ease » antoine griezmann

trois

WHEN ANTOINE WAS 7 YEARS OLD he was a cute chubby kid, with big blue curios eyes and blonde hair. He was really shy and would often hide behind his mother's legs when they ran into a family friend while out, but still smile a lot and run on his back yard, do impersonations of his favorite cartoon characters and laugh really loud at his dad's jokes.

"Antoine is one of the most precious thing earth has seen" He remembers his mother proudly saying to her friends one time.

Oh how wrong she was by saying that, for Antoine often thought precious things where fragile, always tricky as any movement could break them into millions of tiny pieces. And on this context, he really felt like the most precious thing earth had seen.

It first happened when he was 17. It was a normal day in Anoeta, the sun shun big on the sky, people coming and going, not caring a lot for something else than their lives. He just got off of training and was walking home when he saw a bus with the number 8 printed on it. Then he saw the number 42 on a coffee shop window, the number 5 indicating the value of a pound of oranges.

While walking home he couldn't stop thinking about the numbers: 8.42.5.1 and spent the next two days wondering what they could mean. Maybe they were an I.P address, the lottery numbers, a phone number, a password of some sort. They could mean everything and anything and he looked a reason for them for the next day, when realizing how crazy everything sounded.

Then a few weeks later he found himself on a bench at the lockers room, getting lectured for misbehaving on training. He started to feel anxious when his coach saw him directly on the eyes, so he prayed Our Father quietly on his mind to distract himself. And the he prayed on his way back home. Then while watching tv, then before falling asleep, too tired to realize he was never one religious enough to pray that much.

Time passed like that for a few months, with Antoine trying to find a meaning to random numbers and praying to prevent pain from his actions. Then it happened, he started to clean a lot. Moping his floor 2 times a day, before and after training. He would feel anxious when things where moved of where they were supposed to be. Check if he locked the door before going to sleep like 20 times, washing his hands multiple times during the day. Then he started moping 4 times a day, he prayed more and more often, almost like a mantra, he started to feel anxious about the numbers and not finding a meaning behind. Then he would swear there was a ghost behind him all the times, a scene of a horror movie stuck on his mind for months.

Until it got too much he started to miss the bus to training because he would check the lock on his door so much or would stay because he had to clean, even if the house was spotless.

His coach noticed how much Antoine would wash his hands and his lost stare, like he was repeating something on his head. He had seen this a lot of times with his younger players, so pressured on this new lifestyle they lost themselves on their minds, so he did what he had to do, send him to the club's psychologist.

Antoine could not believe it when he found out, but said nothing, if it would help him to keep his coach happy and would actually let him play because of it, he would do it.

After two or three sessions a diagnosis was given: obsessive-compulsive disorder.

And since Antoine was 19, he had a mental illness as a secret to keep.