In a five-star hotel, in a country that I had just set foot in earlier that day, I laid down on the floor of the bathroom, late at night, and tried to settle my breathing. In a country full of glowing marble streets and crisp blue waters brushing up against the faces of rocky shores, I was encapsulated in darkness. The bathroom was made of marble, just like the streets, but the marble of the bathroom wasn’t permitted to shine. I had to keep it dark. I couldn’t handle any more stimulation, any more piercing lights from magnifying glasses. I had illuminated myself well enough.
I pulled myself toward the toilet seat and let my face hang over it. I wasn’t sure if I was going to vomit. Every breath felt strained, but for a time I felt such physical pain that it allowed me to focus on my breathing rather than what was causing all of this anguish. In fact, the feeling that I had such anguish, in and of itself, over something so trivial was part of what made it even worse.
People die, starve, deal with true, sincere trauma, and I am keeling over in a five-star hotel room that I did not pay for because of an identity crisis caused by the sport of baseball. My inability to perform held direct correlation to my character. The slider that failed to move was indicative of air-headedness and a lack of focus. The changeup that travelled wherever it saw fit was a sign of idiocy. The fastball that had lost its movement and velocity could only come from a coward who couldn’t get it done, who couldn’t commit, who wasn’t a “different breed,” but was unimportant and mentally weak. The crisis itself was a sign of a rich kid who could turn the most banal and meaningless struggles into existential crises.
Maybe the shining lights on marble weren’t pointing at me. Maybe they were guiding me to where I was supposed to go. Such a crisis had made me terribly aware of my own failings, but it also made everything I did the most important thing ever. When the sun rose over Greece the next morning, and the sun or streetlights led us down the marble sidewalks, they would guide me to somewhere new. There was an answer to my struggles, and maybe it was in Greece, somewhere where I had never looked. I would need new experiences, new ways of thinking in order to get past my crisis. I knew that I didn’t yet contain the means of finding a solution.