Reign of Rage

Myself at 12, second from left, feigning joviality.

I used to get angry on the tennis court, say lots of bad words, usually string a few together for maximum effect. They rarely made sense. Word salads really.

Kinda funny to my friends, kinda disturbing to everyone else. It was not hard to tell when you walked by my court how I was doing. When I say how I was doing, what I am referring to had little to do with my tennis, or how I was playing, or the score even.

Playing tennis didn't make me angry; playing tennis provided me a place to be angry. Often quite angry. After an outburst, those around me would admonish me for my behavior, try to explain to me I needed to rein it in a bit. Or a lot. That tennis was a gentleman's sport and that I needed to comport myself accordingly.

Others would explain to me that I was representing my family, or my club, or my tennis section, or later in my career, my country. Off the court I could understand it all and agree to try harder to keep it under control.

I even signed conduct agreements, that if I did or said anything, I would be pulled off the court and given a serious time out from the game and there would be consequences beyond that.

Knowing all that, I would walk on the court feigning joviality and levity and that, all in all, I was a happy good natured young lad so very grateful to be able to play this great game with all its lore and I would joke around in the warm up and applaud my opponents shots verbally and otherwise and then without any real sign that something was abrewing, a couple sloppy points and a bad error later and it was “F %$#SH%$$ !ll!!!!!” at the absolute top of my lungs, utterly involuntary, 100 percent spontaneous, and all play would halt around me for as far as one could hear. I would stand there, just as shocked as everyone else.

For my friends I was energetic, engaging, chameleon like.

My tennis Tourette's Syndrome had got away from me again. If my father didn't come down right then and there and pull me off the court, the tournament referee was going to himself, for my levee had broken, and they had seen this all before, and as vile as what just came out of my mouth just was, it was just the beginning of far greater outbursts to come.

And I was 12 years old and completely out of control, and nobody had the first clue what was wrong with me, or what to do with me, including myself and my Dad. I just could not contain how angry I was. I was powerless and overwhelmed by a rage within me the form and scope of which I would not discover for some years later.

It's been said one never knows what worse luck ones bad luck has saved them from. Though I feel poorly about how many people I offended and downright scared with my on court outbursts of mad unbridled rage, I am so very grateful that a tennis court was the place where I could channel my fury.

For to express that degree of anger, with that intensity and frequency, in the real world, where life is not a gentleman's game, would have had dire consequences for myself and likely many others who crossed within my orbit. So in a very convoluted way I may very well have gotten lucky to have found tennis as a place to exorcise my rage, for society is not kind to those incapable of self-control.

My rage proved Dad had to be wrong

Off the court, I was an energetic, talkative, engaging, funny kid. I had to be; those became my survival skills. I needed you to like me, to listen to me, to be my friend and support system.

I became malleable, chameleon like. I could become whoever you needed me to be. I just knew I couldn't be myself, for my authentic self was as a young little boy in a lazy New England suburb who was told early and often that that little boy was no good. A screw up, a fuck up, worthless, stupid, a flawed failure right from the get go. The messaging was clear straight out of the gate.

So again, all subconsciously, and infected with a toxic kind of shame a young child doesn't shake off so easy, I had to lose my authentic real self. I got the message loud and clear. I was no good, and if people got to know me like my Dad did, they would all agree with him. So I had to get rid of that little kid. He wasn't gonna cut it in the real world.

It was bad enough having to feel that way at home all the time; no chance I was going to go out in the real world and let you all pile on to my fractured sense of self and meaning. I had to be creative, become who you wanted me to be.

Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. And there were some lean years in there of being bullied and socially ostracized by my peers during my highly mobile adolescence.

Winning shots and winning matches: a lone source of self-esteem.

But I had my tennis as my safe harbor, a place I could, at least for a couple hours a day, be all alone in the world, yet still engaged. A place I could find validation from within myself by a well -placed shot or a two set victorious thumping. It was the only place and the only source of validation I knew to keep me sane and afloat.

So when things would start to go badly, when I would miss that shot, that lone source of self-esteem, I was losing much more than a point to you. I was losing what little bit of self I had, for to miss was to fail, which somehow got transferred from a tennis result, to a referendum on my value as a young human being.

So when the errors really started to add up and the score was not tilting my way, I would just flat out fucking snap, for my one safe validating place in my strange young world was conspiring against me like all else. I would push back ... push back hard ... and loud ... and with fury in my blood ... because to lose meant my Dad was right.

And I knew he wasn’t. I knew he was wrong. I knew it and I fought that injunction. I just didn't have the emotional maturity or language to defend myself quite yet against that injunction, that I was flawed and no good ... and I was 12 years old ... and the battle for my soul was on.