Track 18: This is Me Trying by Elizabeth Ditty
(a meditation on losing, finding, tennis and trying, set to the song by Taylor Swift)
I have always been someone who tries in private. Maybe it’s some vestigial survival sense to not be seen struggling and thus out myself as an easy kill. Maybe it’s the echoes of the voice that carved its way into my psyche as a nine-year-old, the one that said (always says, no matter what size I am), People will see you in this body of yours and think, “What a shame.” Maybe it’s the ego, because when things look effortless, like you’re god-kissed instead of sweat-soaked, people put you on a pedestal, and you don’t have to explain yourself up there.
I've been having a hard time adjusting / I had the shiniest wheels, now they're rusting
One of the lessons I learned as a competitive athlete in my youth: Never let your enemies see you hurt. Let the blood drip, ignore the forming bruise, tell them the tears are just sweat in your eyes — it’ll all keep until after the game when they’re no longer watching.
It’s a good strategy for soccer, but probably not for life. Because they say the body keeps score, and mine has sure tracked the losses well — the cracking of my rose-colored glasses; the careless shredding of the map I’d carried for my life; the faith turned brittle; the friends who faded when the weather turned not long after; the hearth gone cold despite the fire I’d put into it; the death that slammed into us like a bullet train on invisible, silent tracks; and we can’t forget finally facing the fact that, even after handing over 19 years, redundancy comes for us all here in Corporate America.
I wasn’t an athlete anymore, but I was still carrying around all those injuries, waiting until no one was looking to deal with them, except someone was always looking.
Pulled the car off the road to the lookout / Could've followed my fears all the way down / And maybe I don't quite know what to say / But I'm here in your doorway
A little over a year ago, I found myself staring out at the ocean as the sun was sinking into it. I was frustrated and tired and angry, at people and circumstances, but also at myself for letting things get as far as they had. I’d spent so long feeling unmoored, losing bits of myself overboard along the way. But here I was, run ashore, and somehow, the ancient waves churning and the ever-changing but ever-steady stars let loose just enough of their magic to ignite something in me. It was time to find my missing pieces again, or to create new ones, even if that meant doing the unthinkable, especially as a mother: prioritizing myself.
About six months into this voyage toward whoever I was or might be, a strange thing happened. My son’s tennis coach asked him a simple question, one he probably thought nothing of.
“So when are we gonna get your mom out here?”
I laughed it off and muttered some excuse about my knees, but the cognitive dissonance was already screaming through my brain. I wasn’t an athlete. Not anymore. And I really do have arthritis behind both kneecaps. There was no way I could play a sport, not even recreationally. That part of me was lost long ago. Done and dusted.
But then, a couple of weeks later, he asked the question again. And a small, brave voice of my own found its way back from the depths: “If he looks at you and sees someone who could maybe play tennis… What if you could?”
Now, the non-neurotic thing to do in a situation like this is to take a lesson or go to a beginners’ drill. Instead, because as you’ll recall, I am a person who tries in private, I found myself a slew of algorithm-fed instructors on Instagram and a reliable opponent happy to meet me at my level: a concrete wall at a local park. And even with only this tiny slice of tennis, I fell in love.
I started eyeing those beginners’ drills every week, & I couldn’t deny a hint of jealousy watching my son take for granted his weekly private lesson. But I wasn’t ready for that audience yet.
In the meantime, I recruited my mom and sisters to an almost-weekly match, and while we were all having fun reliving some of the sports memories of our respective youths and learning a tennis Dad-ism or two from my mom (“beat the snakes!”), it was clear the obsessive one was me. I had stakes after all.
And it's hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound
About three months into this affair, with no respect for my schedule or agenda, my gallbladder decided it had seen enough of this world, and in the midst of whatever I was finding for myself, I lost it to an emergency surgery on an early summer Friday. When I learned that I shouldn’t expect to play tennis again for two months, I was devastated. More than that though, I was vexed that I’d let my fear of being seen trying keep me from all the fun I could have been having. I promised myself that, as soon as I could, I’d go to the drills. I’d sign up for the USTA flex league I’d had my eye on. And maybe I’d eventually even find the courage to ask for some lessons from the person who’d unintentionally started me down this path.
Ignoring all good medical advice, I picked up my racket again ten days after surgery and luckily didn’t regret it. A couple of days after that, I got pulled into my son’s matchplay league when they needed a fourth player. It was low pressure, and I was having the time of my life — until my son’s coach came down to watch.
I hadn’t had time to mentally prepare for this particular audience member, and all of a sudden every one of my nerves was sparking with anxiety. My quivering internal pep talk did nothing to short-circuit the electricity making my whole body feel like it was vibrating. I immediately let an easy ball fly past me and proceeded to net the next two.
I jokingly begged him to leave (with the clear indication in my tone that this was one of those jokes that was all truth), protesting that I’d been doing just fine until he’d arrived. He thankfully gave into my request, perplexed as he was. I spent the rest of the time generally making my shots and solidifying my superiority over the 10- and 11-year-olds I was playing against.
So, the worst had happened. The very thing I’d worried about had come to pass. I’d tried and failed in front of the person I was most scared to fail in front of. And I’d both lived to tell the tale and had a spectacular time besides. That night I decided I was going to the drill next week, nerves be damned. I was done trying only in private.
And I just wanted you to know / That this is me trying / (And maybe I don't quite know what to say)
Fast forward a few months, and I am now firmly in the throes of learning the art of trying in public. I just finished my first round of that flex league, where I played a handful of very kind women, all of whom had been playing anywhere from six months to twenty years longer than I have. None of them asked what the heck I was doing, daring to play in a league with them. All of us, no matter what else we had going on in our lives, or because of everything we had going on in our lives, were just happy to be there.
At Tuesday night drills, we’re all out there for different reasons, and witnessing each other in real time as we try and fail and try and succeed and try and try and try again hundreds of times in a single session. The witnessing — and to my shock, being witnessed — is a reward I didn’t realize I’d missed. It’s the best part of my week, unless I also have a lesson scheduled with my son’s coach, who is now my coach too.
Those who know me best have commented how much happier I seem now, how much more confident. I suppose it’s not really the tennis. It’s that tennis has been the conduit for finding a way to believe in parts of myself I thought time and grief had vanished.
I’m better at harnessing those currents now, but I still get nervous each time I step onto the court in front of my coach. He still doesn’t understand why.
But how do you say between the ball he’s tossing to you and the ensuing attempt at a serve you’re trying to fix, “Because you changed my life with a question you might not even remember asking, and I’m desperate to prove to us both you were right to ask it”?
I just wanted you to know / That this is me trying
As August slipped away, I got to deliver news of a milestone after my final flex league match.
“Are you gonna ask me how my match went?”
“How did your match go?”
“I won!”
In the version of this conversation I’d scripted in my head, the response was this: “You finally won one!”
His real response, both a gift and a gentle rebuke from the universe that my work is not yet done: “Your first win!”
At least I'm trying
Having grown up on Disney and Days of Our Lives, Elizabeth Ditty fell for rule-bending escapism and fairytale love stories early on. Now, she writes about earnest characters struggling through coming-of-middle-age crises and finding romance along the way. Elizabeth is based in Kansas City, where she's raising two rule-bending children of her own.
