial in public. In private, however I could never predict her moods from one minute to the next, whether she'd praise me in one moment or rip me a new one in another, and as such, this affected my confidence and self-esteem to a great degree, which in turn did not help my already-growing anxiety and OCD issues. It was much later in life that I learned that she was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and hid it from the family, which explains all of the symptoms; this, of course, also means *drumroll please* that I very well may be a paranoid schizophrenic myself. (You think I don't think about that when I'm talking to myself? My only saving grace in this regard is that practically everyone I know does the same; I'm no better or worse than the average person, fortunately - I just may have a medical reason for doing so.)

On top of all of these other issues, I was sexually abused as a young child by a man that my mother was seeing for many years. I'm not going to spell out that situation in greater detail for what should be obvious reasons, but this is also something else that kept me even further in my shell; I'd buried the memories and pain from that entire situation for a long time and they came back in full force around 2012/13, when I began to piece together exactly what had happened to me and why I had certain memories and images in my mind. So the early years for yours truly were a veritable hurricane of horseshit; I think about it all the time how it feels like a miracle that I've made it to 30 years old while being relatively sane and haven't managed to hurt or even kill myself or anyone else in the process. As I'm sure you can imagine, though, I was not a happy camper for a very, very long time.

But ahh...here's how this all ties in with my sweet, beloved Rafa. Why didn't I hurt myself or anyone else while all of this was going on? The answer is simple: one man. One man did this for me, when I was too wrapped up in my own pain and misery to give a shit about myself, the people close to me, and the world that surrounded me, one man started me on the slow, agonizing climb out of the black hole I was falling into.

I was weirdly ambivalent about the world of tennis at the start 2005. Well, to be honest, I was ambivalent about life in 2005, but let's start with the tennis first. The previous year, on the men's side, Roger Federer had dominated the tour. I didn't like Federer back then. I hated him for having beaten my childhood idol, Pete Sampras, in the 2001 Wimbledon tournament, snapping Pete's streak of four straight Wimbledons in the process, I hated how he replaced another favorite of mine, Andy Roddick, at #1 in the rankings, and most of all, I haaaaaated how the commentators fawned over him, as if he was Jesus walking on water every time he played tennis. (This is honestly still the case, particularly since the start to his 2017 season was fantastic - I do have a little more of an appreciation for him nowadays, but truth is truth. "Roger Federer as Religious Experience," my ass!) Throughout 2004 and 2005, announcers would routinely speak of Federer as the Greatest of All Time, despite the fact that at that point, he had neither the stats nor the longevity to back such claims up. (He does now, but that's irrelevant - they anointed the man too early, damnit!) I celebrated Federer's loss to Marat Safin in the 2005 Australian Open semifinals with great gusto - down, down goes the evil king. Or so I thought of him at the time, anyway. :)

On the personal side of the ledger, I had dropped out of high school at this point and was doing exactly nothing with my life. I was a good student up until high school, then my mother's mental health began to worsen to an even greater degree than it already had been. This, combined with the aforementioned issues I already mentioned - being teased for my appearance, which never stopped in high school, my anxiety, my OCD, etc - wore heavily on me, and after a while, I just stopped going to school altogether and eventually officially dropped out. It would have been so much easier to just talk about my problems with someone, in hindsight, but I was a shell of a person then, bitter, angry, feeling like the universe owed me something for all the taxing experiences it deemed necessary to place upon my head, too blind to see that I was surrounded by people who could have tried to help me.

Then, in April 2005, my life changed forever.

Do you remember the first time you ever saw your favorite athlete perform? I sure do. Well, not all of it, anyway, but a good chunk of it. And it's funny, because the person responsible for pushing me in Rafa's direction probably wouldn't even remember this, but I do! The day of the Miami Masters final in 2005, I got a call from an ex-girlfriend, who I am still close friends with to this day, and though we had recently broken up at the time, we were still friends and I'd been teaching her a little bit about tennis, long distance. I'd forgotten that the final was happening that day, actually, and as I picked up the telephone to answer her call, I had no idea that I was to be set on a life-altering course.

"Are you watching the tennis match right now?" she asked me. "This kid is kicking Federer's ass!"

I don't remember what my exact words were in response, but I realized I'd forgotten that the match was on! I scrambled to turn on CBS (where Miami was then televised) and watch, catching the action midway through the first set. My eyes took in the damnedest thing: this left-handed bronzed speed demon, wearing a sleeveless shirt, "pirate" pants, and appearing to be stacked with muscles on top of muscles, absolutely bullying Federer around the court. I watched in awe - it can't be! But it was. "This kid" was one Rafael Nadal, whom I'd heard of at this point (mainly because of his Davis Cup heroics at the end of 2004) but had yet to see play. What I saw was unbelievable: he had the most unique forehand I'd ever seen in my life, appearing to almost look like he swung a whip-cracking motion upwards, somehow, to get maximum torque and force on the ball, and he had the speed to run even Federer's best efforts down. I was transfixed like nothing else I'd ever seen. He dominated the first set, and while Roger took a 4-1 lead in the second, the kid didn't let that slow him down; he came back and took the second in a tiebreaker. When he went up 6-2, 7-6, 4-1, I was beside myself, most of all because of one thing that stood out to me most: he was not afraid of Federer. I felt as though a lot of players around that time were so psyched out by how good Federer was that they were mentally defeated before they even set foot on the court, but not Rafa. He stared the big, bad wolf down and threw everything he had at him.

Unfortunately, much like this year's Australian Open final, the magic ran out for Rafa that day; Federer fought back to take the third set in a tiebreaker, and, as Rafa tired down the stretch, eventually ran away with the match in five sets. But I was highly, highly impressed with Rafa, the first bright spot I'd had in men's tennis in quite some time at that point. Needless to say, I hitched my my wagon to his star pretty early, and I felt quite vindicated when he went on to win Roland Garros later that year, defeating Federer on his 19th birthday in the semifinals en route. I found so much that I could relate with regarding Rafa: we were both born in 1986, just six months apart, his various on-court tics and nuances, especially when it came to his water bottles and how he has to have them placed just so (clearly a sign of OCD), his cross dominance (he literally does everything else everything else in his life right handed except play tennis, yet he's one of the best tennis players of all time - this is probably the craziest part of his whole career), which I also have to a certain extent. But what I liked most was the fact that he genuinely seemed like a very down to earth person; when pressed to extol his own tennis-playing virtues, he usually demurred, never taking his success for granted and instead preferring to downplay his own chances and show his opponents great respect, even though he usually beat them handily, especially on clay. (He's always been highly complimentary of Roger even though he's largely owned their head to head record, for example.)

I saw all of this, watched him grow, evolve into one of the greatest tennis players of all time - but it took me a long time to put the life lessons that I later realized that Rafa was teaching me into practice. I still had a large whirlwind of unresolved emotions and feelings I had to wade through for many, many years, even as I eventually (somewhat) got my shit together, graduated high school, and "matured" into adulthood. If anything, the first few years of my Rafa fandom were the most trying: I still felt like I had no reason to live, even during what should have been the best of times. I got married at the tail end of 2009, and I was an absolutely shitty husband (yeah, yeah, yeah...if my former spouse happens to be reading this, tell me something I don't already know ;p), because I was still way too wrapped up in my own problems to take a look at the world around me; as such, my marriage suffered because I still felt so insecure, so ashamed, so afraid to let anyone inside my self-imposed bubble, even my wife. I was such an overgrown manchild for so many years.

In late 2013/early 2014, things came to a head in my life: my mother, from whom I was estranged at this point, contracted terminal cancer; my childhood molestation traumas had come back to haunt me in full force, my marriage was ending, and my weight/health were beginning to spiral out of control. I was at a crossroads: I could not keep living my life the way that I was. I couldn't keep alternating between burying all of my feelings deep inside, then lashing out at those who attempted to help. I had to change. I had to do something drastic to shake up the formula, to try to get things into gear. So what did I do? I tried. I simply tried to give a shit. I followed Rafa's example - "I try my best, no?" I tried my best to stop feeling sorry for myself - even though I know I was dealt an undeniably shitty hand to begin my life, that's no excuse to stagnate. I'm still here. I'm still alive. It has to mean something. I tried my best to be a better person, to be genuinely nice and kind, to treat others the way that I would want to be treated, to be open and honest with my emotions and not keep everything buried down like a cauldron that was constantly threatening to erupt. I tried to atone for my previous shittiness, to be positive, to be happy, something that I feel like has been a constant fight since day one. I'm still trying. It's not perfect - I have good days and bad, just like anyone else - but more than anything, what Rafa's example has taught me more than anything else is that I took life for granted for oh so long. I felt so wronged, so victimized, by all comers that I didn't realize how truly blessed I was to have made it through all this crap, how much strength I had in overcoming so many awful things. Rafa showed me that -- through his character, his adorably broken English, his tenacity on the court, and, most of all, his willingness to come back and try harder despite injury after injury after injury that would have felled a person with lesser willpower; the latter most of all is probably the biggest inspiration he's provided for me, seeing as how I feel like it parallels my own life, in a way. He's the best coping mechanism I have for my various mental quirks, in fact: whenever I find myself in a situation where I feel the familiar emotions of anxiety or uncertainty rising, I think of Rafa - his strength, his determination, his willpower, have all gotten me through so many tough situations.

Ironically enough, as I've slowly and gradually matured into a somewhat less shitty person over the last couple of years, Rafa's on court performance has wavered greatly. Prior to this past Sunday, the last major title he won was at the 2014 Roland Garros tournament - just after the passing of my mother in April of that year, and having gotten divorced literally four days before his final victory, it was the one of the lone bright spots in yet another tough time in my life, something Rafa has specialized in over the years. That's precisely why I used to live and die on his results; elated when he would win, depressed when he would lose. It just so happens that the losses came in greater bunches the more I fought for my own sense of peace and gradually realized that a sporting result, win or lose, isn't the end of the world - yet another lesson Rafa taught me more than anyone else. But I still remained his fan, still never stopped believing that one day he might one day achieve tennis' finest glory one more time. And after teasing me with Australia, the tennis gods finally smiled in my direction, one more time, at Roland Garros this year. Sweeter than ever.

I don't know if I can sum all this rambling shit up or not. Listen, all I know is this: when I was a scared, confused, angry teenager who felt like I was at the end of my rope, there was Rafa. When I "matured" into an even angrier adult who, despite my best intentions, lashed out at the world without realizing I was doing so and became the world's crappiest husband in the process, there was Rafa. When I've finally started to feel like I have somewhat of a grip on things, have managed to navigate my way through the minefield and figured out some semblance of sanity and place in the world...somehow, magically, wonderfully, amazingly, despite the always tentative shelf life of athletes...there's still Rafa. I don't know where I would be without my real-life Clarence Odbody, my tennis-playing guardian angel, where I would have wound up or what would have happened had he not shown me how to humble myself, to admit to my own faults and wrongdoings, to keep pushing in spite of everything that has happened and try, try, try to be happy. Much like that brave 18-year-old that I first saw on the courts of Miami way back in 2005, I'm not afraid. I'm taking charge, for the first time, ever, and I wouldn't have ever known where to start had it not been for one man.

"I just gonna keep trying, no?"

Me too, Rafa. Me too.