I trained and competed in gymnastics for over 16 years and have only written about it twice. Both essays were short.
When I say trained, I'm talking about putting in 40 hour training weeks at one of the top gyms in the country. When I skip over writing about it, I'm really skipping over a lot.
I guess I have avoided it because it takes a lot of explaining. It requires me to establish a very clear and deliberate context. There is a lot of shame and embarrassment clinging to the structure of the story, like old vines on brick that are perhaps keeping it all together more than they are tearing it apart.
While I like to brag about the coaches and workouts that I endured, the truth is that when I look at my career as a whole, all I see is where I fell short. Fear overcame me. I didn't get to where I could have so easily gone. I hear myself implying that the coaches were to blame. They got in the way. They didn't do their part. And they did make mistakes.
Sometimes I work so hard trying to prove to people through my gymnastics stories that I was really good. I need to see someone else believe it so that I can believe it too.
If you've read any of my work before, you know I never avoid going on a rampage against stereotypes and tired, lazy language. My gymnastics experience was riddled with "classic stereotypes" like abusive coaches, eating disorders, mean girls and crazy parents. There were times I intentionally left out these details when I tried to talk about my training. I hated people's reactions.
"Well of course you had an eating disorder."
"Well, duh, it's a crazy abusive sport."
"They don't call it gym-nice-tics, right?"
They cozied up to my deeply personal stories with an unsettling faux familiarity. What made them think they knew what I went through? Their assumptions were usually really wrong and they completely blew everything out of proportion and ripped the details out of context. They clung to each stereotype like it was a spotlight that blew out the portrait of all of my individual details. All at once, I felt overexposed and unseen.
Usually when people speak, they aren't looking for the listener to prove how much they know too. They are looking for the listener to prove that they are listening.
Part 2 coming soon.
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