HEARTBREAKING & BRAVE FIGHT OF FOUR-TIME WORLD CHAMP
MARK SELBY’S dark days are behind him... or so he hopes.
The four-time World snooker champion shocked the sport earlier this year when he announced he had issues with his mental health.
On the baize, the 39-year-old is acknowledged as tough, gritty and uncompromising, in a sport where every shot carries pressure.
But the mask didn’t just slip back in January when he announced, via social media, that he was “not in a good place” – it shattered on the floor into 1,000 pieces.
Scrape away the surface from this successful sportsman and Selby’s is a tale of heartache, triumphing against the odds in an unforgiving arena – but it’s also one that could have so easily ended in tragedy.
Now, after six months’ treatment, he is on the mend. Or so he hopes.
He said: “From where I was a few months ago, it’s like night and day.
“I have been speaking to a psychiatrist for six months and his message was, ‘Look Mark, mental health issues don’t go away – you just learn to deal with it far better’.
“When I spoke out, I wasn’t dealing with it well. In fact, I wasn’t dealing with any of it.
“When I’m at the snooker table, I’m in control. I know how to handle my emotions. Away from it, I was anything but that. I thought it’d blow over. It didn’t. It just got worse.
“I was playing, but going through the motions. Being beaten, and not feeling anything. I wasn’t bothered. That’s when I knew I was in trouble.
“It was after the Masters in January. I’d lost to Barry Hawkins in the quarters and I was in the hotel with my wife Vikki. She said to me that on the day of the match she knew I wasn’t right, but didn’t say
anything because she wanted me to focus.
“Afterwards in the hotel she said, ‘I knew you couldn’t win that. I knew from how you were talking and how you were within yourself ’.
“She was right. I didn’t perform, I wasn’t with it. I told her, ‘I’ve been feeling low for a while now’. And she said, ‘Why don’t you do an interview and explain how you feel?’.
“I didn’t want to do it like that. I didn’t know how I wanted to do it – I’d left it so long.
“We were driving back the following day and stopped at a service station. Vikki went in to get a drink. I stayed in the car and thought, ‘You know what, I need help’. I felt the easiest way of doing it was on Twitter.
“I wouldn’t have been brave enough to speak in public and do it without breaking down and looking a mess. I didn’t want that.
“I composed something, and as soon as I sent it everyone was coming back saying, ‘Well done, you’ve taken the first step.’
“I know it’s a cliché, but it did feel like that weight had been lifted.
“Before, at tournaments, if people asked if I was OK, I’d reply: ‘Yeah, fine.’ I wasn’t. As soon as I’d go back to my room, I’d lock myself in and I’d be an absolute mess.”
Selby’s backstory perhaps partly explains the suffering. His mum left
I said to Vikki, ‘Look, I could do something silly’. She replied, ‘No you can’t – you would be giving Sophia the same upbringing you had... look how that affected you’
home when he was eight years old. His dad died of cancer when he was 16. It was more than tough.
He said: “I grieved for a year when I lost Dad to cancer at 16. I didn’t have a great relationship with my mum. I felt I couldn’t go back into the house, knowing my dad wasn’t there any more. So, I moved in with a friend. But for a year afterwards I wasn’t playing any more.
“I wasn’t practising. I didn’t want to compete in tournaments. I just wanted to curl up into a ball and hope everything would go away. To the point where, at one stage, I did try to end my life a couple of times. My friend caught me once, having taken an overdose.
“I thought, ‘I’ll take these tablets, fall asleep and that will be it.’ I was found. I went to the hospital, they brought me round and pumped my stomach.
“My friend said he knew I was grieving and told me to remember that my dad wouldn’t want me to be like this. That he’d want me to smile, play snooker and turn it around. Months and months down the line, I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, I’m going to do this.’
“Dad’s death had a huge effect on
Mum left at 8, Dad died when I was 16. I’ve tried to commit suicide twice... I’m winning my mental health battle, but you never beat it
me. I still don’t think I’m over it to this day. I used to go everywhere with him, playing snooker all around the country as a junior.
“He died just before I turned pro. Every time I go to tournaments, I picture him there because that’s where he was before I turned pro.”
Snooker’s stars will be out in force next week at the British Open. But it’s a bizarre existence, they co-exist and acknowledge one another but it’s dog-eat-dog once the balls are on their spots. However, Selby says if he hadn’t come clean about his feelings, the ending might have been different.
He said: “If I hadn’t spoken out, I think I’d have been in the same position as I was when I was 16. I said to Vikki, ‘I could do something silly here’.
“And she said, ‘You can’t do that – Sophia would be growing up without her dad. You know how it affected you. You’d be giving her the same upbringing as you had’.
“At the time, you just think that you’re doing the right thing. I felt like a burden, a liability. Me not being here would have been better for them.
“I’ve been with my wife for 16 years and she believes I’ve been suffering all that time. I didn’t know. You have good days and bad days. Sometimes, you just think to yourself, ‘I feel rubbish today,’ and you don’t know why. I can’t tell how I’m going to feel from one day to the next. But I do feel like I’ve got mechanisms in place.
“If I wake up and think, ‘I feel terrible,’ there have been times when
I’ve not even got out of bed. Sophia [aged 8] has come home from school and said, ‘Daddy, shall
we go to the park?’. I didn’t want to do that. “The doctor said that as soon as I wake up I should write down what I want to do today. It can be as boring as ‘I want to cook dinner’ or ‘I’m going to go for a run’. But I have to do it. One of the biggest problems with depression is that people put off doing what they were going to. They think, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’.
“Even if I’m having a bad day, I still force myself to do it. It proves you are going in the right direction.
“I’m in a better place now than six months ago. I’ve got a doctor’s number. I’m still on medication.
“I’m still on the same dose. If I’m in a stable place, then he will decrease the dosage. The aim is to come off them completely.
“It will never go away. It will always be there somewhere. But I feel as though I have it under control.
“For now, at least.”