It’s easy to sit at home and idolize professional athletes. Getting paid millions of dollars to play the sport you love? How could it get any better than that?
While athletes sometimes seem like indestructible gladiators, the truth is they deal with some of the same struggles as their fans. Depression, anxiety, and other forms of mental illness can’t be cured by money, or fame, or glory on the court. Those issues come from deep within, and it can be just as crippling no matter who is struggling with it.
DeMar DeRozan has shown us his fun side before. The All-Star guard can be seen clowning around off the court, and his general shy, smiley personality has endeared its way into the hearts of Raptors’ fans. In an interview with Doug Smith of the Toronto Star, DeRozan shed light on his own struggles with depression – showing the human side of player’s that sometimes fans forget.
The interview came following up a Tweet DeRozan sent during All-Star weekend, reciting some song lyrics that seemed to have more to it than just the super star’s song of the day.
The following is an excerpt from The Toronto Star:
“It’s one of them things that no matter how indestructible we look like we are, we’re all human at the end of the day,” the 28-year-old Raptors all-star said. “We all got feelings . . . all of that. Sometimes . . . it gets the best of you, where times everything in the whole world’s on top of you.”
“I’m so quiet, if you don’t know me. I stay standoffish in a sense, in my own personal space, to be able to cope with whatever it is you’ve got to cope with.”
He went on to say
“This is real stuff,” he said. “We’re all human at the end of the day. That’s why I look at every person I encounter the same way. I don’t care who you are. You can be the smallest person off the street or you could be the biggest person in the world, I’m going to treat everybody the same, with respect.
“My mom always told me: Never make fun of anybody because you never know what that person is going through. Ever since I was a kid, I never did. I never did. I don’t care what shape, form, ethnicity, nothing. I treat everybody the same. You never know.
“I had friends that I thought was perfectly fine, next thing you know they’re a drug addict and can’t remember yesterday . . . I never had a drink in my life because I grew up seeing so many people drinking their life away to suppress the (troubles) they were going through, you know what I mean?”
The Raptors’ star concluded by saying, “It’s not nothing I’m against or ashamed of. Now, at my age, I understand how many people go through it. Even if it’s just somebody can look at it like, ‘He goes through it and he’s still out there being successful and doing this,’ I’m OK with that.”
While depression is never something you’d wish on anyone, it is nice to see DeRozan open up about his own struggles. Hopefully fans that look up to the star are able to better compartamentalize their own struggles, and maybe everyone can feel less alone on the topic of mental issues.
