Griner - In my skin: my life on and off the basketball court

I dont like saying no.

I have a driving desire to make people happy, to the point that I often tire myself out trying to be everything to everyone, saying yes even when I want to say no. Maybe its because Ive spent much of my life dealing with rejectionthe vicious taunts I heard as a kid, the disapproval of my sexuality as I got olderso now I find it hard to turn down others, even in the smallest ways. It actually gets me in trouble sometimes, spreading myself thin with friends or making too many public commitments when what I should be doing is catching my breath and carving out some much-needed alone time.

This part of my personality tends to surprise people. They know me only as the six-foot-eight basketball player, the one who doesnt back down, who plays hard, dunks with authority, and lives openlythe one who likes to challenge how society wants to define her. When I tell someone Im a people pleaser, Im often met with a raised eyebrow and a look that says, Really? I never would have guessed it. But its true. I want everyone to feel happy and accepted. And I never want to be the cause of someone elses disappointment, because I know all too well how that particular brand of pain feels.

Of course I mess up plenty, too. What I feel and what I do are sometimes out of sync. Ive always held things inside, kept most of my true feelings and emotions packed away. From the time I was a kid, Ive dealt with so much hurt this way: swallowing it whole, stacking it inside me, thinking I was strong enough to ignore it and keep a smile on my face. Meanwhile, when I was busy telling myself it didnt matter, the hurt would become sadness, then anger, and eventually it would spill over. This seemed natural to me, coping with the ups and downs of life by stuffing everything away until nothing more could fit, then dealing with all of it coming back up at once, a tidal wave of emotion.

If Ive done one thing especially well in the past few years, its break down the walls I had built. And Ive learned something important about myself in the process, especially during my college years at Baylor University. Ive learned that my top priority is being true to myself, and making choices that reflect who I am as a person, even if those choiceshow I dress, what I talk about, who I surround myself withmake some people uncomfortable.

My desire to live authentically has often been at odds with my need to please. I want to be me, but I also want to make the people around me happy. Its a tug-of-war that has consumed me over the years, but one Im finally learning to manage.

This constant quest to find the right balance is also a big reason Im sharing my story, because I think anyone who has ever struggled to walk a different path, while also trying to fit in, can appreciate the difficulty of that journey and the lessons learned along the way. In telling my story, Ive come to understand myself on a deeper level, to think about how I can be the best version of myself, not just the version that others want to see.

I still have a lot to learn (big understatement). But learning to be the real me has made everything else seem possible.

T he morning of my first WNBA game, I did what I always do when my alarm goes off: I hit the snooze button two or three times. Im not one of those bounce-out-of-bed types. Im also not someone who gets nervous before big games. As I was lying in bed, though, slowly waking up, my mind jumped ahead to the afternoon. It was 8 A.M. (give or take a snooze), and in six hours, I would walk to center court and officially tip off my pro career. Lets get this thing started, people! The past several months had been a whirlwind of media, travel, and dramalots of dramaand I just wanted to get out on the floor with the Phoenix Mercury, in front of our fans, and hoop.

But first I had to figure out what to wear. That was the one thing I was nervous about, because youre supposed to look nice when you go to the games, and I didnt want to start my career with a fine. So I woke up my girlfriend, Cherelle, and said, Hey, I need you to dress me. We decided on a navy blue shirt with white polka dots and a pair of dark Levis jeans (the skinny kind). But the key, the thing we obsessed about, was the bow tie. I had a new one I wanted to wear, a pinkish-purple color (or purply pink), so we watched some videos to see how to tie it, because my agent had been doing that for me before events. We fussed with it for a while until we got the hang of it, like ten or fifteen minutes, long enough to make me impatient. Then we realized the tie didnt really work with my shirtit was too big for the collarand I ended up wearing a pink-and-blue one that was already tied.

In other words, I cheated.

You grow up watching players like LeBron James and Kobe Bryant walk into arenas wearing expensive suits, carrying nice bags, and you can see theyre making a statement. Its like theyre saying, This is the person I am outside the jersey. This is who I am without a basketball in my hand. And this was my chance to make that same kind of statement. I had walked into dozens of arenas wearing generic warm-up suits that said nothing about me, the woman underneath. So I couldnt wait to walk into US Airways Center showing off my own style. This is me, Brittney Griner.

Becoming a professional basketball player wasnt just about making money or proving myself. It was about freedom, too. In September of my senior year at Baylor University, I watched the WNBA Draft lottery with friends. We had a little party, just chilling and grilling. And when the Mercury won the top pick, I googled the area code for Phoenix, then called Verizon and said I wanted a new phone numbera 602 number. Everyone kept telling me I was going to be the No. 1 draft pick in 2013, the following spring, and I liked having that extra motivation to make it happen. (I also liked how my new phone number had my jersey number in it. That felt like a sign, when I saw a 42 in there, like everything was falling into place.) Thinking about my future in Phoenix gave me a light at the end of the tunnel, because I knew when I turned pro, I would have more control over the things I said and did. No one could choose those things for me anymore.

It really hit home for me in the locker room before my first game with the Mercury, on Memorial Day against the Chicago Sky. The pieces of my life were steadily clicking into place, and my world felt so much biggereverything from my new California king-size bed, to our arena, to the contract I had recently signed to play for a club in China after the WNBA season. Even my tattoos seemed bigger. I have a flower on my left shoulder, and a week or so before moving to Phoenix, I got it extended down my arm and added a hummingbird to it. Id been wearing a sleeve in practice to protect the ink, but when I pulled on my jersey before our game against the Sky, and I looked at that new tat, along with the red stars on my left and right shouldersthe ones I had to cover up when I played at BaylorI suddenly had this aha moment. Hell yeah, I can show off my tats now! I feel free! I wasnt constricted anymore or burning up in that long-sleeve T-shirt I wore during my last season in college. I felt as comfortable in my new surroundings as I felt in my skin.

It was hard to believe how much had changed in the two months since I had played a basketball game that really mattered, since Id stepped onto the court with a lot of people watching and wondering how I would perform. A seventy-seven-foot banner of me was hanging on the side of the Hotel Palomar in downtown Phoenix, just across the street from our arena, and every time I saw it, I was reminded of those giant expectations.