Salvation

 

Over the last days of August and the first few of September in 2021, I was in the hospital. It was not because of COVID, or any other physical ailment. I had given up. I did not want to be alive anymore. There was my job, where we are ostensibly supposed to help people in dire need but are rarely allowed to actually do so. There was a virus which our country largely did not take seriously because the asshole in the highest office in the land said it was a hoax. There was the country that put said asshole in office and all that said about us as a nation and the awful, shuddering resonance of what that meant. I am immuno-compromised, and have lived the last few years in complete terror every time I cough. And have lived under the shadow of the fact that large swaths of my family (including my parents) voted to destroy our country rather than allow anyone who does not look or love or pray like them to have a home here.

I wound up on an involuntary commit for suicidal ideation because the totality of it all had finally destroyed me. The hospital stay did not make me better, by the way. First: putting someone with a busted-ass immune system on a mental health ward with people whose functional capacity was not conducive to wearing masks was not fucking OK. Second: All I saw was more of the same shit I see at work everyday. People who have been failed, repeatedly, by the healthcare and educational and legal systems of this country and just shoved aside into places where the rest of society doesn't have to think about them.

I am incredibly fortunate, blessed, and privileged that my sister-in-law happens to be an advocate for wrongly-hospitalized/incarcerated mental health clients. I am lucky that my parents, despite their abhorrent political beliefs, dropped everything and came up to North Carolina to be with me. Above all, I am lucky my wife called CHPD Crisis when she did, and that she welcomed me home. I am lucky I got to go home at all, that such a place even existed. My roommate during my stay left the same day I did, because, "the shelter has a spot open for me." I offered him money, and a spot in our guestroom, but he wanted to do things on his terms, and who the fuck am I tell him otherwise?

I came home a mess, of course. I was not functional. Not until we got to Carmichael for the first game of the season. Just being in that barn again, doing all the chants, clapping when the ball went into a free throw shooter's hands ... I can't fully articulate what that meant. Sharing hugs with Ginny and Jean (we've had season tix in neighboring sections for nearly a decade) was so special and healing.

I have a lot of shit to deal with, but this UNC Women's Basketball team is helping me a little bit at a time. This team can't heal me fully. There are probably years of therapy before that. But they have been a mental health salve.

You watch this defense, on a damn string, absolutely flying around and snuffing everything their opponents want to do. You watch KTW just destroying people, you watch the rest follow like they're almost teleporting around the floor. Someone gets hung up on a screen? *BAM* Another defender comes out of nowhere.

And then you watch what they do on offense. Jesus. That transition game, that murderous pace? At it's best, it's the fucking Sistine Chapel. It's Billie Holiday and Aretha and Sister Rosetta Tharpe all rolled into one. They're telepathic assassins and it's awesome.

Most of all, it's the collective joy. This team loves each other, loves hooping together, loves just being on a court so damn much.

Watching this team is a pure delight. Loving this team has kept me alive.

Being in Carmichael this year has been a tent revival. I don't much believe in Christianity anymore, and that's a whole different conversation, but this squad gives me FAITH in something. I can't define it, but I know it's special and important and real.

I know that barn means more to me and Ags than any place other than our home. I know this team is special and that Coach Bang is building something transcendent. 

I know this team is capable of pure brilliance.

And I know they've saved me from death because of it.

And I will love and cherish them for the rest of my days for that.