The Keeper: A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them (3 page)

W
hen I was six, my mom signed me up for sports leagues. First, she signed me up for T-ball. Because I was a big kid, standing head and shoulders above all the other boys my age, the coach put me in the outfield.

But nothing happened in the outfield. I stood there and waited as a bunch of short kids swung and missed. At best, they might send a ground ball rolling toward first base. So as I stood around in the field, I’d make up an imaginary game in my head.
“And he hits the ball into the outfield . . . it’s over the center fielder’s head . . . he’s rounding third base and the crowd goes crazy . . .”

By the time the other team had gotten three outs, I was running wild all over that outfield, waving my arms and shouting, completely caught up in this imaginary game.

Then we tried recreational soccer. My first team was called the Rangers, and we wore green T-shirts.

I had no skill whatsoever. None. I couldn’t dribble or trap a ball or even complete a pass. But I was fast. I ran past the other kids, got to the ball first, and blasted it up the field.

During one early game, I remember an opposing player’s dad—one of those type-A parents on the sidelines, the kind coaches can’t stand—kept shouting to his son, “Don’t let the jolly green giant get the ball!”

Then, a minute later, “Go get that jolly green giant!”

He was talking about me, of course, the tall kid in the green shirt. I looked over at the sideline and met my mom’s eyes.
It’s okay, Tim
, she seemed to be saying.
You keep playing.

It was only when I heard the dad yell, “Don’t let that Puerto Rican giant get the ball,” that I stopped. I turned to the man.

“I’m not Puerto Rican!” I shouted. If he was going to keep screaming about me, he might as well be accurate. “I’m Hungarian!”

P
elé famously called soccer “the beautiful game.” That’s exactly right: it’s an amazing, beautiful game—filled with explosive power and almost ballet-like grace.

I couldn’t have explained back then exactly why I fell so hard for soccer. If asked, I might have said something simple, like “I like running and sliding,” or “It’s fun to score.” But through the lens of time, I can see, even in those early, clumsy moments on the rec field, all I’d later come to cherish about the game.

I could sense, for example, the game’s fluidity, its continual ebb and flow. It’s something I still appreciate—soccer, even in youth leagues, is played without stop, except for a single halftime break. By the time they’re pros, players move back and forth between two goals, up to 120 yards apart, covering as many as seven miles in a single match—more than twice that of basketball players, five times that of U.S. football players, and 14 times as much as major-league baseball players.

I could sense the potential for artistry, although I wouldn’t have used that word at the time. It was so much more difficult to control a ball with one’s feet versus one’s hands. To do this, you had to be nimble and skilled.

I could also sense, even then, how a single moment of brilliance or indecision can change everything. That, of course, is what gives soccer its knife’s edge excitement. Entire games, entire seasons, might turn on a single play—a 60-yard solo run, a
deflection in the box, an acrobatic bicycle kick, a goalkeeper’s fumble in the final minutes of a championship match.

B
ecause I was tall, and relatively fearless, the coach of the Rangers wanted me in goal.

But I didn’t want me in goal. Standing in goal was as bad as standing in the outfield in T-ball. It wasn’t where the action was. If I was standing in goal, I couldn’t score.

Playing up front, I was always one goal away from being a hero. As a goalie, I was one goal away from being a villain.

“If you play goalie for half the game,” Coach pleaded with me, “I’ll let you be the striker for the other half.”

I sighed, and did as I was told, restlessly watching the action I wasn’t involved in.

Then suddenly, the other team would race down the field and the ball would sail right at me. At that moment, I felt the weight of the whole team—which, to a kid, meant the whole world—on me.

I wanted so badly to stop the ball. At the same time, I was terrified I wouldn’t.

Often I did stop it. But when I didn’t—and when the other team’s parents started cheering and the kids who weren’t in green began leaping all over the field—I knew what it felt like to be fully exposed, all alone at a moment of spectacular failure.

It was too much. I often started crying right there on the field.

When I did, my mom got up. She stepped closer to where I stood. Then she caught my eye.

It’s okay, Tim
, her look said.
You’ll be okay.

Mom’s presence was enough to make everything better.

I took one deep breath and got back in the game.

I
was ten when the symptoms began to appear.

First came the touching: I walked through the house tapping certain objects in a particular order.
Touch the railing. Touch the door frame. Touch the light switch. Touch the wall. Touch the picture.

The pattern might vary, but there was always a specific rhythm, and it had to be followed. Exactly. If it wasn’t—if I tried to resist, or if Chris knocked into me at the wrong time—I had to start all over again, until I got it right.

It didn’t matter if I was starving and dinner was on the table. It didn’t matter how badly I needed to go to the bathroom. I had to obey the pattern inside my head. I
had
to touch these things, and in exactly this order. It was urgent.

One part of my brain, the logical part, understood that these rituals were irrational, that nothing bad would happen if I didn’t practice them. But knowing that only made things worse. If it wasn’t rational, then why couldn’t I stop?

What was wrong with me?

T
hen similar things started happening outside of the house, on my way to school. Each day, I walked to school carrying a bag full of books. I remember that bag so clearly: it was an Auburn University duffel bag that my mom had picked up at TJ Maxx. I can still feel it in my hand.

I spotted things along the way—a rock, for example. There was nothing special about the rock’s shape or texture or color; it looked like every other rock. But suddenly, that rock was special, the most important object in the world.

Pick up that rock
, my mind commanded.
You’d better pick up that rock.

I tried my damnedest not to. I gritted my teeth and stared ahead, trying to convince myself that everything was okay, that I could leave the rock. I might manage to walk a few steps before my heart started pounding.

Go back
, my body urged me.
Pick up that rock.

If I resisted, I became physically uncomfortable. My stomach churned. I might break out into a sweat. I started to breathe harder, feeling like the oxygen had been sucked out of the air around me. Sometimes I wanted to throw up then and there.

For some inexplicable reason, the fate of the universe rested on this one act: picking up that rock.

Finally, I gave in, I turned around, got the rock, and dropped it in my bag. I felt a flood of relief.

Everything was okay now. The universe was back in control again.

Over the following weeks, my Auburn bag became filled with rocks and acorns and dirt and flowers and grass stems—all the crap I was driven to pick up on the way to school. As I arrived, I waved to the crossing guard, as if having to haul this enormous bag around was perfectly normal—
Oh nothing, just my books and things, have a nice day!
As if I hadn’t just lost a fierce battle with my own brain. As if I didn’t feel these compulsions to do things I could never in a million years understand, much less explain.

N
ext came the tics.

Each started the same way: with an uncomfortable sensation in some part of my body—a heightened awareness, an
urge
. The feeling could be relieved only by some specific motor action. I started blinking, for example—forceful, deliberate blinks that I couldn’t stop. I began to clear my throat over and over.

Then there were facial jerks. Shoulder shrugs. Eye-rolling.
With each of them, it was the same pattern: that awful sensation welling up, the one that could only be relieved, inexplicably, by some action. As soon as I did it, I felt normal again. Seconds later, the cycle would repeat itself. Terrible sensation. Buildup of stress. Action. Relief. In school, teachers snapped at me in class—
Sit still. Stop clearing your throat.

Other kids laughed.
What’s going on with your face?

At home, Mom stayed quiet, but I could feel her watching me. I saw how her eyes zeroed in on whatever part of my body I’d moved, the flicker of concern that passed over her face. It was the same look that she had when she realized Chris and I had outgrown our winter coats and needed new ones. It was the same look she had when she pulled out her checkbook and a calculator, opening one bill after another and sighing.

I could tell it worried the hell out of her.

I hated that I was adding to her anxiety. I hated that I couldn’t knock it off, be a little easier on a woman who deserved some peace of mind.

But, of course, that was impossible.

O
n the soccer field, though, my whole world changed. While the ball was far away, my mind might still order me around (
touch the ground, twitch, snap the Velcro on the goalie glove, cough, touch the goalpost, blink
). But the closer that ball came, the more my symptoms receded. The tics, the crazy thoughts, the conflicting mental messages—poof! They were gone in an instant.

So were the details around me. Players, colors, people on the sidelines, they all blurred and fell away. Only one thing remained in sharp focus, its every detail vivid: the ball, moving toward me.

I would kick it or catch it or parry it. Or it would elude me and I’d have to pick it out of the net while the other team celebrated.

Either way, whether I had succeeded or failed, that’s when everything became crystal clear again—players, colors, spectators, scoreboard.

And then, too, the intrusive thoughts.
Touch the ground. Touch the post. Twitch, jerk, cough.

W
hen I was 11, I developed a new symptom, the worst one yet: I had to touch people before I talked to them. When I say “had to,” that’s exactly what I mean: if I didn’t touch them first, I literally couldn’t form the words.

It was like touching the person opened the door to my thoughts, allowed vague ideas to flow into concrete words. But if I didn’t touch the person, everything in my brain just kept thumping against the door, unable to escape.

At school, I tried to hide this tic through casual touches—I might punch a kid lightly in the arm, or tap him on the opposite shoulder from behind, as if trying to make him look the wrong way. Sometimes I faked bumping into them.

At home, I touched my mom on the shoulder. One tap. Then I could talk.

She glanced down at the place I just touched. She didn’t say a word.

After a while, when I stepped toward her, she began stepping backward, slightly out of reach.

“Go ahead,” she encouraged. “What were you saying?”

But I couldn’t tell her. I stood there mute.
Just tell her
, my brain screamed.
Tell her something.

No words came. I was helpless—yet again—to control my own brain, my own body.

M
om took me to a pediatric neurologist. He peppered us with questions about my behavior. If I’d had any doubts about whether I’d been hiding my symptoms, that visit made it clear: I hadn’t been. Mom described it all: the compulsive touching, the twitching, the blinking. She’d noticed everything.

The doctor put words to my symptoms. I had obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, and Tourette Syndrome, TS—a double whammy of brain difference, a worrisome one-two punch.

OCD is an anxiety disorder, one that brings conscious intrusive thoughts and compulsions—
Touch the bannister. Pick up that rock. You’d better do it or something terrible will happen.

TS, on the other hand, creates almost unconscious physical urges.

The two are closely related—at least a third of TS patients have OCD. Sometimes it’s even hard to tell the difference between a tic and a compulsion. But while tics stem from an urge in a specific part of the body—either completely unconsciously or through a premonitory sensation that’s satisfied only by the tic—OCD bubbles up as conscious thoughts in the mind.

“His certainly isn’t the worst case I’ve ever seen,” the doctor said to Mom. I wondered then what the worst case might look like.

What Mom already knew, and I learned over time, is that most people don’t understand TS. They think of it as a “cursing disease,” a disorder that makes people swear uncontrollably. That’s how it’s usually depicted on television. It’s a trope, because it makes a great punch line. And sure, that form
exists, but it’s rare—fewer than 10 percent of all diagnosed TS cases. But there are myriad possible tics. In fact, TS looks different in everyone who has it—I’ve heard it called a “fingerprint condition,” and that’s exactly right. No two people have the same case. Some people echo other people’s words. Some hoot, some cough, some hiss or bark or grunt. There are motor tics, too—in fact, it’s not TS unless a person has both vocal and motor tics—like nose wrinkling, grimacing, kicking, or even jumping. Complicating matters, even in a single person tics often change over time, too.

So now we had a name for my urges, but not much else. There was no reliable treatment or cure. Some children did extremely well on medications; others moved from cocktail to cocktail, each one causing different side effects to little avail.

But the doctor explained some other things, too—curious things. He said that he’d seen some examples of people with these disorders having some special gifts—an ability to hyperfocus, to stick with a task until it’s 100 percent mastered. He’d also seen a kind of hypersensitivity—an ability to see and feel and smell things that others couldn’t.