Home Run Heart (Kitt’s Harbor #2)

13. thirteen

thirteen

Brooks

I decided to take my first appointment with the team therapist over video chat on Saturday morning from inside my car, parked in the driveway of the rambler Claire and Caroline rent on the east side of Kitt’s Harbor near Old Town. They are lingering over coffee at the kitchen table when I slip outside. Caroline is busy scribbling in a notebook with a bright pink sparkly pen while Claire sits reading a book titled, The Modern Moneymaker: How to Capitalize on Your Wealthy Relations . Neither seemed particularly interested in where I’m going, but I make an announcement anyway on my way out the door.

“I’m taking a call with a therapist in my car,” I say. “Don’t bother me.”

Claire glances up from her scribbling, her eyes sparkling behind her glasses, but Caroline doesn’t spare me a glance. “Godspeed, brother,” she says solemnly before turning the page of her riveting read.

I settle into the driver’s seat of my car, swallowing down a knot in my throat as I open the app that my agent, Desi, had told me to download prior to my appointment.

“If she’s not a good fit, we can find somebody else,” Desi told me. “But she came highly recommended from several of your teammates.”

I’m not sure what to expect but feel that this is something I need to try. Seeing Nora at the market the other night and meeting her son had made me realize, yet again, that I have a whole lot of internal work I need to do on myself. I may be jumping the gun here, but I realized that if I want to parent differently from the father I was raised by, I need to make a dedicated effort to learn how to do that. I don’t have an example of what healthy fathering looks like, so I hope this process will help me in that regard.

I texted Jonah after agreeing to see a therapist, and he’d texted back: proud of you, Brookie . His confidence in me was what also propelled me to move forward with this, even though I feel completely out of my comfort zone.

A rush of nerves zips through me as my therapist’s face fills the screen. She smiles, introduces herself as Greta, then asks me a series of questions right off the bat about my goals for therapy and what I hope to accomplish.

“There are a few things I’d like to work through,” I say, scrubbing a hand over my jaw. “First of all, I get a little stuck in my head sometimes and want to get some help with that.”

“Can you explain to me what that feels like?”

I let out a long breath, trying to find the words to describe the way my mind works.

“I think I’m always aiming to execute things perfectly, and when that doesn’t happen, I can be pretty hard on myself.”

Greta nods. “That’s an easy trap to fall into as an athlete, especially when there’s constant pressure on you to perform.”

“Yeah, I mean, I had a pretty great season, but it ended on a really sour note. It’s been hard for me to not feel like it’s my fault that the team didn’t progress further than we did. I feel like I let everybody down. We could have gone on to win a championship if it wasn’t for me.”

“Have any of your coaches or teammates done or said anything to contribute to these feelings?”

I think back to how I was treated after our loss in September. “No,” I say honestly. “They were all really cool about it, actually. I guess it’s mostly been the media and fans that have been coming after me.”

“I’ll give you one piece of advice, if you’ll allow me,” Greta says. When I nod, she continues. “I’m sure you’ve got a plan to take care of your physical health during your off-season, am I right? What does this consist of?”

“Staying fit, honing my game, eating and sleeping well.”

“Right. Those are all wonderful things to focus on, but you need to give your mind as much attention as you do your body. Your mental health can really impact your overall well-being. To protect your mental health, you need to take some preventative measures. Don’t google yourself. Don’t read the news. Ask the people you work with not to pass on anything negative said about you from people who aren’t directly in your inner circle. You can’t trust the voices of the critics and disgruntled fans. They’re just trying to capitalize off of your mistakes by sensationalizing them, and it will always be that way.”

I mull over her advice. “I was always taught that constructive criticism can be helpful in helping me improve my game.”

“It can, if it’s coming from the right people. People who are in the ring with you. People who have your best interests at heart. That’s the distinction.”

“Makes sense. I’ll keep that in mind.” I think of the teammates I’m close with, my coaches, trainers, and the veteran players who took me under their wing. I’d ask any of them for advice. They’re the ones I should be listening to.

“If one of your teammates made a huge mistake that cost you a game, would you be upset with them?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Would you blame them for the loss?”

“No, I don’t think I would,” I answer. “I’d try to help them feel better about it.”

“Then, you need to treat yourself just like you would treat one of your teammates: with kindness and love. The way you talk to yourself is very important. Negative self-talk can really impact the way you move through the world and has a great bearing on your relationships.”

I stay quiet, processing her wisdom. I’d never thought of it that way. I hadn’t been the only player on the team to strike out that night. Miles had stunk it up, too, but I would never say anything critical about his performance to him. If one of my teammates has a bad game or a bad moment, I try to let it roll off my shoulders and try not to let my disappointment show. Why shouldn’t I do the same for myself when I make a mistake?

“Brooks, why do you think you have to be perfect?” Greta asks, and her question catches me off guard. “What are you afraid is going to happen to you if you’re not perfect?”

I lean my head back against the headrest and think it over.

“In my line of work, everything depends on my performance. I’m being paid to play my sport at an exceptional level. I’ll get dropped if I don’t deliver.”

“And what will happen to you if you get dropped?”

“My baseball career might be over.”

“And then what? What would you do?”

I shrug, laughing awkwardly. “I have no idea. I guess I could get a coaching job or something.”

“If the absolute worst thing imaginable happened to you, if your worst nightmare came true and everything you worked for was taken from you and your dreams fell apart, would you survive it?”

The thought of having my baseball career taken from me makes me sweat. Baseball is everything to me. When I’m playing well, it’s insanely fun and fulfilling. I’ve worked my whole life to live out this dream, and if I lost it, I’d be devastated.

But would it kill me?

The more I think about it, the more clear Greta’s reasoning becomes.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I would survive it. It wouldn’t be easy, but I could do it.”

“That right there is the crux of the matter,” Greta says. “People who struggle with perfectionism are often fueled by fear. Fear of letting others down. Fear of making mistakes. Fear of not being enough. They try to hit all the marks and think ten steps ahead in an attempt to outrun a deeper sense of unworthiness. I’d wager that you’ve had some experiences in your life that taught you that baseball, or how you perform in life in general, is inextricably tied to your self-worth.”

I swallow. How can a stranger, someone who doesn’t even know me personally, hit the nail on the head? The painful truth of her words reverberates in my chest.

“My dad,” I say, and with those two words, I know that this conversation is about to take an unexpected turn.

Greta gives me a gentle smile of understanding. “Do you want to talk about him?”

No, I don’t. Do I want to talk about the man who excels at two-faced, guilt-tripping manipulation? The man who raised me to believe that unless I was killing it every second of every day and putting in constant inhuman effort, I would amount to nothing? But I think if I want to be different from him, I have to talk about the hard reality of what growing up under his thumb felt like.

“It’s a real can of worms,” I say, feeling incredibly uncomfortable. But also knowing that if there ever was a chance for me to get some of my deepest-rooted insecurities and beliefs out in the open, now is the time.

“I love worms,” Greta quips. “Sometimes taking a look into the past can teach us a lot about the present and then help us make positive changes for the future.”

“Okay,” I sigh. But where do I even start?

The crawling anxiety that accompanies even the thought of my dad starts to claw up into my throat, and I’m suddenly ten years old again. Already small, but often made to feel even smaller by the man whom I call father.

I sift through memories of Bill Alden, wondering if I’ll even be able to articulate what the complex dynamic of our relationship is like. If you could even call it a relationship.

“My dad was always really hard on me,” I say, and find an unexpected surge of anger clogging my throat and preventing me from saying more. But Greta doesn’t rush in to speak again. She waits patiently. And waits some more until I’m ready to continue. “He held me to a really high standard, and if I didn’t meet that standard, he was sure to let me know.”

“In what way?”

“He’d lecture me. Make me work for hours so I wouldn’t repeat my mistakes,” I say. “He rarely had anything positive to say about me, even when I played really well or got good grades or accomplished anything. The only time he ever paid attention to me was when I messed up.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been really hard, especially as a child,” Greta says simply, and in that expression of empathy, I know that she’s the right person for the job. I want to continue this conversation. I want to dive into things I’ve never processed before.

“He and I don’t speak anymore,” I say. “I had to essentially cut ties with him once my mom officially divorced him. It wasn’t good for any of us to be around him. I still can’t be around him. The funny thing is,” I say with a bitter laugh, “he texted me after the last game of the season, listing off all of the things I’d done wrong and calling out my mistakes. He always expects me to be perfect at everything, but he is so far from perfect himself.”

“That’s usually the case, isn’t it?” Greta muses. “Let me ask you this, though. Do you feel most connected to people who are perfect?”

“No, of course not.”

“You like to be around flawed, genuine, authentic people?”

“Well, yeah. Doesn’t everybody?”

“Then what does that give you permission to be?” Greta lets her question permeate and the answer forms in my mind like a shaft of sunlight blazing through a cloud.

“Imperfect,” I say.

We spend a few more minutes chatting about how I can be more ‘gentle’ with myself (an entirely foreign concept to an intensely hard-working athlete like me), as she says, and ways I can handle future encounters with my dad.

“Do not engage,” Greta advises. “It’s not safe for you to engage with your dad. So to keep yourself safe, especially as you’re healing, you can’t let him get to you.”

Greta wraps up our session with a call to action.

“I think it would be good for you to re-evaluate whether or not baseball makes you happy. It sounds like you have been operating from a place of fear for a long time because of your history with your father, and it might be a good time to do some soul-searching and find out if this is really the path you want for yourself.”

I don’t like the sound of this. My whole life has been baseball. But…maybe that’s Greta’s point.

“May I suggest,” she continues. “That you do some exploring. Spend some time with your younger self–with the little Brooks you were as a child. What made him happy? What sort of things did he get excited about? I think it may be helpful for you to find some hobbies or interests outside of baseball during this off-season, so you can support not just your physical health, but also your mental and emotional health. Think of it as a chance to find more balance and approach your life holistically, so when things don’t go exactly as you hope they will, you’ve got more than just your baseball career to lean on.”

She’s literally giving me the same advice Jonah had given me before. Maybe he’s walked this path and gone through therapy himself. That would make sense, seeing how he seems to have a healthier relationship with the sport than myself.

“Okay,” I say slowly. “How exactly should I do that?”

“That’s up to you, but we have six sessions scheduled together, right? Why don’t you try something new each week before our session, then come back and report your experiences to me. We can talk more about your relationship with your dad, too, or anything else that feels relevant to your progress.”

I agree, feeling a little more steady with some concrete direction. Once Greta hangs up, I sit back in my driver’s seat, feeling surprisingly drained. Talking about my dad is never easy, but I feel the strangest sense of relief at the same time. Finally, someone can help me work through these things I’ve carried on my own for so long, and that feels good.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I want to create a full life outside of baseball. I’m not exactly sure what that might look like for me, but the possibility that Nora might be a part of it is highly motivating. I’ve been given the second chance I always hoped for but never felt that I deserved.

I drop my phone onto my lap and pull my hat off, running a hand through my hair. An unexpected thought hits me, and I head back into the house feeling lighter than I have in weeks.

Time to enlist the help of my meddling sisters again.