The Storm Inside

Daily Letter · Mindset Operating System · 8:42 PM

FATHOM THIS

Two months before this story happened I had been voted captain of the Towson lacrosse program by my peers.

I want you to hold that detail while you read what comes next.

FIELD REPORT | North Baltimore to Downtown — Summer, 2003

I knew something was wrong before I left the parking lot.

Not dramatically. Not in a way I could name or explain or point to on a map of my own body. Just a quiet wrongness in the way my brain was processing a drive I had made a dozen times before — a routine package delivery from North County Baltimore down into the city. Summer internship. Ordinary Tuesday.

I got in the car anyway. Told myself it would pass.

The drive south on 83 did not help. By the time the city skyline came into view the quiet wrongness had graduated into something with more weight. A cold sweat building at the back of my neck. A faint lightheadedness hovering at the edges of my vision. I ran the athlete's internal calculation — the one that says push through, let the body work itself out, things level off, you are fine.

Things did not level off.

I parked in a downtown garage and sat for a moment. Tried to regulate. The tingling had started in my fingertips by then — a sensation I had no reference point for and therefore no framework to interpret correctly. I got out of the car and walked toward the building anyway because that is what you do when you have a package to deliver and a job to keep and a version of yourself to maintain for everyone watching.

The lobby receptionist smiled when I walked in.

I smiled back. Probably said something. Hello, this is for — whoever the package was for. I could feel the sweat now, visible, and I could not tell whether she could see it or whether I was simply that aware of my own deterioration. The elevator doors were open. I took the stairs instead because movement felt like the only thing keeping me from whatever was coming.

I made it halfway down the stairwell.

That is where my chest caved in.

That is the only way I can describe it — a caving, like something structural had given way. My shoulders pulled inward. The pain radiated and I thought with complete clarity that I was having a heart attack. Twenty-one years old. Captain-elect. Summer internship. Stairwell in downtown Baltimore.

I called my mom first because that is who you call when the world is ending and you need someone to know you are still in it. Then I called 911. I stumbled down the last flights and made it to the lobby where a security guard — a stranger whose name I never learned — saw what I could no longer hide and did something kind. He stayed near me. He did not look away.

The paramedics carried me out on a stretcher.

Every physical reading came back stable. Heart rate elevated but structurally sound. Blood pressure high but not dangerously. Lungs clear. Chest normal.

The storm was entirely inside. A full panic attack — my first, though I did not have that language for it yet — with no external cause anyone could point to. Just a mind that had been carrying more than it had been given tools to carry, finally presenting its invoice in a stairwell on a Tuesday afternoon when the audience was exactly nobody I knew.

I did not tell my teammates. I did not tell my coaches. I told my parents a version of it and kept the rest private because I was twenty-one years old and I had just been voted captain and I was supposed to have this figured out. So I performed having it figured out. And the performance was exhausting in a way that the panic attack itself never quite was.

MINDSET OS | What I Wish I Had Known

If you are a player reading this — or a parent who recognizes something in this story that you have seen in your child and could not name — I want to say something directly.

The storm is not weakness. It is static that has been building without a healthy outlet, finally demanding to be acknowledged. And the most athletic thing you can do when it arrives is not push through it. It is tell someone.

Not at the dinner table if that feels impossible. Someone in your secondary circle. A coach. A mentor. A person who has been where you are and came out the other side.

Or me. Directly. That is what this email address is for.

Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations — "You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength." The panic attack taught me that the strength he was describing is not the absence of the storm. It is the decision to stop pretending the storm is not there.

Be true to what you want. Be honest about what you do not know. Reach out before the stairwell.

I missed the boat entirely in my career. This is why I coach today. More on that in the letters ahead.

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About the Author

Kyle Smedley is the founder of Harbor Lane Holdings, building at the intersection of sport, people, and capital.

Career stops include Events.com, Tourmaline Builders, Lombardi Contracting Corporation, and DPR Construction. Today he leads Atticus Lacrosse Company, working alongside Mad Dog Lacrosse and Ravenscroft School, and Harbor Lane Company, operating across real estate, private equity, and talent placement.

Field & Fathom goes out at 8:42 PM.

Reach out directly: [email protected]

Until tomorrow,

Kyle

Founder · Harbor Lane Holdings · Atticus Lacrosse Company

Field & Fathom · Harbor Lane Holdings · Daily

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