Jay Glazer - Unbreakable: How I Turned My Depression and Anxiety into Motivation and You Can Too

A re you KIDDING ME?! I cant go to the bathroom because the refrigerator blocks your bathroom door?! Michael Strahan screeched at me, in my shitty fourth-floor walkup on East 91st Street in New York City, light years before he was the king of daytime television.

You can go to the bathroom, you just cant shut the door. Make do, I yelled back, total problem solver that I am.

What the f... His voice trailed off. Jay, the light doesnt work in here, I cant see shit!

Stray, just hold down the string attached to the light bulb. Keep it pulled down the whole time and the light will stay on. Stray is the nickname those who are close to him use, though on this day I was about to call him one of the many other nicknames Ive had for him over the years.

What if I have to sit down? he asked.

I thought for a second. I havent figured that part out yet. Just keep the door open so the light comes in. Trust me, I wont watch.

Jay, you gotta be... I dont even know what to say.

Hey Stray, one of us aint a six-five, 272-pound pass rusher, getting paid millions of bucks to play for the Giants, so just fucking make do. This is what nine grand a year gets me!

It was 9,450 bucks a year to be precise. And this tiny shoebox, six blocks from Spanish Harlem, was all I could afford for the decade I was hustling, slowly but relentlessly, toward my dreams. I was so broke that Mr. Im Too Good to Go to the Bathroom and Hold the String volunteered to drive me from Giants Stadium, where I was cutting my teeth on being an NFL reporter, back to New York City every single night, for SIX years! Basically, I owe him about twenty-eight grand in Lincoln Tunnel fare.

Our friendship had been forged instantly in 93, our first year at Giants training camp, when nobody paid any attention to us. Well, let me correct that. They talked to him, but it was to make sure he paid for all the veteran players dinners and sometimes their big bar tabs, an old hazing ritual for young players. Thats a good twenty-five to thirty big, big eaters. Welcome to the NFL, Michael. Trust me, funding nights out for wild players like Lawrence Taylor was not exactly a fun way for Stray to spend his money.

As for me? The other reporters openly made fun of my brotherly relationship with Michael. So, I was broke and the brunt of everyones jokes. But fuck them. If I wasnt going to be on their team, I would start my own. Yup, a team for a whopping two of us!

Michael and I shared a juvenile sense of humor, and we both worked ten million times harder than anyone else in the room. So, even though his hard work would pay off way before mine did, and he would become the Giants star pass rusher, our brotherhood grew because of our shared work ethic. I think he respected that I jostled for every possible freelance gig, on top of having a weekly one-hour show for NY1 TV and a weekly column in the New York Post, just to scrape up my $910 a month for rent.

Hard work does pay off though. In the twenty-five years since my brother (or baby sister as I still refer to him, just to piss him off) couldnt shut the bathroom door in my apartment, I became one of the top inside sports reporters on the planet, as FOX Sports NFL Insider. Ive had the biggest scoops in NFL history, involving the most well-known names in football (including, perhaps, the biggest: the Spygate video that caught the New England Patriots cheating). Ive covered twenty-five Super Bowls. Been a part of eight Super Bowl broadcasts. Got inducted into the Television Hall of Fame with Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Strahan, Jimmy Johnson, and Curt Menefee and the entire FOX NFL Sunday team. Created the first mixed martial arts cross-training program for pro athletes and trained over a thousand NFLers, fighters, and pro athletes. Became an actor (I use the term veryyyyy loosely) and a regular cast member on the highest-rated comedy on HBO, Ballers, with my little niece Dwayne The Rock Johnson, for five seasons. Opened Unbreakable Performance Center, which quickly became named The Most Elite Gym in America by Yahoo Health. And this is the most important one... became a voice for mental healtha mental health warrior, if you willand saved the lives of countless combat veterans and retired athletes through my charity, MVP: Merging Vets & Players. I have coached people out of suicide and hopelessness every week and worked my ass off to beat down the negative stigma often associated with mental health issues. God has blessed me with the ability to communicate, to be authentic, and to relate to any and all. And in turn, I have made it my lifes mission to lift up others.

Sounds like a dream life, right? I mean, I am still waiting to wake up in fifth grade and find out that none of this shit happened. What most of you dont know is that I accomplished all of this while living in my own painful, dark cell of depression and anxiety. Mental health is the hip, hot thing to talk about these days, and its about damn time. But I have been privy to the painful reality of this issue for far too long.

Despite the laughs on TV and the crazy, riotous stories I am fond of telling, I have lived life in the gray since I was a kid. Life in the gray... this phrase has found its way into my daily vocabulary since I first heard it and felt like it exactly described how it feels to be me. I wake up every single morning, convinced the sky is falling; and its this heavy sadness that exhausts me, drags me down, and eventually drowns me. Even with meds (the other four-letter word that has been prevalent in my life), and every other form of therapy I could try, the gray has clung to me.

In the last few years, I have found ways to crack through the gray and see... dare I say it... some slivers of blue. (I am afraid to say I found a way to the blue, because people with depression get scared to jinx it when we find something that actually works.) If you are reading this and are wondering what the blue feels like, because you havent yet seen that sliver, I absolutely fucking get you, I understand you, I hurt for you, but most of all... I GOT YOUR BACK! And I hope that the tools in this book help you find a way there. In turn, I can also learn from you, as we all start talking publicly about our fears and anxieties more.