Beads of sweat drip down my forehead. My breath labors. My heart beats faster and faster and faster. “Everything will be okay,” I whisper to myself before panic sets in. “It’s only a few few minutes and then the charade is over.”

But I know better. The experience will be chiseled into my memory. A voice inside challenges me. I shouldn’t be here. I must be here. I can’t go on. I must go on.

I’ll never forget the day I stood paralyzed on the shore as I watched my sons swim to the middle of the large lake. I tried with every fiber of my being to jump in the water and swim with them and enjoy the perfect Saturday afternoon.

But an invisible force took control of my body. I couldn’t move.

Perched on our driveway is an old, worn out adjustable basketball hoop. The kind you pull a pin in the back to adjust the height to seven feet to practice windmill dunks.

In the spring, a bird comes by and pecks off a piece of the brittle net and uses it to build a nest in our backyard. The cracked plastic base houses crickets and spiders and tiny lizards that scurry out whenever I move it. Two five-pound bags of sand resting on the base make sure it doesn’t fall over when there’s a slight breeze.

The hoop is a piece of shit.

Let’s start with the beginning…as I know it.

His name was Frank Walter Tarczynski. But his name could’ve been Francis. Or it might have been a Polish version of Frank such as Franciszek.

He was born sometime in 1911 in Chicago, Illinois. When he was 20 he married a woman named Victoria. Not much is known or remembered about her either.

When we moved to Los Angeles I spent the first five years grinding away like every other actor. Schlepping from commercial audition to commercial audition. Performing in small stage productions in front of seven people. Taking scene study classes just to keep my chops up (if I actually had any chops).

A personal essay that explores what’s changing in my world. It was written while participating in Write of Passage Cohort 9. Special thanks to Malavika Prasad, Alisa Sano, Chris Wong, Parker Thomas, and Abhishek Bindal.