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The Roar

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What would you do?

Bernard Tomic is struggling – what would you do in his shoes? (Photo: AFP)
Expert
1st February, 2018
12

What do you do when you’re a kid who finds out he can hit a ball the way most grown-ups dream of? What do you do when your dad tells you hitting that ball is what you’re going to be doing full-time for the rest of your life?

What do you do when you’re just a kid and you already know that this game is no game? What do you do when you’re just a kid and it’s been made perfectly plain that your family is riding on your shoulders?

What do you do when landing that ball inside those lines is the one path to success and happiness for you all?

What do you do when at only 12 you’re already a world-beater? What do you do when you’re still just a kid, but you’re standing head and shoulders above every other kid, and the expectations your father has been burying you under since you were eight have suddenly become infectious, spreading like wildfire to everyone who sees you play?

What do you when you’re 16 years old and you’re travelling the world and you’re hitting that ball so sweetly it makes grown men coo to see it, and the money starts to pour in, and you can see that destiny, placed on your head all those years ago, looming before you: to be rich and famous and loved by all?

What do you do when you hit the big time and you’re taking down big names left and right? What do you do when you just turned 18 and you’re on front pages everywhere and the family’s expectations, that you will be their saviour and their champion, have turned into an entire country’s hopeful gaze?

What do you do when all of Australia won’t stop looking at you and waiting for you to become the hero they demand you be? What do you do when the national sporting media becomes your second father?

What do you do when you’ve been anointed as the next big thing, and suddenly… you’re not?

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Bernard Tomic mid swing

Bernard Tomic continues to polarise opinion. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

What do you do when the big wins don’t come, when the champions don’t fall before you, when the shining, golden future everyone promised was just a few forehands away doesn’t materialise?

What do you do when, after a lifetime spent striving to do nothing but give satisfaction, you start to disappoint?

What do you do when you’re still travelling the world, and the money is still rolling in, and you’re buying big houses and fast cars and you and your family have everything you could ever need, but you still keep losing and the world has started to scold?

What do you do when the crowds who loved you start to hate you? What do you do when thousands of people you’ve never met turn on you, when total strangers deride your character and question your morality? What do you do when people who wouldn’t think twice about doing a job just for the money to provide for themselves and their family snarl that, when you do it, it’s the worst thing a man can possibly do?

What do you do when you’ve turned into an enemy of the people, because once you found out you could hit a ball, and because of that were ordered to keep hitting balls for the rest of your life, and now you’re not hitting it like you used to, and that makes everyone furious?

What do you do when you realise you’re rich and famous and miserable?

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What do you do when you don’t know what to do? What do you do when you’re sinking into a black pit and you can’t figure out how to escape it, and there are millions watching your every flail?

What do you do when all you want is to be happy, and you have no idea what direction happy lies?

What do you do when your whole life you’ve been told there’s only one thing you can do, and you don’t know how to do anything else… and you don’t want to do it anymore?

I don’t know what I’d do.

The Roar encourages all readers who may be suffering from mental illness to seek support from organisations such as Lifeline, Beyond Blue or Headspace.

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