Running Scared

Confronting trauma, healing, and mental illness.

By D.C. Crite

I’ve been clocked at 10.19 seconds in the 100-meter dash. I’ve rushed for nearly 1,900 yards in a single season on the gridiron. I’ve outrun a lot of people and avoided lots of obstacles.

Some may believe that I used my athletic ability to showcase my talents, but I saw the track and football field as places of refuge. Just as I used my helmet to protect my head, I used sports as a way of hiding and running from what I feared and never understood: mental illness.

I’ve suffered from PTSD and depression for a long time and, for a long time, I refused to deal with it. I remember hearing a quote, “You can’t defeat what you don’t face.” With mental health and mental illness, this holds true.

Like most men, especially Black men, I was far too embarrassed to face the truth that, mentally, I wasn’t okay and that I needed help. I masked my shortcomings and issues by fleeing to the field. This was my way of self-medicating to soothe the pain. I could bury my pain and secrets in the deepest darkest corners of my mind, praying that they would lay dormant and never re-awaken. However, mental illness doesn’t operate like that. My issues would rise from the grave like Lazarus.

In my darkest time, my tears fell, my thoughts raced and I contemplated ending it all. I wanted answers for my uncontrollable anger and extreme highs and lows.

The answers seemed elusive to me until I began to inventory my life’s many traumatizing experiences. Never dealing with discovering a dead body in a run-off ditch: this mattered. Watching my mother being physically and verbally abused and suffering my own abuse and feeling helpless about it mattered. A tour of duty in the U.S. Navy mattered.

These mattered because the pain and memories from these events mattered: the night sweats, nightmares, constant anger, and severe depression. Since age 7, I’ve been running scared trying to keep up the score. After tallying it up, I realized that mental illness was way ahead.

I finally found the courage to be vulnerable. I reached out to a mental health professional. I began to discuss the things that I was afraid to face. I began to understand my mental illness. I began to catch up with the disease. I began to heal.

Will I ever defeat my mental illness? I honestly don’t know. What I have learned is that running neck and neck with PTSD and depression is no small feat.

“There’s a reason windshields are bigger than review mirrors.” This quote didn’t resonate with me before, but now I understand it. I’m learning to deal with what’s ahead and regret what’s in my past as little as possible.

Are you hesitant to face what you fear? If you continue to avoid and outrun the problem, you’ll tire and, eventually, fall behind. It’s okay to say you’re not okay.

I used to be fast and elusive. I’ve outrun and avoided many challenges in my life except one: mental illness.

I’ve caught up to it by dealing with it, and right now, catching up to it and managing it has been growth enough for me.