Fear of Falling
Having been a figure skater for over five years, I was not afraid of falling. Falling can be embarrassing, such as when I fell while attempting to land an axel, a rather difficult jump, during my third exhibition. Falling can be dramatic, like when I pretended to fall during the climax of my pair skating routine so my partner could lift me up. Falling can be as funny as it can be frustrating. But falling was never fearful, at least to me.
Then came the day that I learned just how frightening falling can be.
I was attempting to do a basic one-foot spin, one of the first tricks that I learned how to do. I had sprinkled a few of them into my newest routine, not only for easy points but also to break up the monotony of moving from one element to the next. Putting all of my weight onto my left foot, I glided forward into the middle of the rink. I sharply turned backward, so I was flying clockwise around the center on two feet. As I circled closer and closer, I took a deep breath and prepared to make the forward switch onto my left foot to do a counterclockwise spin. Within the span of a second, I was on one foot with my arms stretched out to my sides, feeling the frozen air brush along my skin. After I brought my right leg around to my front and wrapped around my left leg, all I would have to do is fold my arms to my chest and allow momentum to take over. I had done this spin at least a thousand times; it was so simple.
Except that’s not how it went.
As simple as it is to succeed, it’s also as simple to fail, and fail I did. I fought centripetal force to carry my right leg in front of me, and I did it with the usual amount of great effort. However, as I guided it back to coil around my other leg, I misjudged how close my legs were and plunged the back of my blade into the front of my left calf. My breath hitched, and I began to shake, similar to how a top shivers before it falls over. I thrust my arms in front of me as I fell forward, or maybe sideways; I can’t be certain how I fell since I was still spinning. But, I do know that as I fell, the blade that still penetrated my leg tore its way down, stopping and exiting just above my ankle. My left side slammed into the ice, and all the air inside my lungs was ripped away. My chest heaved as I tried to suck in some air, but I could barely manage to get any. The ice in front of me was blurred, and the voices surrounding me were warped. Tears and sweat dripped from my eyes. My hands, sprawled out below my line of sight, trembled as warmth seeped onto them. I used the last bit of my strength to bring my hand up in front of my face. My palm was coated with crimson, and specks of gore smeared onto my fingers. Blackness flowed into the corners of my vision. The sounds screeched into silence. The wave of unconsciousness crashed into me.
I’m unable to recall anything that happened in the days following my accident. Whether my memory has failed me due to fear or shock is something that I’m still unsure of to this day. According to the therapist that I saw in the months following my release from the hospital, it’s a combination of both; the term she used to describe it was PTSD or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. At first, I denied that I could have PTSD. I had always known associated it with soldiers and war flashbacks, and what I went through was nothing compared to war. However, when she explained that six percent of traumatic injury victims develop PTSD, I couldn’t argue those statistics. I realized that I was fighting a losing battle with the symptoms, and in order to defeat my fears, I needed to accept what happened and move on; the first step to winning was understanding what I was facing.
PTSD is by no means limited to the men and women who serve our country. It was only when PTSD was added to the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual — Third Edition in 1980 using research based on Vietnam veterans that it became synonymous with soldiers returning from combat. According to today’s research, PTSD affects five percent of Americans, which can be further broken down to ten percent of all women and four percent of all men. The causes of PTSD are also not only limited to war; sexual assault, violence, major injury, and other forms of trauma make up the majority of PTSD cases. The only element of PTSD’s original definition to remain constant are the symptoms, all of which I experienced. I relieved the event through nightmares that I endured during what sleep I could get. I avoided the possibility of facing a similar situation by refusing to set foot on any patch of ice, with or without skates. I encountered negative emotions such as depression, anxiety, and anger whenever I thought about how many hours I put into perfecting every element that I would never be able to do again. The anxiety was especially difficult: remembering felt like constantly walking through a shadowy corridor, every open door being an unwanted memory. Eventually, I found that the memories of my trauma were more disturbing than the event itself. That’s when I could no longer deny that I had PTSD. I was no longer losing my battle.
In the years following my accident, I never found myself back on the ice. Although I had intended many times to try to find a place on the ice, I was forced to accept that my figure skating career ceased when the blade pierced my skin; There was no longer a reason for me to lace up my skates. This changed, however, when I recently learned that my fiancé, a Minnesota native, never learned how to skate properly. He knew of my trauma, and at first, he was hesitant to the idea of me teaching him how to skate. In all honesty, I was reluctant to show him a skill that I hadn’t practiced in years. Between the lasting effects of my injury and the symptoms of PTSD that I still carried, I wasn’t even sure if I was able to skate anymore. However, after I swore that I wouldn’t do any of my old tricks, and he promised that he would do his best to catch me if I fell, we made plans for that weekend.
The setting sun cast a warm glow from behind the frozen trees as I laced up my skates for the first time in years. We intended on skating earlier in the afternoon, but our plans were delayed when I uncovered my old figure skates and discovered the laces were still stained with crimson. Apparently, they had been stowed away in that condition without much thought after the accident and subsequently forgotten about. But after a few hours of my fiancé simultaneously scrubbing my skates with bleach and consoling me, we drove out to Lake Winona as the wintry sun began to brush the treetops.
After I secured my skates and assisted my fiancé with his, we faced the frozen lake. The ice was slashed in every direction, and I attempted to trace a set of scratches to a young boy who gripped his mother’s hands as they stuttered along the ice. My fiancé took a shaky step onto where the ice met the shore and stumbled as he turned towards me. He regained his balance before he stretched a gloved hand towards me.
“I promised,” he reminded me.
I nodded and let out a sigh. It wasn’t him that I didn’t trust, it was myself. I doubted whether I could actually do this, physically or mentally. Maybe I wasn’t as ready as I thought. As I questioned what I was doing at this lake, my eyes focused on the boy and his mother. I watched as he tentatively let go of his mother and shuffled a few feet ahead of her before he fell, his puffy coat making it look like he bounced. I turned away and braced myself for his wails to shatter the silence, but instead of screeching, I heard laughter. I glanced back to see his chuckling mother skate towards him and pick him back up. He used his mittens to brush the bits of snow off of his pants and hobbled forward again. The boy was fine, uninjured. He fell and simply got back up. Although what happened when I fell was unfortunate, there were many other times where I got back up without issue. I had forgotten about all of those other times, blocked out by my PTSD to convince me that my fear was reasonable. I realized that in the years since I fell, I’ve been on the ground, laying in fear. But now that I was facing my fear, I was finally getting back up.
I stood still on the edge of the lake, posed. My heartbeat thundered amidst the silence, similar to how it would before the music to my routine cued up. My eyes glanced over my peaceful surroundings, much like how they would when I scanned the audience for familiar faces. The sun was growing weak, but it still shone a spotlight on me. The song would begin any second now. I was ready.
“You promised.”
Putting all of my weight on my right foot, I glided forward onto the ice, and I was not afraid of falling.
