As I lay dying (from a cold)

...but then made it after all

It’s not easy being alive. I am right and you know it. We dream, we strive, we love – and in the end we die. How depressing. It’s a cheap trick, really, that life plays on us. Every transformation process has its end point but the ageing process, the biggest transformation of all, ends in death.

This week, I paint a dire picture of life because I had a cold. Feverish, stuffy, the ugly kind. We all know how close to death one can feel when having a cold (especially men). Not even two years ago, when I was still a tennis player, I would have pushed myself to train despite sweating profusely at breakfast already. I would’ve taken an Advil (or five), yelled at myself internally for being soft and I would’ve watched Michael Jordan’s flu game on YouTube for inspiration. I thought it heroic pushing through my body’s difficulties, hardening myself in my fever’s heat like iron hardens in fire.

Now, I lay in bed in a robe, moaning shapeless words in a language foreign to me, watching Selling the OC on my computer, too weak to plug in the charging cable, whimpering as I saw the battery go from low to zero. Maybe I cried. This is a judgment-free zone.

she lay dying with a cold (and a robe)

Read the next sentence in your best Carrie-Bradshaw-voice:

I couldn’t help but wonder, in a society where therapist vocabulary is used in normal conversation and self-care and mental health are talked about on a daily basis – has high performance sport gone out of fashion?

I knew that while I whimpered in bed about a cable I couldn’t reach somewhere in the world a coach was screaming at their player. For sixteen years, I had been that player. I’m not saying my coach yelled at me for the entirety of my career – there are other ways to get your player to do what you think they should do – but generally speaking, in sports the language is rougher, more immediate, direct. In a high-pressure situation where a single point can define the outcome of a match, there is no time to mince your words.

In my first rehearsal for a TV show I hosted back in Germany for a few years (the show was discontinued, that’s how good my hosting was) one of the producers was trying to give me feedback.

“Andrea, you’re doing fantastic, really, a great job, nobody can tell this is your first time, just if you can, and this is not a criticism, I am merely asking you to try, if you feel comfortable with it, but you really don’t have to, only if you want to, because you really ARE doing a GREAT job, did I say great? I meant very unique, original, fantastic…”

I interrupted him and said: “What am I doing wrong?”

He said: “You’re not doing anything wrong.”

I said: “I clearly am, just tell me what it is.”

And he said: “Just look in the camera a bit longer after you have finished talking.”

Thank you. Was that so hard? Why couldn’t he just say: Look down the barrel, sister, and stop getting on my nerves. A natural born talent for TV as you can see in this video attempt here:

I had to get used to a new world where egos get hurt through words. For sixteen years, my ego had gotten hurt by an opponent better than me nearly every single week and I had to take it, had to pretend it didn’t matter, only to have my ego hurt once more a week later. This, however, was new.

Our strengths can become our weaknesses. I was so proud of my toughness and how pain-resilient I was, how hard I could practice, outlasting all the others – until I broke my back in 2012. The “muscle soreness” in my lower back as I had termed it had actually been a stress fracture and I had managed to finish the job for good. A blinding success just like the TV show I hosted.

Nevertheless, 2011 had been my best year on tour. Would I have finished the season in the TOP 10 if I hadn’t been this hard on myself? I don’t know.

Part of being an athlete is extending your limitations. Day in, day out. Pushing yourself further when others quit, ignoring pain to get to that extra percentage point that may score you a win. You are surrounded by the best athletes in the world, you see them in the locker room and you want to keep up. It’s the nature of competition. But how much is too much?

For a long time, Rafael Nadal was my favourite player on tour. Then I grew up to become an adult and realised I could root for many players at the same time. Some folks over on tennis twitter have not arrived at that conclusion yet, have they?

The reason why Nadal was my favourite player for a long time was that he made tennis look hard, he made it look effortful. Every fibre of his body spoke the language of having once been strained, hardened, poked. Every time he struck a ball you could see that tennis was not only talent but also hard work. After the era of Roger Federer who made everything look easy watching Rafa play felt like a reality check. Roger was Disneyland, a fantasy, Rafa was Florida, the reality. I can’t wait for this quote to be taken out of context.

I blame Roger Federer and all French women for tricking me into thinking that being beautiful is easy and playing tennis is effortless. But I’m glad they exist, I really am. Because Roger, French women and art will save the world. Beauty will save the world.

Things that make me happy:

For years, I’ve been on the hunt for a signature scent. It was supposed to be a whiff of mystery, one of raised eyebrows and “who is this?” I’m very excited to announce that I have finally found it. It’s Orphéon by Diptyque. If you’re in a room one day, wondering what wondrous smell came over you, turn around, it might be me.

do not try at home, could cause riots (the sexual kind)

Things that make me unhappy:

Selling the OC. It’s absolutely terrible. Some real trash. 1/10 would not recommend. It’s so bad that I picked Selling the OC as the one thing making me unhappy this week when I literally almost died from a cold. Think about it.

get off my lawn!

I hope you are doing much better than I was last week and do not have to deal with the utter decay of your sinuses. It’d be particularly sad because you couldn’t smell the mystery woman that I am. See you all next week!

Yours truly, Andrea