Mystic – It’s one thing to fight another person, the line goes, but if you’re fighting yourself, that’s different. That takes real courage.

And this is the story of Casey Cochran, a young man whose age, 25, belies the wisdom he’s gained and subsequent courage summoned to conquer mental health issues.

Perhaps you know a different Casey: New London kid, former Whaler and perhaps best known as once the starting quarterback at UConn. But he’s a whole different guy now, among the happiest among us here in our corner of the world, paying bills as a shipwright at Mystic Seaport.

Casey Cochran has found his calling working with his hands, fittingly embarking on his self-help pilgrimage by helping restore the Mayflower.

“I struggled for a couple of years after those concussions,” Cochran was saying earlier this week at the Seaport, alluding to the head injuries that ultimately derailed his football career.

“I was down and out. In a dark spot. Not happy with my mental health. There was probably a day when I stopped and said ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ But there was a buildup of years of me not liking where I was. It was a slow, gradual turnaround. At some point, I told myself I wasn’t going to settle for only being a college football player. Part of the reason why I stopped playing is because I wanted a long healthy life and to find the things I wanted to do.”

Cochran has emerged as a beacon for anyone fighting the desperate — and sometimes lonely— battle of unhappiness, hating who they are. The people who remind the world they’re in a good place when the opposite is true. The people who know they need to change.

How does change begin? With the sometimes agonizing truth tethered to self-awareness.

“It’s just about never stopping in that pursuit to feel better. It’s all about recovery,” he said. “I had a brain injury. But people have all kinds of things they’re dealing with. People have done or are doing things in their lives they need to stop. They need to get out of it. I never wanted to settle for not being happy.

“It slowly eats you up. It’s not black or white. There’s a lot to be said for working through a situation you’re not happy with and not giving up. You get help. You reach out. You realize the people who truly care. You realize what you truly want. I am proud of what I’ve done. There comes a time when you then have to take steps and do what’s right for you.”

Cochran graduated from graduate school at UConn in 2017 with a degree in sports management. There were offers to coach football. On the surface, his life was to be envied: College degree, young, good-looking guy. But then Casey Cochran realized something: It’s not what you say around the water cooler at work or to your friends at the bar later. It’s what you tell yourself.

“I always wanted to play music. I always wanted to work with my hands. If I went right into coaching, I’d never have been able to find those things,” Cochran said. “It always intrigued me, constructing something that wasn’t there before.”

And there, in one line, Cochran described the true magic of his transformation. In working with his hands, molding pieces of wood to fit precisely on to a ship, he’s also constructed a life that wasn’t there before.

“I needed distance from football and sports in general. It was my whole life forever. That’s all I ever did. Especially studying it afterward. I just needed to find what I wanted to do,” Cochran said. “On a whim, a buddy and I rented a place near Margarita’s in Mystic. We were within walking distance to town. One day, we went to every bar in town and asked for jobs and got one (at Chapter One). I was at John’s one night and met some guys who worked here at the Seaport on the Mayflower.”

Cochran left Chapter One and began “crawling in attics,” as he said, installing insulation. But the allure of seeing the same guys at John’s kept tugging at him.

“They said they needed help at the Seaport, someone who could lift and swing a hammer. I jumped on it,” he said. “I asked for a job and got in (Jan. 2018). I love coming to work every day. For six months, my commute to work was walking over the Mystic Bridge. I love it.”

Then Casey kept talking:

“We already made one of the best photos of the year in The Day. Us carrying a steaming plank, the first one to go on to the (Mayflower). It’s the first thing that brought me back into sports and that feeling. As soon as I was done playing, the hardest thing was not being in the locker room and that feeling of being with the guys and working for something greater. I missed that.

“When I came here, at the time there was 30 guys working here I got to meet and hang out with every day, especially after work. The camaraderie came back. I had that locker room feel again. I never thought I’d have that again. This place brought it back for me.”

And it’s like Cochran has graduated into a professional locker room of sorts now. Some of his colleagues are 50-year shipwrights, having graduated from the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS) in Newport. Now he picks their estimable brains about restoring, framing, planking, caulking and decking.

“I don’t even think I knew some of this stuff about myself,” he said. “But I always had a feeling about working with my hands. My great grandfather was a stone mason. Beyond that, we don’t have many skilled workers in our family. My dad never had tools. My mom kind of did most of the handiwork around the house.”

Cochran kept reiterating: None of this is black and white. And yet we all kind of know deep down what we want. It’s just that the road is often paved with fear and vulnerability.

“I was stuck in football for a long time. Making my father happy thinking that I was making my family happy,” he said. “I was just hurting myself in the process in a lot of different ways. Towards the end, I was having anxiety attacks leading into the season and before every game. So much pressure. I don’t feel that anymore.”

He’s even a songwriter now.

“I’m recording an album,” Casey said with a grin the size of the ship he’s restoring. “It’s folkly, country and kind of all over the place. I even wrote a song about the ship.”

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro