Remagnetization

This afternoon Kerry Wood threw his last strikeout. I watched it live. I had heard the news in the morning that Kerry intended to retire, but I don’t think it really hit me until I saw him walking off the field. Kerry Wood was my childhood hero. My two defining sports memories happened in the spring/summer of 1998 when I was 5 years old. One was Kerry Wood’s 20 strikeout game, the other was Michael Jordan’s game winning shot in the Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals. I remember watching Wood’s 20 strikeout game and just being amazed. I was just beginning to really understand and love baseball (Not to brag, but I was a standout T-ball player) and to me, Kerry was incredible. Batter after batter for the Houston Astros that day tried to hit the ball that day, and batter after batter walked back to the dugout disgusted with themselves. Nobody could touch Wood’s blazing fastball and dastardly sweeping curveball. I wasn’t able to be a pitcher like Kerry Wood when I was playing t-ball, but eventually I got old enough to play real baseball, and I wanted to be a pitcher. When I was learning to pitch, I modeled my pitching motion after Kerry Wood’s. Simple, smooth, and powerful. I pitched throughout my time playing baseball and while I was never as good as my hero Kerry Wood (unfortunately my fastball topped out in the mid 60s and I never really learned to throw a curveball) I always looked at Kerry Wood as what a pitcher should be. 

When Kerry Wood walked off the field today, tip his hat to the cheering crowd, and pick up his son in the dugout, I was trying my very hardest to keep it together. I’m not going to pretend to be a tough guy and say that I never cry, but I rarely cry and if I do feel so emotionally moved that I feel like crying, I have a natural response to try to suppress it. Suppressing those tears has never been harder than it was today. To me, Kerry Wood’s retirement is one of those “Shit, that’s my childhood walking away” moments. One of those moments that you never think is going to happen but when it does you revert back to yourself as a kid. Sitting in front of the TV, switching the TV to channel 9 because the Cubs game was about to start. Reading through the sports section of the Tribune the morning after a night game because Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me stay up late on school nights. I was reminded of a time when everything was simpler. Being a professional baseball player was a realistic career choice, the Cubs would eventually win the World Series, and life would be like a leisurely afternoon ballgame at Wrigley. Unfortunately that’s not the way life works. Sometimes life is good, sometimes it’s bad, but I don’t know if it will ever be as good as those summer afternoons, watching my hero Kerry Wood take the mound for the Chicago Cubs. Thanks for the memories Kerry. Go Cubs.

I am writing this because, well, I felt like today the universe or God or whoever was yelling in my ear “Write something!”. It started at a bible study where the topic of conversation was inferiority, a topic that led to the discussion of other topics like self-esteem and anxiety, areas I am very experienced in. Later tonight, I was talking with a friend about writing and I realized as I thought about my own experience in writing, that writing is at the heart of all my insecurities, anxieties, and feeling of inferiority. I’ve been told by people that I was a great writer ever since I was a kid. I believed it too for a while. That changed when I went through a period where I started to believe that anything nice anyone had to say about me was bullshit. I hated myself so much that I couldn’t believe that anyone had anything good to say about me. It was threatening to my destructive self image so I locked out any and all compliments. I have gotten better at accepting compliments, but I still think my writing is shit. People still tell me I’m a good writer but I don’t believe them because I rarely share any of my writing publicly, and when I do I usually delete it within a few days. I am convinced that every paper I write for school is garbage and in a very strange way, I am disappointed when I receive good grades on them. 

Writing about personal things is difficult for me. Years of depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsiveness have convinced me not to let people into my world. Sure, open the door just a little bit to satisfy their curiosity, but never let them all the way in. There was a short period a couple years ago where I felt comfortable talking about my past, but that time has since past. There are just a few years of my life that are just too painful for me to talk about. So naturally writing anything about my life or my ideas is frightening. It plays on my greatest insecurity, that people don’t like me (why should they?) and that if given the chance they will mock and reject me. Even as I write this post I am questioning whether I should actually post it. It might be better to keep this all safe in my mind where no one can judge it. But that’s not what writing is about after all. Writing is dangerous. Writing is the collection of thoughts. Writing is the piecing together of words that alone mean nothing but together mean everything. The written word has the power to make a man weep, laugh, and yell, in the same piece. The written word allows for the dead to speak to the living. The primary tool used by those who wish to oppress is to withhold the gift of literacy. I am afraid of writing because I am afraid of what I could do with it. I can anger. I can offend. But what I am most afraid of, is someone liking my writing, because then I would have to write again.

If you happen to stumble across this, take what you will from it. It is in no way organized or thought through. There are probably grammatical errors that I will be horrified by when I read this in the morning. These are simply the unorganized thoughts of my tired brain at 1:00 AM, which come to think of it, might be a good title for this post.