The Rugby Player with Superpowers:Interview with Tyler Kania

Orignal Article Link: https://www.inmag.com/books/maniac-with-no-knees-tyler-kania.html

By Carin Chea

Tyler Kania is the embodiment of New England appeal. His smile is boyish and inviting, and his Instagram feed is brimming with Connecticut greenery and its crisp seasonal transitions.

His suits are immaculate, his hair reminiscent of Clark Kent. Everything about him exudes an effortless confidence. Kania has enough charisma and energy to fill an entire rugby field, which he actually manages to do as a rugby player and coach.

But Kania’s mischievous smile belies another side to his charmed existence: A diagnosis of Bipolar I Disorder complicated by grievous injuries sustained during his rugby-playing career.

Nevertheless, through wry humor, professional treatment, and continued engagement with the rugby world, Tyler Kania has prevailed.

In his forthcoming memoir, The Maniac With No Knees, Kania provides an unfiltered glimpse into his life as an athlete overcoming mental illness.

On his website, the writer poignantly quotes NHL professional Robin Lehner, who perhaps encapsulates Kania’s journey in one sentence: “I’m not ashamed to say I’m mentally ill, but that doesn’t mean I’m mentally weak.”

How’s your week going so far?

Pretty good. This is the first week I’ve been able to go jogging since rupturing my patellar tendon on April 6th. It’s a very rare injury, and this is the second time I’ve had it. I’m so fortunate to finally be able to jog.

You were a rugby flyhalf. What’s a flyhalf?

The flyhalf is the quarterback in rugby. We command the offense, we command the plays, and we do the passes. We do all the kicking on the field. The whole offense goes through the flyhalf.

Do you still play and coach rugby?

I obviously can’t right now because of my knee injury. I want to play again. That’s my goal. I’m 32 and I was a really decorated rugby player when I was younger, prior to my first ruptured patellar tendon and onset of my illness.

Before that, I had aspirations to play at the highest level. I stopped playing for four and a half years and then came back into the game in 2021. I basically skipped out on the prime of career.

In the meantime, I’ve been helping out with my men’s club team and making sure they’re prepared for their opponents. Once my career is done, I still think I have a few more years of playing, and then I’d like to coach a college team or a men’s club team.

The last team I coached, we won our conference.

When was the moment you decided to write your memoir?

The short answer is that after I ruptured my patellar tendon in April, I went manic due to the pain and lack of sleep, and in a fit of righteousness, I just started writing to my followers on Instagram.

During manic episodes I’ve done a lot of crazy things. Before I wrote this book, I was ashamed of who I was. I didn’t want my friends to know my story.

When you’re manic, there’s no shame. You have confidence. It inspires you to act. You don’t care what people think.

So the manic episode inspired me to tell my story. It gave me the courage to share with the world, and when I got to the other side of it, I kept going and started to get feedback from others who also had mental health issues.

I realized I have an important story. A lot of people I met at the mental health institution weren’t blessed with readers in their families or have the confidence that comes with being a good-looking athlete coming from a family with money. I have privilege.

I wrote my book because I want people to know what it’s like to live with mental illness. There’s obviously a lot of bad things to having something like bipolar; it’s horrible and feels like the worst curse in the world. But there’s also a silver lining. We have superpowers.

I have to say: I really appreciate the fact that you acknowledged your privilege.

I have been blessed so much. It would be wrong of me to not do this, in my opinion. Stuff in this world needs to change. Every employer talks about standing up for mental health, but it’s all talk.

When someone has a real illness (and I’m not just talking about feeling down for a little) employers don’t know how to act. Like me getting fired from my job.

I had just finished the first draft of my book at the end of June, and that same week I got fired from my job in cybersecurity sales.

When I was manic, I had accidentally forwarded two emails to the wrong person. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise though. Getting fired gave me the freedom to spend five months editing my book.

You mentioned being institutionalized. What was it like in a mental institution?

My first day of inpatient, I was diagnosed with Bipolar I and was given Lithium. And it has changed my life. I take it every morning and every night.

In inpatient treatment, you’re not there to get better. You’re there to get your symptoms stabilized so that you’re not a threat to yourself or others. You have no freedom or liberty. You can’t go outside. I had 15 minutes outside in the entire time I spent there! And that was only on the balcony of the wing I was on.

You don’t have group activities. The schedule is blank. There was one TV for 30 people, and the only person who had the remote spoke Spanish. You don’t have shoelaces or forks. The beds are bad. It’s very scary. People are too damaged to talk.

The most unruly people are narcissists. They’ll fight the nurses and the patients; they’ll scream in the phone booth at whoever’s at the other end. They wouldn’t take their medication and had to be restrained to their beds.

It was also a healing experience to see people who had suffered worse than me. I was inspired by them. I was so pessimistic and down on life.

There were people who had been through the most horrific traumas you could imagine, and some of them were just so inspiring for doing their best to keep going.

Before you leave the place, you go to outpatient for a while from 8am to 5pm each day. That’s when we had freedom. We had group therapy. I was able to eat food that wasn’t awful and rubbery.

We had $20 food vouchers, which was good because I was on anti-psychotics which made me very, very hungry. To have things like a Rice Crispy treat meant freedom for me.

So, they stabilize you in inpatient, get you better in outpatient, and when you leave, you have to find confidence in your life again.

I’m not ashamed of being institutionalized. I’m proud of it, the good and the bad, and I’ve learned from it. Without the years of suicidal depression and the institution, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I wouldn’t have had the courage to share it with the world. A lot of people are too damaged or afraid to share their story.

Like my roommate, for example, who had aphasia. He hadn’t spoken in weeks, and I was lonely there. I started talking to him, and after a while, he started talking back.

We formed a friendship. I was inspired by him and so many others – those who had schizophrenia and those who went through electroshock therapy.

I didn’t realize they still did that.

Some people are so depressed that they have to have a reset in their brains all over again. Sometimes they have to re-learn basic life tasks.

What are the key messages you want to send across in your book?

There are three.

First, I want people to know what it is like to live with mental illness. While there are dark times, we have superpowers as well. Mania caused me to write this book, and depression caused me to read endlessly for a year straight.

Second, what the conditions are like inside of a mental health institution. There’s not a lot of freedom. It’s helpful for those who need it, but the conditions need to improve.

Lastly, understanding what the mind of the suicidal person is like. It’s taboo and needs to be de-stigmatized. When you’re suicidal, it’s actually a warm feeling.

I’ve never heard that before. What do you mean by that?

You like that feeling. It’s comforting. When you think about the end, you think about putting to rest all your pain. It surrounds you with every breath.

I’d take my dog for a walk and I’d see myself hanging from the trees every time. I locked myself in my room for a year and read 300 pages of literature a day, because I didn’t want to be in my world, I wanted to travel to someone else’s world.

One day I came very close to ending it, but there was a friend’s wedding the next day, and I decided to stick around a little longer.

What would you say are some of the things or moments that were turning points for you?

A week after the wedding I just mentioned, I went to a birthday party for a rugby friend’s 30th. I didn’t want to go. I was ashamed. I hadn’t played rugby in nearly five years.

I didn’t want my friends to see how far I’d fallen. But, I sucked it up, and they told me that our old college coach was coaching the men’s team, The Hartford Wanderers. I went to watch the next week.

My coach’s wife was there; she had been an endless source of confidence for me in college. This was also just an exhibition game, so there weren’t a ton of subs.

I was sitting on the sidelines. When an injury happened with only 10 minutes left, she encouraged me to play, and the coach told me to go in. It came out of left field.

It was the biggest blessing that happened to me. I touched the ball once and set up the game winning score. It healed me for a while.

I started to play rugby again but a few months later, I had a minor injury that sidelined me, but serendipitously, the next day, a position opened up for coaching the Eastern Connecticut State University women’s rugby team.

I hadn’t had human connection for half a decade at that point. All of a sudden I was in charge of 25 college girls. I worked really hard at it and the team appreciated that. I mentored them in ways that worked on and off the field. And, we won the championship.

Who are your heroes?

Sylvia Plath and Jack Kerouac.

I read a lot from them during that year I locked myself in my room. When I read Plath, I found how beautiful our illness can be, how tragic it is, how much of a roller coaster life can be when you’re manic depressive.

I saw myself in Jack Kerouac, a guy who traveled the country with his friend playing sports. He’s also a stream of consciousness writer.

When I was manic, I wrote on the notes app on Instagram. That’s kind of how Jack Kerouac wrote, On The Road, right off the top of his head and onto a scroll, for several weeks and months of continuous writing.

If you could go back in time to a younger Tyler who was struggling at his lowest point, what would be the one thing you’d say to him?

I had some really low points where I couldn’t see the finish line. I couldn’t see the world as a good place to be in. Honestly, I’d tell him: “Everything’s going to work out.”

The bad times in my life made me who I am. I could’ve told my younger self to play, come back to rugby sooner, or to not quit this job or that job, but those decisions I made in those moments made me who I am today.

Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like to talk about?

I want to work with funeral homes and families of the deceased to write something more robust in their obituaries, something they can pass down to their grandchildren.

I’ve also been doing research for a historical fiction about the Wild West, and I definitely would like to do more mental illness centric material in the future.

Did I miss anything? Is there anything else you’d like to add?

My story’s a long one. There are so many crazy twists and turns. Reading the book will give people a better explanation than I can give in a few paragraphs.

For more information, please visit TylerKania.com.