You Can Get There From Here: Part 3

Bounced from the JDC team with more risk coming. At the end of Part 2 (Click Here), I had been suspended from the Junior Davis Cup team and it was agreed I would play the next event on my own, though not entirely on my own, for my JDC teammates and coaching staff would also be there watching my every move. A moment of crisis. It’s unimaginable in this day and age that a talented troubled teen like myself wouldn’t have a single adult to turn in a crisis for guidance. But I didn’t. My JDC Coaches had a team to manage and my parents and I weren’t having such heart to hearts. In my upside down shame-filled thinking, I made the calculation long ago the less my folks knew of my problems the better. Seventeen and messy, I was a box of red flags screaming for help. For staying sober the night before an important match should not have been a hard decision. In a situation where there were no options, I somehow manufactured one, rationalizing and bargaining my way into making the absolute worst decision imaginable for my life in the most emphatic of fashions. Was this a…