Detroit Pistons point guard Derrick Rose returned to his hometown of Chicago on Thursday, speaking at a panel at the Dorin Forum. During his talk, the three-time NBA All-Star talked about his upbringing in Chicago and the impact it had on his mental health. Recalling a specific time in his childhood, he revealed that he had PTSD at one point in his life.
"When I was younger, we used to have a lot of things that used to happen in my house and on my block to where I kind of got PTSD in a way," Rose explained during the panel, ESPN reports. "I'll be downstairs in the basement doing something and I'd hear somebody playing upstairs and I'd run up there thinking somebody was bursting in our house about to attack my cousin... This girl, she used to beat up everybody in the neighborhood, like she would beat up somebody and I would think they were coming back for revenge. So any little bumps or sounds in the house, I'm scared, or at night I would hear something and get scared because I was thinking that these people came back."
Rose, who grew up in Englewood in Chicago's South Side, added that his relationship with the city has only improved since leaving the Bulls in 2016. He said that he felt the city "Basically turned [its] back on me" when he was traded to the Knicks, but the relationship has since been "repaired."
As he closed out his appearance on the panel, Rose offered a message to his 16-year-old self. "I would say, 'Watch what you pray for,' because when I was younger, my goals used to be crazy, but at the same time, the older I got, I wasn't ready for it," Rose concluded. "I knew I wasn't ready for a goal like that. I wasn't ready for a championship. I knew I wasn't ready because I used to say to myself numerous times like when I go out in public now, I can barely go places."
He also explained that it "kills" him to go on vacation and see people "chilling there as a dentist or somebody with a regular job," because he's "jealous of that." Rose said, "Deep down, I want that, but I can't have it, so be careful for what you pray for because you'll never know how it'll turn out."
