Wounds Healed, Lessons Learned, and a Memento Mori for Personal Ambition:
"Surrender your inner novel and set your sights
on a couple of really searing letters to the editor."
-Dennis Hinkamp, from "Popular Advice - Updated"
My own innner Olympic novel was supposed to have a slightly twisted but still Disney-ish ending: Skate a victory lap to a song called "Defy You," and then nail my gold medal to somebody's bathroom wall. But just because it didn't end the way I wish it would have doesn't mean it was all for nothing. Or was it?
I'd like to think I made the speedskating world a better place. But the reality may be that my anger flashed for a brief moment and burned itself out, and while my speedskating dreams died and faded away, the "Good Old Big Shots" will continue to roam the earth in their Team USA parkas, terrorizing the good people of the sport and molding the federation into whatever form they want it to take.
Maybe the most I can hope for is not to bring about change, but merely to warn the next generation of young skaters.
But even if my comeback to this sport, and the writing that has come out of it, have been only for me, then it has still been worth the time and effort. I have managed to heal my own wounds.
The last time I quit speedskating -- after being blackballed at age 17 - my psychic wounds from this sport were like scabs that could be and were ripped open again and again. That would be a fairly good description of my 6 years of college and grad school.
This time, there are no fresh wounds. Only a scar remains: It no longer hurts, but it will always be there.
It doesn't even feel like five years have passed. In sloughing off the dead skin of a burned-out amateur athlete, I feel like I'm opening my eyes after a one-night bout with food poisoning. Yes, unfortunately, "the entire pie has been tainted." I can't even skate recreationally any more.
For some reason, I am at peace with the way things turned out. Speedskating is no longer a cause to hate myself. I have fully internalized, not just with my mind but with every fiber of my being, that my self-worth is not tied up with my performance in this sport. I am no longer "possessed to skate."
Ironically, the thing that made me so much at peace was finding out just how truly evil U.S. Speedskating is; how few people within the sport I could actually trust; and finally - with the results of the 2006 Olympics - HOW DEAD WRONG THEY WERE ABOUT EVERYTHING.
No, I don't hate myself. I hate U.S. Speedskating, and no one who knows my story can blame me for hating them. I truly believe that I have not left this sport because I am too bad for it, but because I am too good. It is U.S. Speedskating that should not suffer such fools as gladly as it does, and it is U.S. Speedskating that should be sorry to lose someone like me.
"Surrender your inner novel and set your sights
on a couple of really searing letters to the editor."
-Dennis Hinkamp, from "Popular Advice - Updated"
My own innner Olympic novel was supposed to have a slightly twisted but still Disney-ish ending: Skate a victory lap to a song called "Defy You," and then nail my gold medal to somebody's bathroom wall. But just because it didn't end the way I wish it would have doesn't mean it was all for nothing. Or was it?
I'd like to think I made the speedskating world a better place. But the reality may be that my anger flashed for a brief moment and burned itself out, and while my speedskating dreams died and faded away, the "Good Old Big Shots" will continue to roam the earth in their Team USA parkas, terrorizing the good people of the sport and molding the federation into whatever form they want it to take.
Maybe the most I can hope for is not to bring about change, but merely to warn the next generation of young skaters.
But even if my comeback to this sport, and the writing that has come out of it, have been only for me, then it has still been worth the time and effort. I have managed to heal my own wounds.
The last time I quit speedskating -- after being blackballed at age 17 - my psychic wounds from this sport were like scabs that could be and were ripped open again and again. That would be a fairly good description of my 6 years of college and grad school.
This time, there are no fresh wounds. Only a scar remains: It no longer hurts, but it will always be there.
It doesn't even feel like five years have passed. In sloughing off the dead skin of a burned-out amateur athlete, I feel like I'm opening my eyes after a one-night bout with food poisoning. Yes, unfortunately, "the entire pie has been tainted." I can't even skate recreationally any more.
For some reason, I am at peace with the way things turned out. Speedskating is no longer a cause to hate myself. I have fully internalized, not just with my mind but with every fiber of my being, that my self-worth is not tied up with my performance in this sport. I am no longer "possessed to skate."
Ironically, the thing that made me so much at peace was finding out just how truly evil U.S. Speedskating is; how few people within the sport I could actually trust; and finally - with the results of the 2006 Olympics - HOW DEAD WRONG THEY WERE ABOUT EVERYTHING.
No, I don't hate myself. I hate U.S. Speedskating, and no one who knows my story can blame me for hating them. I truly believe that I have not left this sport because I am too bad for it, but because I am too good. It is U.S. Speedskating that should not suffer such fools as gladly as it does, and it is U.S. Speedskating that should be sorry to lose someone like me.
posted by Eva at 12:46 PM
<< Home