Alright, my chalk is on, my braces are strapped tight. I’ve visualized this routine a million times in my head and each time I’ve finished with no errors. I know this floor like the back of my hand. I’ve tumbled on this floor since I was three years old. This routine I’ve practiced and competed more times than I can count, but the wave of butterflies still flutter in the pit of my stomach. I’m nervous, but I am also so excited. I’ve competed all my other events, and this last routine determines my all-around, my placing, and whether or not I see Nationals in the spring.
And there it is. The flag on a stick held by the judges allowing me to start my performance. The green light for me to show what I’m made of and entertain them, all while having fun doing it. I smile, I suck in one last calming breath, raise my arms for salute with a bright smile on my face, and march onto the floor.
I take my starting position, giddy with welcomed anxiety for the starting tune of "Pirates of the Caribbean" to start. It does, and I am ready. I dance, and I tumble with everything I have, sticking every landing, including new moves I’ve only just mastered for this season. I've become a pirate for a minute and thirty seconds. The song concludes with me in my final pose and my breath heavy from the exertion. I killed it, and I know it. I stand, salute to the judges, and walk off the floor knowing that I just sealed my fate.
But little did I know how much I sealed it. That day, the competition was different. The feeling coming off of that floor was different. This time, I was in immense pain. The worst pain I’ve ever felt bottled up in the lower part of my back. I curled up on the side lines waiting for the bag of ice I know Coach is bring ing out. I’ve already scratched one meet due to this injury that no one can figure out, and I need time off so I can come back for States, Regionals, and Nationals that I just qualified for.
I wasn’t coming back though.
After that meet I visited numerous doctors, none of whom explaining to me why I couldn’t walk, sit, or lay down without Earth shattering pain. I took a few months off of practice and meets to wait for a heal that would never come no matter how much I wanted it. But, I worked for those qualifying numbers to see those three big competitions, and I was going to go back.
And I tried. I went to practice before States to get back in the grind. But I did one minor move for warm up, and I was back on the floor in tears. In that instance I knew it was bad. There was something really wrong.
I left one of my last appointments being told that if I continue with the sport, I risked damaging my spine for good. I had a permanent stress fracture in my lower lumbar that would never heal. The pain wouldn’t stop unless I stopped provoking it. The second the words left the doctors mouth, my entire world shattered. How could I just stop doing something that I did for four hours a day, five days a week? It was life. How do you just stop living?
I walked into my gym and sat down with my coach for the last time. It was the last time of feeling the coarse gymnastics-blue spring floor under my feet. The last time my hand stroked the smooth leather beam. The last time I smelled the sweat and tears of every practice, each fall, each joy. The last time of seeing chalk clouds in the sky. My childhood and adolescence home was being left.
I left such a large chunk of my heart in that gym that day. I had become gymnastics. Eat, sleep, breathe. I was the sport. It defined me. I loved it. Leaving was the hardest break up I’ve ever experienced. The most painful heartbreak; the kind of heartbreak that never heals.
Today, there’s no more saluting, no more blisters making my hands rough, no more bruises from nasty falls, no more bloody rips being bragged about. I don’t hear my teammates cheering before my routines anymore, and I don’t see my parents in the stands supporting me. I don’t get butterflies before the routines I won’t be competing again. No more linking of arms during the National Anthem before the beginning of meets, no more bells rung after new moves are landed in practice, and no more velcro of grips and braces being heard, and no more foam blocks being tumbled into. Those are all fond memories of the past.
I gave gymnastics almost 11 years of my life, and in return I got so many wonderful memories and lessons that I am so incredibly thankful for. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to be able to go back and experience it all over again. Though there’s an unfixable broken heart, and always tears after looking back at pictures and videos, I am so happy that I got 11 years of love from a sport that is so special and so rewarding. It was all an experience I certainly didn’t take for granted.
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