I had to go home twice

In 2017 I couldn’t pay for college.

I was an international student on a partial scholarship, and the balance left over was more than I could earn. So I went home to Albania for the summer and the semester. I wasn’t playing tennis and I wasn’t studying. It was hard, but I handled it. I found the money, I came back to the States, and I told myself that was that.

A year later it happened again.

The second time was different

The first time felt like a problem I had to solve. The second time felt like a verdict on the kind of person I was.

I want to be honest about what that stretch actually looked like, because I think people skip this part when they tell these stories. I was under real pressure, I was anxious, and there were periods I would honestly call depressed. I couldn’t find the meaning in any of it and I had no idea what I was supposed to do next.

And I asked the question everybody asks. Why is this happening to me? Once, fine. But twice?

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with asking that. I think you’re going to ask it whether I recommend it or not. The thing that matters is how long you stay there.

What I won’t tell you

I’m not going to tell you that losing two semesters was secretly good for me.

When people are in the middle of something genuinely bad, the worst thing you can say is that something good is coming out of it. You don’t know that. They don’t feel it. And it usually lands as a way of asking them to hurry up and stop being upset.

So let me just say it plainly: it was bad. I’m allowed to say that, and you’re allowed to say it about whatever you’re carrying right now.

What I will say is that looking back on it now, it makes sense to me. Not because the universe arranged it for my benefit, but because of who I had to become in order to get through it. Do you see the difference between those two claims? One of them asks you to believe something about the world. The other one is just an observation about a person, and it’s the only one I can actually stand behind.

The part that’s in your hands

Here’s what I’ve come to believe. You’re going to grieve the thing. That’s not optional and it shouldn’t be rushed.

But there’s a difference between grieving and staying. If you keep crying, keep blaming, keep holding onto being the person this happened to — first, it doesn’t help you. And second, it doesn’t help anybody around you either.

Time cures most of it, and I genuinely believe that. But how much of the job are you willing to hand over to time, and how much are you going to do yourself? That choice is the difference between arriving somewhere in two years and arriving in five.

Why I take cold showers

This is going to sound unrelated. It isn’t.

I take a cold shower most mornings, and not because I enjoy it. I want to be completely clear about that — there is not one single morning where I wake up looking forward to it. I do it because it puts me in a difficult situation on purpose, at a time I’ve chosen, at a scale I control.

So what happens if the only hard moments in your life are the ones that arrive uninvited? Every single one of them catches you cold, because you have never once practised being uncomfortable on your own terms.

It doesn’t have to be a cold shower. Read the book you don’t feel like reading. Do the session when you’d rather not. Five minutes counts. The point is to be someone who has practised being uncomfortable before it becomes compulsory.

Where this comes from

People sometimes ask why I do this work rather than only coaching tennis.

It’s this. I know what it feels like to be in a moment you can’t see the end of, and to have nobody around who can help you think about it. I had to build the tools myself, late, under pressure, and I’m still building them.

If any of that spares you some of the time I lost, then those two semesters bought something after all.