Confessions of an Ex-Gymnast
Have you ever had a chain harnessed to your waist with a truck tire attached to the other end and been made to drag it behind you as you ran around the outside perimeter of an old warehouse until your breath came in cracking heaves and your vision became blurry? There was a heat wave that July. I was eight.
How many times can you climb up a rope attached to the ceiling of that very warehouse? How about we time you? How about with no legs? How about “you don’t leave ropes until you finish your numbers!”. This is when I was introduced to muscle failure. Up and down and up and down and- “go wrap your hands, you can’t get blood on my ropes! And quick!”- down and up and down and up. The blisters would pop and after practice we would show them to our horrified parents, grinning, “look at this one Mom!”, “No, mine’s bigger!”. We were nine.
When I was ten, my parents brought my brother and I to our first concert. Tim McGraw. There was a military booth that was holding a charity chin-up contest. We watched a Marine on leave bang out his maximum, beating the standing record and high-fiving his buddies with pride. It smelled like beer, sweat and toxic masculinity. My parents nudged me, “You can beat that Bec! Go ahead and give it a try, c’mon!”. My dad lifted me to the bar, the Marines at the booth smiled in amusement at what a cute production this would be. I drew a crowd as I reached 35…40…people whispered and jaws dropped and the Marines shut up. This was the first time I became uncomfortable with praise.
When I was eleven, I stood on the first place podium of the level 7 State Championship, holding the shimmering blue and gold 1st place trophy and saluting to the crowd. I saw the forehead of my Mom in the crowd, trying to flash pictures of me through teary eyes, lost in the sea of applauding relatives, friends and onlookers. “You’re the best in the state Bec!” My Dad had said on the way home, beaming with pride. He was right. I was proud too. I was happy. Overjoyed almost. But the whole way home, I stared out the window, silently replaying my routines over and over again in my head, obsessing over the things I had done wrong: that totally preventable wobble on the beam, that overextension of my arms during my giants on the bar, those three steps I took after landing my vault. Was that sickled foot during my floor routine big enough to be a whole tenth deduction or just half a tenth? Because that’s what I was trained to do. It is how I was taught to think. My pride was always mixed with dissatisfaction and sprinkles of regret. It still is. It is twisted and entirely unhealthy.
When I was thirteen I got my first serious mental block and I cried myself to sleep for weeks over it. It was my back handspring connection series on the beam. I had been competing the skill for almost a year. I did it everyday. It was muscle memory at this point. I had it. But then I didn’t. I still cannot explain it. None of us know why it happens, but every competitive gymnast has this experience at some point. This was mine. It consumed my mind. It was all I thought about. The frustration possessed me like a demon. It flowed through my veins like evil. I daydreamed about it at school, during lunch, on the bus home, while doing other events at practice. Very much in the shower. All night. I had nightmares about it. It was as if my brain had short-circuited and I no longer had the ability to do the skill (an absolutely essential skill, might I add).
I would get up on the beam and stand there in my starting position. My arms extended over my head, rocking back and forth, shifting my feet into the perfect position (which I could NEVER find), paralyzed with fear and frustration, trying to make myself just do it. We were taught early on in our careers to have a routine set of lines that we say to ourselves in our head before performing any skill. It was private and it was personal and it worked. Except when it didn’t. For my handspring series, mine went something like this: “Step out when you land. Spot the end of the beam. You are not going to die today. Swing your arms and go. One…two…three…go”. And then, when I said “go”, I would swing my arms and go. But one day my mind would not let me go past “thr-”. I literally could not say the rest of the word in my head. My mind became master and it poisoned my body into paralysis and raw inability.
One day during this mental block period, my coach became so frustrated with me that she would not let me get off of the beam until I went for it. I stood there for 45 minutes, tears streaming down my face, shifting back and forth, rubbing my sweaty hands together over my head, repeating those damn phrases over and over and over again in my mind, hoping that maybe this time I would make it past “thr-”. Once or twice I did, and I swung my arms and jumped back into the air but ended up stopping myself abruptly, falling dramatically and painfully over myself, crumpling onto the mat below, bruised and defeated. I was exhausted with my myself. This continued for weeks.
Then one day, I did it. I wish I could say more about it. I wish I had more of an explanation. Yet, that is how it happened. I just did it. I lifted my head after the flip, smiled softly to myself and felt the demon leave my body through a cool exhale as the weight of the world lifted off of my shoulders. My coach on the other side of the gym clapped, grinning and shaking her head. “Do ten more and then you can rotate to vault!”, she called over, as if nothing extraordinary had happened. I did ten more, rotated to vault and had the best sleep of my life that night.
That same year, I began to have back problems. It was subtle at first. A dull yet unrelenting ache that I attributed to normalcy. I mean, how could I do the things I do and not have some back pain? All of us had sore backs all the time. It came with the sport. What a deal.
When I was fifteen I was a level nine gymnast. There were only about six girls left on our level now. The demands and nature of the sport had a ruthless way of whittling down the size of a team each year. We were the big girls in the gym. The younger levels looked up to us. They were our little sisters and we looked out for them. We wiped away their tears and gave them advice and even helped coach them. I was doing big things in every event. Big, scary, dangerous, super-cool skills. There was talk about the Olympics. Not serious talk, of course, but nonetheless, that is essentially the goal after level 10. It was worth speaking into existence.
In high school, I had gymnastics for 4–5 hours every single day after school. On weekdays I would get out around 9:30pm. My Saturdays were filled with double sessions and midday practices. Sundays were for private lessons (“privates”, as we called them). I cannot put into words the amount of social events, hangouts, teenage milestones, birthdays, concerts, beach days, sleepovers, school dances, reunions, parties and so much more that I missed because of this sport. Eating dinner with my family was a special occasion. My three younger siblings barely knew their older sister. My parents worried. They encouraged me to skip that Friday practice to go hangout with my friends. I was not a normal teenager and was becoming increasingly more sheltered and “behind” on experiencing life. I simply did not relate to my peers. I didn’t know how.
Call it a blessing or a curse, but my Junior year was also the last year I was able to do the sport that had become my lifestyle for as long as I could remember. My back problems had become abnormal (well, they always were) and after seeing countless doctors, specialists, orthopedics, physical therapists, chiropractors and even a weird electro-shock therapy dude who worked out of a garage, it got worse.
I had a very frightening experience where something happened in my spine during a basic skill on the bars. I collapsed and could not put any weight on my legs, it felt as if my spine had been disconnected at the tailbone. Shooting pains down my legs and vibrations all over my body. I could not breathe. I could not get words out to tell my coaches that I wasn’t dying (which, as I found out later, is what they thought). I eventually got my breath back and the sharp pain dulled to a — well, a less sharp pain. The next day, the sharp pain was gone and I was only considerably sore. I went to practice and everything was fine. This happened two more times. We began to call them “episodes”. After the third episode, I could take it no longer. I was scared to death of what happening to me. I was incredibly in touch with my body (a learned skill necessary in the sport) and knew that this type of pain was threatening and serious. I finally gave in to my parent’s pleas for me to “take a break” from the sport, at least until we figured out what was going on.
I’m surprised I don’t have radiation poisoning from the amount of scans, X-Rays, MRI’s and other tests I had done after that. Finally, one fantastic surgeon concluded that I had Sacroiliitis, as well as two slipped disks, a protruding disk and widespread tendonitis throughout my back and hips. I guess that would explain it. If there is one thing I hate, it is crying in front of people, but I balled my eyes out for hours during that appointment as the irrefutable news that I absolutely could not return to gymnastics sank in. I broke down again when I saw the big bulky brace I would have to wear for the next six months.
The transition was hard. From the life of a gymnast to the life of a normal high schooler. Probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I was faced with the daunting task of adapting to an entirely new life style. My identity had been stripped from me and I could not shake the sense of throbbing emptiness inside me. My lack of experience with peer pressure mixed with my lost soul and wounded heart as well as my recent realization that high school could be pretty fun and that I had the opportunity to climb the social ladder landed me with the wrong crowds and in some pretty dark situations. However, with time, I healed. I adapted. I got out all my repressed wild phases in a few short months that undoubtedly took a few years off my parent’s lives, and emerged stronger, wiser, happier, and entirely different from who I was before. This would be the perfect time to talk about caterpillars and butterflies but I’ll save us all the cliche. I joined my high school dive and track team, got jobs, found new hobbies, learned what my family talked about at the dinner table (chaos I tell you!) and, most significantly in my heart, met and formed the wildest, most unique, hilarious, and insanely close group of friends who I still, to this day, call my family.
Looking back on this experience, I would not have it any other way. Gymnastics molded me into the core person I am. It taught me dedication, perseverance, discipline, awareness, strength, introspection, and grit. And add an “extreme” before each of those words. But everything happens for a reason. Leaving this sport allowed me to grow tremendously as a person. I now cannot recognize the person I was while I was in gymnastics, and I believe that is a very, very good thing.
When I was twenty I visited my old Gym and sat in the parking lot for twenty minutes trying to summon up the courage to go inside. When I finally did, the chalky air and sounds of springboards clanking and coaches yelling and girls landing on poofed up mats hit me like a train. I was disoriented and foggy for a moment, and then I was okay. I said “hi” to my coaches, watched some of my former teammates for a bit, and then went on my way. On the way home, I felt like crying, but instead I rolled down my windows, turned up the radio and smiled, thankful for the experience but knowing full well how much better off I was now. It was one of those moments where you feel so utterly in touch with your true self and your essence shines as if a miracle is occurring. I guess, perhaps, it was.
I don’t have kids yet but I plan on it someday. I will not stop them from pursuing any dreams or goals and I will never stand in the way of them thinking they can be anything they want to be in this world. But I hope with my whole heart and entire being that they do not have any inkling of desire to become a gymnast. Because their mommy was a gymnast and she would never wish that upon someone she loved.
