Life Happens in the Splits (BftP)
***This is a BftP, or “blast from the past,” post. Prepare yourself for some either relevant or cringe-worthy words from my younger self.
Andreea Munteanu’s highly photogenic beam routine, courtesy of Pierre-Yves Beaudouin.
I’ve been dwelling lately on the idea of transformation (I told you this might be a trend). Maybe it’s the age; as a late-twenty-something, I’m in the throes of what everyone tells me is a very tumultuous stage of life and personal development. Maybe it’s the season; Spring is, after all, a time of abundance, change, and riotous newness. But something’s got me thinking about the alchemy of becoming ourselves; of the way that we have to let old versions ourselves die to make way for the new.
When I was fourteen, a combination of injuries and genetics forced me out of competitive gymnastics. At the time, it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done; I shed not only a sport (and lifestyle — the hours I put into gymnastics left time for little else), but also an identity I’d built for myself since I was five years old and had maintained across nine years, three countries, and more bobby pins, blisters, and competitions that I could count.
Accepting that there are mountains I cannot move is a foreign and unsettling concept for me. Everything in me shouts “there’s got to be a way, you just haven’t figured it out yet!” But that’s not always the case. Giving up gymnastics was the first time I really had to confront the fact that sometimes, you have no choice but to cut your losses. There’s nothing for you to wait for; you simply have to let go, and learn to get comfortable with the fall.
I won’t minimize the heartache that comes with the death of a dream. But I also think it’s interesting to take the narrative of loss and flip it on it’s head. The bigger the hole left in your life, the bigger your capacity for filling it with something even greater than was there before. There’s more room now, and you know what it feels like to throw yourself into something that fills you to the brim. If you were waiting for permission to lead a big life — now’s your chance to say “challenge accepted,” and turn the page to the next chapter.
a note from my younger selF:
“Karma is Laughing its Head Off
I was fourteen when I gave up competitive gymnastics. Fourteen years old, six inches too tall, and no longer quite as able to pass for androgynous as the rest of my team. The end came abruptly, even after several years of stubbornly refusing to see the scales tipping out of my favor and seven months of willfully blinding myself to the edge of the cliff. I didn’t tell my coach until the day before I left. It didn’t matter, really; I think she knew anyway. After all, it could only have been a matter of time.
My latest injury in a cumulating series of physical setbacks carried fatalism with it like a phantom limb — the sick, half-fantastic press of something you’d rather not see, rather not acknowledge. I fractured a cartilage plate in my right wrist, and for seven months I had skirted around the dilemma. I conditioned when I could not vault, I danced when I could not tumble. The uneven bars were a lost cause. Outside the gym, I politely ignored my orthopedist when he told me quietly that high-impact sports were now out of the question — there was a good chance that it would take years for me to even be able to put my full weight on my wrist again. He didn’t press the issue. He knew that I wouldn’t accept that diagnosis. No amount of persuasion would convince me that for the first time in my life, I had met a mountain I couldn’t drag myself over by sheer force of will. Even if I did manage to miraculously mend my wrist, I would only hurt something else. There’s a reason most gymnasts are under five-two; bigger bodies simply can’t handle the physical strain. But I would have to run into that brick wall myself. No one wanted to say it aloud; I appreciated that. I don’t think anyone really knew what to say. Not to me. So they let me drag it out until I could leave on my own.
It took me seven months to reach that conclusion. Then I simply walked out.
I didn’t say goodbye.
The calluses from nine years of hand grips were surprisingly quick to fade. It took a little longer for me to stop shaking chalk out of my clothes, and longer still for me to adjust to the little things, like not having to wear my hair plastered to my head in tumble-proof styles, and not sprinting to my mother’s car every day after the last bell, struggling out of school clothes and into a leotard as we sped along the freeway in an effort to make it to the gym in time for warm-up. It took the longest of all for me to redirect my thoughts away from those of a gymnast. I still wonder whether I succeeded at all.
Sometimes I’m struck by the irony of my situation. I had to commit myself, heart and body and soul, to one of the most cruelly self-selecting sports there is. Even at the age of six, my uncles (all over six feet tall themselves) were placing bets on how many inches over six feet I myself would grow to be. Naturally, I chose a sport where the tallest Olympian ever, standing nearly a head above her teammates, was a whopping five-foot, four inches tall. But none of that mattered to me; I had decided what I wanted to do, and I had given myself to it entirely. We can’t always choose what we love. Today I am five-feet and eight inches tall, and so far from the size and fitness expected of a gymnast that the very idea is laughable. Karma is laughing its head off.
For the most part, I left my life as a gymnast behind a long time ago. I wouldn’t be who I am today without gymnastics, but I also wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t given it up. I traveled different roads, and got to see and do things I never would have been exposed to had I continued my life as a gymnast. I’ve gradually stopped hating my height, and I can even admit that it comes in useful every once in a while. I am glad that I was able to be truly passionate about something in a way many people never are, even if I couldn’t realize that passion. I am a happy person, and I am content with my life. Life, after all, goes on. But I would be lying if I didn’t say that I still sometimes wake up wishing so fervently that I could give it all back. Wishing that some sacrifice of what I have today would buy back who I was then. But I can’t buy back time. So I hold on to what I still have, and look for ways for that passion to transform into something new.”