Welcome to the refreshed Cup of Chowder! To celebrate the new look and feel of our sports communities, we’re sharing stories of how and why we became fans of our favorite teams. If you’d like to share your story, head over to the FanPosts to write your own post. Each FanPost will be entered into a drawing to win a $500 Fanatics gift card [contest rules]. We’re collecting all of the stories here and featuring the best ones across our network as well. Come Fan With Us!
"When reality becomes non-sequitur
With every sense you have deceiving you
You don't deserve this terrifying life
Hold tight the tether you're connected to"
Assemblage 23: "Angels and Demons"
If it wasn't for hockey, I have no doubt I'd be dead.
That might seem a downbeat way on which to start a "why I'm a hockey fan" piece, particularly one that's supposed to be an upbeat celebration of all that's to do with hockey, but stick with me here, because by this thread hangs a tale. Mine.
Growing up in the middle of Britain, about as far from the frozen prairies as you can get in terms of sporting landscape, I wanted to be a soccer star. Everyone did. I was lucky enough to experience my sporting awakening just as football in the UK came out of the dark days of the tribal warfare and violence that characterised visiting games for so many people and began the journey to the multi-million pound game we know today.
I had season tickets in a relatively small, dilapidated stand in a relatively small, dilapidated stadium in the relatively small, dilapidated city of Coventry that is my home town - once Britain's Detroit but now an unremarkable sprawl with its proudest building a cathedral the Nazis almost bombed out of existence...and I watched the gods of modern football play. Beckham, Henry, Cantona, Bergkamp...any big name in the Premiership, and I saw them. One time I got hit in the face by a David Beckham free kick. It was awesome.
And then hockey came to the city, with the moving of a franchise in Britain's second tier. I got free tickets to watch the game in 2000, and fell in love with it, as you do with a new thing. It helped that the Coventry team won things - which doesn't happen often, believe me. (I was driven later driven far away from British hockey by the fan experience I had eventually, which I wrote about here, incidentally.)
Then the NHL came on British TV, late at night as the new Channel 5 (yup, we only had 5 terrestrial channels then) looked desperately for shows to fill its schedules and just took live NHL games. The first Stanley Cup I saw lifted live was lifted by Ray Bourque, and that story only made me fall more in love with the game. I consumed reading material from every era. I was obsessed. I still am.
There may be a reason for that buried deep in my brain chemistry. You see, although I've never been officially diagnosed, I am told by doctors that I show all the "characteristics" consistent with high-functioning autism, or possibly Asperger's syndrome.
This means that I don't see the world in the way many people do. My brain craves patterns, rhythms, data and environments that I can process quickly and make sense of, because everyday life is so confusing to it. Social interaction? I can do it, but it's tricky sometimes. Ask me to memorise a player's number and recall it five years later, and I can. Watch and analyse what's going on in a hockey match, and I can see the game unfold like a chessboard. My brain runs like a Swiss watch, ticking along at lightspeed.
Ask me to interpret someone's facial expression or simply enjoy a social drink with people I don't know, to do the basics of functioning life, even to remember to eat and drink regularly...and, more often than not, it seizes. It's simply not capable of processing these tasks in the same way "typical" brains do. It requires me to work incredibly hard to live as a functioning human being, in many situations that most people handle without even thinking. My brain is hardwired differently, it has few filters, and it doesn't do things other brains do as a matter of course.
To look at me, you wouldn't know this - but that's thanks to 32 years of hard lessons that even to this day are still being learnt daily. I don't often understand much of what most people would consider "normal" life, and sometimes my mind is a chaotic, lost-in-confusion place as it makes its way through the day - but I have learned how to live it nevertheless, even if it feels sometimes like I fake my way through it.
For me, hockey, playing, watching, writing and talking about it, makes life simple. It makes a confusing world finally make sense. It allows me to interact with people in a way I probably wouldn't be able to in many other situations, as someone who struggles to find meaningful connections with many people - to make friends, to feel extreme emotions of joy and euphoria.
Hockey allows me to be a part of something - a part of the world, rather than a part of my own one that I'm rarely able to let other people all the way into.
Then there's the second problem.
I know for a fact that my brain tries to kill me regularly, and has for many years. I suffer from horrific clinical depression, which manifests itself in often violent and unpredictable mood swings, sometimes several in a day. I have contemplated suicide many times, although only come close to acting on it once. This, contrary to popular myth, is not because I've had a particularly traumatic life experience (I have a loving, stable family who all played their part it helping me grow up, develop my potential and make my way in the world, which much have been a hellish task at times, a truly wonderful fiancée, and excellent friends) - but just because an accident of chemistry in my brain means that it will occasionally turn on me and unleash an army of angels and demons
Demons that tell me that the world hates me.
That I'll never amount to anything.
That everything I do is wrong.
They yell, they scream, and they are ceaseless. Every day involves some degree of battling these monsters in my head and slaying them, over and over again, with the help of medication, self-care and the support of friends and family....but I have accepted now they will never stop yelling. Sometimes they yell more quietly, sometimes more loudly.
And just occasionally, you find yourself wanting to tear off your own head just to make them stop.
I nearly have done, metaphorically. Once, a few years ago, I was stood at a level crossing, watching a train come towards me, and the voices were saying "hop over the barrier. Go on. We'll be quiet then. We'll never say anything again. That's what you want, right? That's all you want. Take it!".
And I nearly did. But then, I remembered there was another place where the demon voices of the black dog of depression stop, without fail, and I could go there any time I liked.
That place is a hockey rink. When I'm watching a game, whether it be a recreational game or an NHL game, the demons are driven away. There is a blissful, joyful peace inside my head - one that comes with watching something that simply, irrefutably makes sense to you - one where you can answer the questions in your head, anticipate the beauty in the patterns of a beautifully executed breakout or the poetry in a glorious pass.
It is a kind of frozen magic. And sometimes, with the flick of a stick, anyone can create it.
Sometimes, when you're playing, even you can create this magic - even though the only level I play at is late-night house league and I am as far away from pro hockey standard as anyone has a right to be and still play the game, the beauty is still there. It shines in the rink lights glare off fresh ice. You can hear it in the swish of skates and the thump of sticks, and feel it in the burn of your muscles as you near the end of a shift.
In a hockey rink, I am free. The demons in my head are silent, and the angels sing for joy.
Hockey helps keep the darkness in my head, always lying beneath the surface, far away. Watching it allows me to make sense of a world without, for once, having to try.
It's my happy place. It is where I am at home.
And knowing it is always there means that the demons will never be able to shout loud enough to win.
And that, my friends, is why I am a hockey fan.
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