I cried. But not for you.

Saturday, July 14th, 2018, I was laying in bed in Los Angeles when I realized that I had reached a major milestone for me and AfroLife.TV - we have a live Beta. This is a very hard thing to do and something that many have tried to launch and failed or have operated a business like this and have failed. I knew it was going to be challenging and sometimes it got the best of me, but I was built for this. I achieved my goal of launching a business to entertain, empower, and educate our community, so personally and professionally it’s a milestone. I had not thought about it and it had not hit me until then. Weeks of middle seat coach travel, years of pushing and selling and disappointment had not stopped me. I had not taken a breath or slept well in months and that day while I was just laying in my hotel bed, I realized I had reached the first major milestone in three years. I cried for the first time in five years. I am not bragging about that because it always feels good after I do, but I just don’t cry very often. For years I’ve heard people say that I am built a very specific (unique) way, they’ve never met anyone like me, how can I deal with all of the stress, you are an asshole and I want to study you. Yes, I’ve heard a few more but I would rather share something more meaningful.

The last time I remember crying was in 2016 when I saw how happy the matriarch of my family was when we surprised her with her favorite type of music for her birthday. It was her 94th birthday and I was staying with her since I had just moved from amazing Minneapolis (I say that in the most sarcastic way possible) and making my way around Miami. It was an early morning and my older sister Yvonne had orchestrated this entire mariachi band to come to her house early because that night we were throwing her a huge house party. So since we all knew what was going to happen, the family started showing up at her house before the band arrived and she loved seeing us all there (oh, I should also mention that most of the family lives in the neighborhood). So my mother showed up, my sisters showed up, and my aunts showed up and she doesn’t even think about what’s going on because she is just happy that we are all together. She started with talking about how some of us are looking too thin, or too happy (meaning plump, and that is a good thing in her mind) and that we should be eating more, so inherently she wants to start making food for us. The inside joke about that is that before we go over we get mentally prepared to be called overweight since that is her way of telling us that she likes that we are eating well. You don’t want to be too thin cuz then it’s over, but plump (aka overweight) is great. In 1930 where she is from, you only wanted to be plump because that meant that you were eating well, being taken care of, or that someone loved you enough to feed you. Anyhow, we heard a car pull up and my sister said, “Who is here?” out loud. My grandmother’s first reaction was confusion because unless it is another family member or the pharmacy dropping off her medication, nobody should be coming over. My older sister asked her to open the door and her face just dropped, and she reverted back to 15-year-old Maria Idalia Alberti. We were a little concerned that it may be too much for her at her age, but then again she’s probably the strongest one of us all.

She started crying and looking at us with a reaction that none of us had seen before. From my mother to the littlest person in the room, they were all crying after seeing her reaction. I held out as long as I could, (not because I am against it, it just doesn’t happen very frequently) until she sat down and looked at me with a surprised look, expressing all of these emotions she could not control. She took her right hand, she looked at everyone with her big, brown, tired eyes, and did the 5-year-old face wipe with it. If you don’t know what I mean by that, it is the type of face wipe that a child does to just clear the eyes and face without caring what she looks like. It’s just one, big, all consuming wipe of the face to clear the tears, nose, and eyes, all at the same time. She looked at me and I broke down. This is what that looked like:

She would be so upset if she knew I put her out on the internet in her bata (night gown)

It was a very special moment for us all, not just me. It was a sign of how we all cradle and worry about her and what’s to come, unfortunately. We saw and felt what she had sacrificed and how it all amounted to where we were at that very moment.

Chula Vista High School, early 90’s, your boy was one of the top 50 football players in the state of California and top 100 basketball players in the country. Yes, the entire country. I was invited to a basketball camp that, back then, was called the Nike Superstars Camp, which was a weeklong intense basketball camp that only the top ballers in the state and country got invited to and your boy was invited. I got the invite in the mail and stuck it in my bag. This was obviously during the summertime since the school was not in session nor were we in season. But since it was summertime and the only thing on my mind was girls, the beach, and staying fresh to def, I ignored the invite.

The Friday before the camp started, I got home from being out with my boy, Willie J, and walked into two women looking at me with this terrifying look on their faces and I asked what was wrong. My Aunt Anna and mom sat me down in the living room and started yelling at me straight away. I really couldn't even understand what they were saying, they were so animated (this is the universal way my family shows concerns, by yelling).

“Why did you not tell us about this?!”

“What is wrong with you?!”

“Are you stupid?!!!!!!”

I was like, “Huh? What is going on?” My mother started in with, “You were invited to this camp and you didn’t tell us about it.”

“Why are you not wanting to go?”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“You are going!”

And then the unthinkable happened.

The loud-ass women overnighted my acceptance, packed my bags, and the next week I was forced to go to this camp that I didn’t think would be useful or helpful and would take me away from my summer for 10 days.

I was a junior in high school and for a student athlete, that is the biggest year of his or her high school career. It was when the colleges and universities got serious about looking at you and scouting you.

The following week, I was being sequestered and driven against my will to UCSD, which was where this camp was. I was going to be there for 10 days, sleeping in the university dorms, and going up against the best players in the country in front of all the D1 and D2 schools who were in attendance to watch us ball out. My summer had now been hijacked and taken from me. This sucked, I mean, I was going to go play where I wanted to anyways, I didn’t need this camp.

We drove up in our Toyota minivan that looked like a broken missile and they made sure I wasn’t going to escape. They walked me to the registration line and waited until I got checked in as if I had a plan to escape or something. I got the schedule for the week and my dorm number and walked to the dorm with my two middle-aged female bodyguards. As expected, this place was run very tightly and left no room for free time. I got to the dorm and in the dorm was the list of the other players that came in from all over the country, and on that list, it showed who I was balling with, who the other players were on my team, and what time the first game started for us. It was that same afternoon. We were playing on one of the outside courts and I got prepared to go play. I put on my new kicks, jersey, and shorts, and hesitantly walked over to my first game. It is an interesting dynamic that happens to athletes. It’s like we turn into really critical, analytical animals sensing who the others are, who looks like he can ball, and who you are going up against. You learn what to look for and how to judge what they can do on the court. These guys were tall and bigger than me (which was always the case in basketball) and playing at this level was going to be interesting.

Jelani McCoy (LINK)  walked onto the court (if you don’t know who he is, back when he was a 6’11, All American who went to UCLA then the NBA and did big things there). Well, he was my center and I was his forward at 6’4. The other team started to show up, the game that was currently being played finished, and we started warming up on the court. The refs called the captains to center court and now people, college coaches, started to show up to watch our game. I remember feeling and saying, “This shit is getting real.” The jump ball started and boom, we took off. It was basketball at a very high level. I was running down the court and some fucking guy from another San Diego school swiftly handed me a skinny elbow to the side of my head. If you know anything about skinny elbows vs normal elbows, you don’t want the skinny one, ever, because they are like weapons, but this dude gave me one. That is when it became real; shit got real. What was not evident to the other players was that I could jump out of the gym, play above the rim, and shoot the three. All of that would happen while I was physically beating them up. Your boy balled out, big time. Immediately after the game, the college coaches walked up to a number of us and me and asked me two questions: did I play any other sports (because I was physical) and when the next game was.

We were playing two to three games a day and the guys I was playing against were serious ballers, so the competition was enough to draw crowds to the games. The more we won, the better the games became and the bigger the courts they put us in were. We made it into the main gym for the first time and your boy had just found his three-pointer, so obviously I was bombing them from anywhere. I had a similar game to Rider and Barkley. I played against Luke Walton, who now coaches the LA Lakers and other notable players. By the time the last day came, I was having the time of my life and came full circle to my mom and aunt yelling at me about not taking advantage of the opportunity to go to the camp. Many of the kids I was going up against ended up playing in the league. I had the time of my life, my game improved, and even coach Collins and my high school coaching staff came to one of the games. I felt safe, wanted, and improved. The last day of the camp, we were having the award ceremony dinner in the gym. Dinner started and then the awards. During the awards, they surprised us all and brought out all of the parents. We did not expect for our parents to show up. I remember getting emotional and hugging my mother and just crying cuz she knew best. I’ve not thanked you for that, so let me take this time to say thank you. That was a very long time ago and the memory has been stuck in the grooves of my mind.

Writing for public consumption is very challenging for me; it does not come easy. I need to be in the right headspace to have access to the many stories stored away in the grooves of my brain. Writing for work comes as second nature for me; that’s easy. But when it comes to sharing, that’s where the negative self-talk starts. This blogging process is becoming increasingly important to me and a healthy way to grow and see the journey for myself. Stay tuned.

Alberto Marzan Chula Vista high-school