Time is such a fascinating thing to witness as you get older.
Picture this: You’re a kid in the 90’s, born and raised in New York City. You’re walking around Bensonhurst, Brooklyn on 18th Avenue, and every adult walking by either is sporting a New York Knicks jersey or t-shirt of some sorts. Almost every New York based sitcom or television show has their main characters in Knicks gear, or the basis of that specific story line is New York sports related somehow.
You’re too young (and not into sports) to realize that that was 90’s culture. Simply wearing a sports jersey of the home team became a unity symbol for a city that lost its “joy” throughout the following years to come. Tragedies happened, gentrification started, and New York began to lose what made it New York in the first place: being a New Yorker.
Then, on a hot, summer Saturday night, the New York Knicks became the 2024 NBA Champions, something that most of us have not been born long enough to ever see because the last time it happened was 53 years ago.
For the first time since I’ve been alive, I’ve witnessed what New York was always meant to feel like. The strangers you met at the bar felt like long-time friends every time the Knicks scored a point. Every game in the playoffs that they won felt like a celebration with each one getting bigger and louder. For once, New York felt like New York, and the pride that we carry as a city is the reason why we are known the way that we are.
Whether you are a native New Yorker or if you’ve been here for the last couple of years, New York won, and the way that it won reminds me that even when someone or something doesn’t think you will make it, you eventually do make it, and the only thing that got you there was that you didn’t quit.
That’s the whole lesson I got from this playoff run.
Hi, my name is Liz, and I am learning not to quit when things feel intangible for me to get.
Lemme explain.
It’s weird for me to tie in this historic win with mental health, but through the celebrations and for someone that got into the Knicks a couple of weeks right before the playoffs, I got to see and feel everything. The Knicks were not the #1 team in their conference going into the playoffs; they weren’t even the second. They were a team that just made the playoffs at the end of the regular season, and even then people did not think they would be real contenders for the championship.
The same goes for mental health.
It’s hard to not see the light at the end of the tunnel when the light merely is just the size of a dot. It’s hard to see the path towards the goal when you find yourself continuously going back ten spaces every 3 that you take forward. It’s hard to see the change when you finally believe you are not meant for it after every single time that you are close to it. It’s hard to see things through to the end when it feels like it’s never coming.
It’s coming. It always does.
Because that’s the thing about fighting for your mental health. You’re going to have super good days where you reflect back and feel yourself healing, but you’re also going to have super bad days where you aren’t able to see anything in your view besides the hardships you are going through. Those days seem to be the ones that stay with us the most, thinking that a bad day, week, month or year is proof that things aren’t going to work out. We forget that in that time, there are good times— that is something that we should be celebrating.
We should celebrate those good days; the wins you have against your mental health. The days where something goes wrong at your job but you don’t allow it to defer your mood. The days where you overcome an internal fear because you felt courageous enough to try. The days where you didn’t expect to be good ones until you went out there and lived it.
Even when the odds are against you, go against the odds.
I am learning to accept that my lows are not a complete picture of my journey; it’s just a fragment of it. My lows teach me how to keep going because you know that the lows are not definitive; they are just a moment in time. I’ve experienced so many lows in my life and somehow there has always been highs to overshadow them. I’ve had band days, weeks, months, and years— but the good ones are what fuels me to keep going, even when OCD wants me to dig deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of uncertainty.
The uncertainty of the end result is what makes the journey an actual journey.
So here I am, as a naive New Yorker celebrating a win that many people before my time have waited 53 years for. People that got to see the win in 1973 and waited for decades for their team to do it again. Some have passed since then and most of us weren’t even born yet, but the feeling is mutual: keep going. The brighter days will come.
Letters From Liz. 