I remember the exact moment I decided I was difficult to love. It was quiet and undignified. No witness but the mirror. I stood there and lifted my camera like a small, trembling verdict and took a picture of myself, as if evidence were required. At the time, my body was a negotiation I was losing. Hunger felt holy. Disappearing felt efficient. I did not want to die so much as I wanted the effort of living to stop asking things of me. There is a difference, but it is thin enough to cut yourself on.

I learned then that sometimes human beings have to sit in one place and hurt. Not dramatize it. Not redeem it. Just sit. Like an animal who knows running will only make the wound worse. Pain does not always ask to be solved. Sometimes it asks to be survived minute by minute, breath by breath, with no larger story attached. You will become far less concerned with what other people think of you once you realize how rarely they do. Their attention is brief, distracted, tender in flashes. Your suffering is mostly private. This is not cruelty, but it is physics. Everyone is carrying something heavy, and no one has a spare hand. But there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. It does not try to fix you. It does not extract a lesson. It sits beside you like a cup of water placed within reach. I learned it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack, the body finally insisting on rest the way a parent insists a child stop crying by holding them anyway. Concentrating on anything is very hard work. Attention is not a given; it is a muscle that trembles under load.

You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. I try to learn and be coachable. Learn from everybody, especially those who fail loudly and honestly. This is one of the most difficult things anyone can do.

Being a Student of the Game is learning how promising you are as a function of what you can pay attention to without running away. When I took that picture, something in me chose not to flee. A large part of myself went underground instead, becoming a sleeping giant beneath the earth. Alive, waiting, conserving strength—but I hope it’s not like tuberculosis. Not gone. Not ruined. Just resting, until the day attention becomes courage, and courage becomes motion.