The following words come from Gordon Corsetti’s personal memoirs and a three-hour interview conducted at US Lacrosse headquarters in Sparks, Md.
We’re Making it Work
I was born in 1988 in New Jersey, and raised in Georgia with my younger sister, Caitlin, by my parents Lou and Mary Jo, both from Long Island — a fun mix of northern and southern sensibilities.
My mother is a skilled carpenter, which she learned from my granddad. My dad managed a securities exchange trading floor, but his heart was in coaching and his soul was in cooking. It was not uncommon to come home to see my mom in the garage, circular saw in hand, and enter the kitchen to the smell of a delicious meal my dad prepared. My sister was, and still is, the social butterfly.
Mom remodeled our house. Dad improved on The Food Network. Cait cheered and edited her class yearbook. I rounded things out as the quiet kid more interested in books than conversation.
We are still a bunch of oddballs, and we still follow the unofficial family motto of, “We’re making it work.”
When my dad and his college buddies moved to Atlanta, they started a club team, and they all had sons. Not long after that, Atlanta Youth Lacrosse was established. I played on this absolute dirt patch of a field. It took seven of us 8-year-olds to pick up one cast-iron goal. We prayed we didn’t have to put it in the far crease. Every great memory I could think of happened on that field.
My other athletic pursuit was martial arts, originally taekwondo, then kickboxing and jiu-jitsu. I didn’t fit in well at school. I couldn’t engage with any of my peers. My mom would say, “You listen to the beat of a different drum.”
It was two hours of kickboxing and three hours of jiu-jitsu every single day after school. I’d come home at 11:30, maybe do some homework, sleep, and repeat. The exercise from lacrosse and martial arts was my first antidepressant. Still today, doing something physical is the best way to improve my mood.
A True Teammate
At around age 15, I started getting these whispers — odd thoughts that floated by the edges of my mind. I’d wake up and think, “Why bother?”
Month after month, the whispers grew louder and more forceful. A weight accumulated on my shoulders. I found it difficult to speak and limited myself to the shortest possible responses to get through the day.
By my senior year of high school, I had endured enough constant pain to seriously consider killing myself. I had the spot picked out on the road home, a tight curve with a long fall. I wouldn’t wear my seatbelt. My fatal accident would be, just that, an accident — something I thought my family could live with more easily than a son who committed suicide.
One day at practice, I got beat on a dodge, smoked by my buddy, Ben. For a perfectionist with distorted thinking, the seemingly minor incident provided all the proof I needed to put my plan into action. I sat on the back of my hatch expressionless, feeling invisible as the last few after-school groups left for the night.
“Hey, you OK?” Ben asked.
He sensed something was wrong.
“How can I help?”
Those four words saved my life that night. I confessed my plan and told him about the thoughts that plagued my mind. I didn’t think that was something I deserved — to have someone sit with me, not even to say anything except, “Dude, I’m here.” We talked for about an hour before leaving to help a friend move.
Still my closest friend today, Ben gave me space to hurt in safety and distracted me so the next day didn’t seem so bad. Later that night, he made me promise that I’d see the school counselor the next day.
I was fortunate to have a friend who reached out and got me help.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CORSETTI FAMILY
Corsetti (16) played in the Atlanta youth lacrosse league started by his father, Lou, who was also his first coach. Both are full-time employees of US Lacrosse today.
A Moment of Clarity
I went to Presbyterian College in South Carolina — a self-professed lone wolf, an introvert who now had a roommate. I went pre-med, even though I hated chemistry. I had 6 a.m. lifts and lacrosse practice every day. I couldn’t say no, the “make it work” mantra disguising cracks that began to develop in my psyche.
One of my teammates, Andy Halperin, asked how I was and I jokingly replied, “I’m thinking about slitting my wrists.”
Concerned, he told our coach, Jason Childs, who pulled me aside later that day.
“I’m going to call your parents about this,” he said.
“That’s not what you’re going to do,” I spat back.
“Let me rephrase that,” he persisted. “I am calling your parents.”
I wanted to punch his face.
My mom, who deals with the same mental illness I do, drove hours in the dark to take me to the local ER the next morning. I met the doctor who told me I probably had depression and prescribed me a low dose of the antidepressant Paxil.
I responded well to that medication and one day, a few weeks later, I stopped thinking. I didn’t have a bad thought in my head. I didn’t think, “I’m worthless… I want to kill myself… People don’t like you.” Nothing. No pain. All of a sudden, I had clarity of thought. That blew my mind, because the last time I could clearly remember life without that pain, I was 10.
Eventually I maxed out at 50 milligrams daily. Then I decided I was doing so well that I didn’t need medication anymore. The whispers returned. Skydiving became my vice. I got certified, purchased my own parachute and jumped 40-odd times. Sometimes, in the door or under the canopy, I would think, “I could wriggle out of this thing.”
Broke and unmotivated in my studies, I dropped out of college in March 2008 and enlisted in the Marine Corps. I passed the physical exams and lied about my mental health and medication history. If I could just get in, I thought, I could grit it out.
Three months later, I was on Parris Island carrying an M16, surrounded by 99 other recruits and everyone was yelling all the time. Boot camp is an effective system designed to break civilians down and build them into Marines. Unfortunately, I never made it to the building up part.
The next morning I told my senior drill instructor I was having panic attacks and couldn’t breathe. He sent me to medical, where the discharge process began.
Thirty-three days later, I was on a charter bus to Atlanta — physically destroyed, mentally drained and emotionally scarred.