Читать книгу Acrobaddict - Joe Putignano - Страница 26
ОглавлениеLURKING WITHIN A VICTIM’S OWN GENETIC CODE, A VILLAINOUS DISEASE CALLED fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva IS ABLE TO CONVERT MUSCLES, TENDONS, LIGAMENTS, AND OTHER CONNECTIVE TISSUE INTO BONE, FUSING INTO A TYPE OF EXOSKELETON THAT CAN TRANSFORM A HUMAN BEING INTO A LIVING STATUE.
As I watched my past roll out to sea, a falling star dropped into the empty space over the horizon. The ocean reflected the night sky like a huge liquid mirror. I sat on the soft sand and knew deep within my bones that my dream had not yet turned to stone, that behind my fury and hysteria, I still had the desire to compete. Together with the sea and the moon, I decided to continue to try my best in gymnastics.
Despite all my body modifications, I was in the best shape of my life. I trained every day—stretching, lifting, and performing routines better than ever. My grades and SAT scores, on the other hand, were not doing as well. I needed to bulk up my senior year average in order to continue my education and gymnastics. I needed to get noticed by college-level coaches, which made my senior year a very important one.
Once I would get into a good college, I hoped to turn my education around. I had stopped drinking and smoking pot, and increased the intensity of each workout. I had accepted that my Olympic dream would not happen; the best I could aim for now was to compete at a good college. Although I admitted this truth to myself, I still hadn’t accepted that I had fallen so far behind. To be an Olympian remained my secret aspiration, even if it was submerged in a sea of regret.
The Junior Olympic National Championship was being held in Oakland, and I wanted to go for more than one reason. California, in my mind, was a wonderful land of palm trees and hope, the complete opposite of the dreary seasons of New England. I secretly planned to run away after the competition and stay in California to start my life over again.
Although I felt like I was spiritually drowning, the warrior in me made a pact to rise up from the ocean floor for one more fight. I strategized and obsessed and focused on the perfect execution of skills, solidifying every bent knee and pointed toe. Gymnastics competition is a science of safety and numbers. We had to do our routines hundreds of times exactly the same way, error-free, but more importantly, we had to be perfect on the day of the competition. What we did in practice ultimately didn’t count. I ran through my routines in my mind every night against the throes of insomnia. Those routines were my flesh and blood, my children, and I mentally and physically knew every inch of them. Even sleep allowed me no rest, as my muscles twitched and my body perspired, executing harrowing skills instead of having sweet dreams.
Gymnasts all over the country were preparing for their state championships. We were strong, dedicated athletes used to extraordinary amounts of pain. Every day we woke up with incredible amounts of soreness. We murdered our bodies, and the apparatuses we used gave us horrible beatings. It’s an odd relationship between the gymnast and the structures we flip on, swing around, and hang from. Anyone with a love or respect for his or her body would not endure the slow re-formation, or the bone-bashing and joint-jarring challenges gymnasts place upon themselves in their obsession to achieve greatness. But the deep love and bizarre devotion kept us flipping on fire as our ligaments, joints, and muscles ripped and stretched. Years of pursuing this agonizing relationship had hardened our bodies and conditioned our minds to transcend normal pain.
Each apparatus was unique as it doled out its own punishment. Our knees and ankles were destroyed after endless punching of the floor, sending crunching pangs of agony through our bones. We pointed our toes and tightened our legs to extremes. The pommel horse never appeared dangerous, but it was a hard, leather-covered beast, and hitting it wrong was like getting punched by a prizefighter. The leather covering the horse sometimes ripped the top layer of our skin, like the bite of its namesake. Swinging from the still rings stretched our shoulders to their fullest point of flexibility, until it felt like our ligaments and tendons would pull out of their sockets.
The worst discomfort for me was the high bar. It took years of training to strengthen the muscles in my forearms to hang from the bar, and then the constant friction between the steel bar, chalk, and leather grip tore the skin off my palms. We called these deep, bloody, flesh tears “rips.” Even with multiple rips, we still had to perform. A drop of water on the torn flesh stung like rubbing alcohol poured on a wound. Rips made everything unbearable—showering, opening doors, holding a pen. When we slept, the raw meat of our hands pulsed in pain, like skin on fire, as if pain found its birth in our open wounds.
But, for us gymnasts, this was our love and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We begged for the glory to battle against gravity through the extreme movements of man. Our obsession, desire, loyalty, and discipline overshadowed any treacherous notions of quitting this beautiful sport. We were protected and possessed by the unspoken power of gymnastics. We wanted to be warriors, and in many ways, we were. If we weren’t going to be great, what would we do? What kind of future would we have after years of dedication to the sport? Our bodies were broken and whipped into the human machine gymnastics demanded.
For the true gymnast, physical pain becomes as natural as the tortured breathing I experience during an acute asthma attack. We get used to it, hate it, love it, sleep with it, and absorb it into our beings. But if we tired of the agony, or hated the never-ending endurance testing, or couldn’t wait for the war to be over, it was never spoken. Those things go beyond the sport of gymnastics, and every athlete feels a deep passion to push through the affliction of injury. I often wondered if my desire to win was worth the mutilation and destruction of my body.
I won the state competition, and it meant everything to me because Coach Dan was there to see me take the first-place medal. I was still embarrassed competing in front of him, because I knew in my heart I could have done better. I knew I could have been a true champion, and now I was only a suggestion of that, a mere shadow of what I could have been.
The next level was regional competitions, consisting of all New England states. Chris and I were constantly neck and neck, and I was afraid he would win this one. He was much stronger than me, and resembled a body builder more than a gymnast. He also worked harder, but I felt I had more passion and had sacrificed more. I think my coach was eager to watch the story unfold, to see which one of us would win at that level.
During warm-up for our third event, Chris injured his ankle coming off the vault. He had to withdraw from the competition, ensuring we would never know who the better gymnast was. I won that regional championship, but it never felt like it was a true fight, both because Chris could not compete against me and because I had held back on some skills I would have tried in an effort to highlight my strengths. This made me hate the fact that I won. Although I knew my choice to play it safe was how you played “the game,” I wasn’t in it for the game as much as for the pleasure of the beatings. I chose to take the gold rather than to go all out and potentially screw up.
The regional win meant that I was now qualified to enter the Junior Olympic National Competition in Oakland. We would be gone for one week, with one day free to tour California. On our way to Oakland I revisited my daydream of not getting on the return flight and running away. The palm trees gave me refuge from my thoughts, and it was good to see a different environment. I thought that if I could just get away from my home, then maybe I would have a fighting chance at life.
We spent our “free” day seeing California before getting ready for our competition against the country’s top gymnasts. Practicing in their midst was pure intimidation, and our entire team felt the pressure. They all appeared confident, mature, and ready to deliver, while we all quietly fell to pieces. I don’t know if we were tired from the trip or just overwhelmed by the reality of the competition, but as a group, we did not want to compete. Yet we had no choice. We had to perform; we had worked too hard to pull out now. I realized that I had peaked too early in the season, and let myself be devoured like a small fish in a shark tank. I was all over the place during the first two events, and my performance was awful as I changed routines on the fly instead of going for solid skills I knew.
In my normal state of competing, I became deaf to sound. My mind would become a place of absolute quiet as I located the warrior within, but now, for the first time, I heard the chaos around me, and the champion never stepped forth. I couldn’t summon him. I drowned in the noise of the crowd, the sounds of other gymnasts as they met their marks, and the canned music in the background. My warrior got lost in that sea of sound.
To make matters worse, I fumbled my best event, the floor exercise. On my last tumbling pass I walked into the skill, giving up on the difficult movement and doing something basic. I don’t know why I did that, and as I left the floor I heard my dreams shatter. I couldn’t look my coach or teammates in the eye. I was so disappointed in myself, knowing how important that competition was to me . . . and to them. I had to perform exceptionally well there to show collegiate coaches that I was a good gymnast and a tough competitor, but I blew it. It was devastating.
If I didn’t have a motivation to kill myself before, I had just found one. I was nothing. Empty and completely confused by the sport I loved, betrayed by the grace and gift of gymnastics, I wanted to cry, but didn’t. Like a statue, I just sat there, solid and expressionless. In that moment, I surrendered my sword. I dropped the blade that was perfectly carved by years of training. I gave my power back to the heavens, saying, “I don’t want this fucking gift anymore; take it back, because I cannot handle the responsibility and demands of it.” I couldn’t endure another minute of this agony, and even though I had no idea what I would do with my life, I knew that I could not remain a gymnast.
