Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One (21 page)

“No, babe, it’s going to work,” I said.

That’s what I’d always told her in college. It had worked then, but this was different. Our NFL dream was over, and we were about to have our third child.

“But if we lose the car, what are we going to do then?”

“I don’t know, we’ll find a way,” I said. “I’ll bike it. I don’t care. We’ve got to do this to just get us by. We’re only a minute away. We’re almost there.”

Of course, we were really far away, but I didn’t know it then. This went on for about a year. I hocked the car at this place that gave us about $2,500 and let us continue to use it. We had to pay back the money at an exorbitant interest rate, and if we missed even one payment, they would come and take the car. Rebecca couldn’t believe it. She threw up her hands at me and prayed:
Lord, please help this man, because he’s being a fool and nobody can talk any sense into him!

We had nothing left. One day, I called Ken. “Ken, hey, dude, I need some help,” I said. “You know, we’ve pawned everything. Can you just send me a little bit?”

“Terry, I can’t do it.”

In all of the years we’d been friends, it was the first time I’d ever heard him say no, ever. I was stunned, and I didn’t know what to say.

“I can’t do it,” he said again.

He was really saying no. I didn’t get it.

“Why?”

“Hey, man, I just, that’s enough,” he said. “I have officially given you all of the money I can. The reason I gave you the coins was because my wife would have felt uncomfortable with me writing checks, and so I was just trying to slip things to you like that, but it’s not right. I can’t give you any more money.”

He had given me a lot of money over the years. But instead of being grateful, I got mad.
What is this?
I thought. But, of course, I knew I couldn’t say that to him.

“That’s all right,” I said. “Hey, I understand. No problem. I’ll talk to you later.”

I hung up mad. And then it hit me:
Why are you angry with the only man who ever helped you? Why does it bother you so much that he told you no? You feel like he owes you, and he’s the only one who’s ever helped you. He doesn’t owe you anything. You are a grown man. You are on your own. You need to do whatever it takes, and your wife has been telling you this the whole time, but you didn’t listen to her
.

And then I had an epiphany that changed my life:
There’s no looking cool. There’s no being hip. There’s no pro-football-player
image. I need to start all over again, because no one is coming to save me. I’ve got to do it for myself, and I’ve got to do anything it takes
.

That was it for me. I knew what I had to do. I went to Rebecca.

“Ken’s not doing it anymore,” I said. “I’ve got to do it. I’m going to get a job.”

“Yeah,” she said, as in,
WHAT HAVE I BEEN TELLING YOU ALL ALONG?

That week, I went to a place called Labor Ready in North Hollywood. Every morning, I showed up at five a.m., and they assigned me manual labor for the day, for which I was paid $8 an hour. For an eight-hour day, after taxes, I earned $50. It was basically a halfway house, because so many of the workers had just come out of prison. There were a lot of drug addicts. They were in really rough shape. On my first day, I looked at the people around me. They were itching, scratching and dirty, and they were there to sign up to earn their money, just like me.

The boss sent me to a place in the Valley called White Cap, and they handed me a broom. I had tears in my eyes when I started sweeping. I swept for eight hours.

I’ve got to do anything it takes. I’ve got to do anything it takes
.

Some of the other workers came up to me.

“Hey, hey, hey, man,” one of the guys said. “You look familiar.”

It was clear he didn’t really know who I was, but I didn’t look like any of the other guys. I looked like a pro-football player. So he wanted to prove something.

“You don’t know me, man,” I said.

I was wearing a hat. I pulled it down and made myself keep quiet.

Just take it
, I thought.
Understand it’s on you. No one’s going to help you. You might be sweeping floors for a while. This might be your life now
.

MAYBE I DIDN’T WANT TO ADMIT IT AT THE TIME
, but I needed that humbling. I needed to be broken. Because the moment when you’re broken is the moment when you can see what’s really happening. While I was sweeping, for hour after hour, I thought about how my wife kept telling me to do the right things, and how I ignored her and went my own way. I thought about my parents, and how I thought I was better than they were, and how I resented “factory work” and stuck my nose up at anyone who did it. Even with all of the problems my mother and father had experienced, they’d sacrificed so much to make sure I could live a better life, and they both loved me with all of their hearts. Then I thought about Ken, the man who had given me money and friendship and truly was the reason I was even able to move out to California in the first place. Here, he had a wife and kids, but he believed in me enough to take money from them and
give it to me. It struck me how good his family had been to me, and how wrong it had been for me to expect him to be responsible for me. I felt ashamed. When I got home from work, I called Ken.

“Man, I’m sorry,” I said. “I was mad at you, and I had no reason to be.”

“It’s cool, man,” he said. “I just want to see you make it.”

“Thank you,” I said.

That job was a breakthrough for me. Before that, I’d been so concerned about my ego, and how I looked, and how people saw me. My main concern was preserving my image, no matter what. Rebecca had constantly been on me to put our family first, but I was just too immature and self-centered.

When I was in the NFL, I felt so entitled because I played football, and I thought everyone should feel lucky to help me get what I wanted. If I didn’t get what I wanted, I was resentful—and, honestly, mean—even to my own wife and kids. Well, let me tell you, that’s not how the world works. And there’s nothing like eight hours with a broom to set a man straight. After that, I knew I was willing to do anything for my family, especially now that we had another baby on the way.

Luckily, I only had to work as a janitor for about a week, and that week felt like a year. I’d had my humble time, and I knew I couldn’t do that job forever. I got myself over to a temp agency as quickly as I could and passed their typing test. They put me at the Veterans Administration Hospital in North Hills, in a mobile office, filing papers that had been displaced by the Northridge earthquake. It was definitely a step up from janitorial work. But it was still a far cry from the NFL and my plan to finish my movie and put it out into the world as a way to gain entrée into the entertainment industry. On top of that, I earned $8 an hour, for eight hours of work a day, even though I would
have gladly taken on extra hours to earn more. I’d humbled myself, and we were still just barely getting by. I was soon depressed and wondering what had become of my life.

I didn’t want to abandon my Hollywood dream, no matter what, so I stayed up all night watching movies as research for my film. I lived on hamburgers and fast food, and I stopped working out. I quickly gained thirty pounds, and let me tell you, it was not muscle mass. I was really out of shape. Even though I’d always cared about looking sharp, I started just throwing on a big T-shirt and some sweats, lumping around and creating the outward representation of how bad I felt inside.

My friend Mark, who I’d met during my time with the Chargers, tried to rescue me from the brink. He owned a beautiful house near San Diego, and when we were really struggling, he always told me that if I had enough gas in our car to get us down to see him, he’d take care of the rest. I had not missed a payment on our hocked car, and we’d been able to get it back, but we were
broke
. His place was paradise. The whole family swam in his pool. He barbecued and made us the most beautiful food. He even put gas in our car for the return trip. He was a true friend to me in my time of need.

Mark could see I was in serious decline, and he called me about it one day.

“Terry, are you working out, man?” he said. “Are you doing anything?”

“Nah, I’m done with that,” I said. “I’ve been concentrating on this film stuff.”

“Come on, you’ve got to work out,” he said. “You can’t let that body go to waste. You’ve been playing, you’ve got your NFL body, man, don’t lose it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, just to get him off the phone.

I was so depressed that, without being conscious of it, I’d
created a net-negative vortex, and I couldn’t bring myself to work out. I knew I should, but I couldn’t do it. Without anything to rouse myself out of my funk, I avoided taking care of myself, and I sunk lower and lower, while denying it was happening.

I think many men are like this. We don’t acknowledge any negative changes in our appearance, and we continue to see ourselves as we looked at our best. I definitely deluded myself about my own weight gain until Rebecca came up behind me in the bathroom. And pinched my back fat. It was like she had slapped me awake.

“What did you do?” I said, tensing.

“It’s cute,” she said. “You’re just so cute.”

She did it again.

“Stop, stop, stop,” I said.

It was as if the world had screeched to a halt. But I was still in denial.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“You got a little thing here,” she said. “It’s all right, honey. I love you. It doesn’t matter to me.”

Even with the burgers, and the sweatpants, and the weight I’d gained, I’d never acknowledged what was happening. I honestly never had. Suddenly, I looked in our bathroom mirror and saw myself as I truly was at that moment. I looked as miserable as I felt. I had dark circles under my eyes. My skin was broken out.
I’m tired. I’m out of shape. I look terrible. Something’s got to change. I’VE got to change. I cannot go on like this anymore
.

Our pastor at our church in San Diego had once said something that had really stuck with me: If you do something for twenty-one days, it will become a habit, and that means you can change your life in twenty-one days.

Even though we were broke, I knew I couldn’t use that as an excuse.

“Becky, I’ve got to take a little bit of money, and I’ve got to join a gym,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

“Okay, I’ve got no problem with that,” she said. “You go ahead and do what you’ve got to do.”

Now here was my next big shock. Not only did I have to pay to work out for the first time in my life, but also there was no schedule that told me what exercises to do and when to do them. I had to do it by myself, and I had to do it for myself. I didn’t even know where to start. I just knew I had to get in my twenty-one days.

On that first day, as I walked around, it all came crashing down on me. I was a professional athlete. No, I wasn’t, not anymore. Now I worked at the Veterans Administration, and I wasn’t even in good shape. I was at least forty pounds overweight, with a spare tire of fat around my middle. I sighed and climbed onto a little recumbent bike. I got so depressed, I lasted only five minutes.

“I’ve got to go home,” I said. “I can’t do this.”

I ran right out of there. But at least I’d gone. That was day one.

I went back the next day, stayed for maybe fifteen minutes, and then I went home. No matter how bad it felt, or how down I got, I made myself go back every day. By the twenty-first day, amazingly, I was actually doing a full workout.

Even more than that, three weeks was long enough for me to see a change. Honestly, my body hadn’t really changed much in that time, but my mood had. I felt so much better, happier, and most of all, clearer. I realized there had been something wrong with my brain before because of my inactivity. It was almost as
if my thoughts had become cloudy, and my spirit had become depressed. Now, by contrast, I felt so much better. There seemed to be something healing about the movement itself. I realized that some of my happiest days, ever, had been when I was running in the sunshine across a grassy football field. And then I came to understand that, as humans, we’re meant to be much more active than we are. There was also something so positive about actually having an impact on my situation.