5/8/2022
I have a tendency to obsess. Over things, ideas, love, people, places, death, existing. One of my first obsessions was basketball. Uncle Kenny put a bald Wilson basketball in my hands while I was still mastering multiplication tables and offered me the basic mechanics of the game. That was all it took.
Basketball would soon consume me, as obsessions tend to do. Somehow becoming another thing I would use to determine my worth, my social capital, and my sense of belonging. I got good at it: basketball. Then better than good at it: obsessing. Both began to intermingle with the quiet compulsions around my hair, my lips, my breasts, my weight, my body, my voice and anything anyone had a strong opinion about as it concerned me.
But who is one without an obsession or two? And how is one seen if not for a thing that gives people a reason to pay attention to you in the first place?
The summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I ran miles on a gravel track before heading to my internship/teller job at Comerica Bank on East Gratiot Avenue. After work, I would play pickup basketball for hours. And hours. And hours. Jumar and I would play full court games of 1-on-1 on blacktop — in that Detroit July humidity until exhaustion or the night sky, or both, forced us to give it up for the day. There was always another run before I climbed into my full-size bed for the evening. David (RIP), who had his own share of obsessions, was always game to trace our route from his house on Electric to the 7-Eleven and back, no matter what hour I showed up on his front porch.
A tupperware bowl filled with a box of rice-a-roni red beans & rice + one cup of mahatma long grain white rice + water. Microwave for 6 - 8 minutes. A cup or so of orange or grape Faygo. 1-2 Nectarines. 4 Giant Sweetarts - save the green apple one for last. My diet most days. Was down 20 pounds before I was set to return to campus in late August. Told myself this was all about getting better, putting in the work, topping who and whatever I was or had done the previous season. It was mostly an exercise into shaping myself into something I thought was more noticeable.
I was 19, 5’8, 125 pounds. Semi-unhealthy. Lonely even. But the crossover was lower, faster, and tighter.
The obsession with your own secrets can kill you.
The unseen, unspoken, unexplored, and under-examined places cannot stay this way. Not if freedom is what you have in mind for yourself.
Sometimes, you have to get to the root of your obsessions.
Several days ago, in an overly dramatic moment with myself and the concept of surrender, I decided to finally work through a box filled with scraps of memories from high school and college the mother dropped off last April. Tucked underneath the terrible powder blue prom dress are basketball trophies and plaques. Amongst other things, there’s a page ripped from some magazine (Ebony, Essence, or honey). This particular page is a surprisingly well-kept coming soon ad for the movie Love & Basketball. I be needing God to talk to me nice and Loud. The box got incredibly Loud. And spiritual. And then I got incredibly scared and overwhelmed by the Loud messages coming from that box.
Basketball was an obsession until it was not. Until I found that I had nothing left to give it or to prove to myself in it - when I discovered I did not need to it be seen or adored or approved of. For a long time, even after college and after I stopped playing consistently, I wrestled with my own sense of failing at something I thought should have granted me more far more success. This wrestling ended up being one of those exercises in disentangling yourself from a thing you thought defined you way more than it did or ever will.