đ§ Listen to Sarah read this installment of Cured.
At a tennis center on Chicagoâs southside, my sister and I wait for my nephewâs game to start. Courts of teenage boys face each other in singles and doubles matches. The whack of tennis balls hitting racquets echoes through the space. It smells of sweat and dirty socks.
My sister has found me a chair, so I donât have to put weight on my broken foot. When she invited me, she was clear: âYou need to get out of your apartment, even if just for a little bit.â
Itâs not going wellâall the healing Iâm trying to do. I keep walking on my broken foot. And then thereâs the whole recovering-from-twenty-five-years-of-serious-mental-illness thing. My new psychiatrist, Dr. R, recently spoke to me about recovery. In all the years I was in the mental health system, not one clinician mention getting well; the best I could do was âmanageâ my symptoms. My diagnosis was biological and lifelongâinside me, never to be resolved. Which would have been fine if it were true. Turns out no psychiatric diagnosis is purely biological or necessarily a life sentence.
Three-quarters into the qualifying match, heâs losing. The other player is good. If his first serve hits the net or goes out, he lobs his second, which throws off my nephewâs rhythm.
This tournament will affect my nephewâs ranking and determine whether he qualifies for the state championship at the end of the season.
My nephew is best described as solidâemotionally, physically, mentally. He loses, is disappointed, and gets over it. Within hours, heâs cracking jokes and smiling. Not that things donât get to him; they just donât absorb him.
Itâs pretty clear heâs going to lose. He uses his shirt collar to wipe the sweat from his forehead and under his glasses and mutters in frustration.
Then he regains focus. Everything comes together: his serve, his backhand, his agility. He plays loose and light as if heâs never had a momentâs frustration or doubt the whole game.
During match point (in my nephewâs favor), they volley for what seems like a very long time. Then he wins. I want to leap out to my feet with joy but canât.
Before leaving the arena, my sister and I stop to talk to his coachâan older, chubby, balding man. He gushes with enthusiasm over my nephewâs win. âAmazing. He crushed it.â The coach holds up his phone. âThis is what we listened to in the van on the way down here. And it did it.â
Onscreen is a YouTube videoâblack and whiteâof a guy wearing headphones speaking into a mic. His head is shaved. His face is acutely square, his jaw severe. He has the neck of a serious weightlifter.
My nephewâs coach says, âJocko Willink. Heâs why your nephew won today.â
I get home, google, and learn that âJocko,â as heâs known, is a phenom. A retired Navy Seal who served in Iraq, heâs published books on leadership and runs a company that serves as a pseudo-military training ground for businessmen who want to lead as if theyâve once been Navy Seals even though havenât. Jockoâs passion is Jiu-Jitsu. His YouTube motivational speeches and interviews get millions of views. His podcast has tens of millions of downloads.
If he helped my nephew, maybe Jocko can help me.
Within a week, Iâm deep into the world of Jocko. I dip in at first, catching clips of his motivational speeches on YouTube. Soon, Iâm listening to the full one-to-two-hour podcasts. My fascination morphs into infatuation and then fixation.
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