alright, storytime. i grew up as a figure skater. i loved it, i wanted to go to the olympics. i was on track to go to the olympics, but why that never happened is another story. the important thing here is that from the ages of seven to sixteen (with a small break) every morning at five or six am i would wake up and get driven to the ice rink by my mom. if i was lucky i would beg her to get me an iced coffee from mcdonalds. i’d skate for an hour or two, maybe have a lesson, and then go to school.
during the summer it was wild. for all the time i wasn’t traveling id get up around seven, get breakfast at the rink, skate for a few hours, do off ice conditioning and stretching, maybe get lunch, and skate for a few more hours.
while i was going through puberty i was constantly sore. my period was irregular, and heavy impact stunted my growth. i loved the ice, i really did, but now that im away from all of that i feel this grief for the person i could have been.
that stretching i did almost every day? it relieved the soreness in the short term, but it plus the impact did something to my body. i was always flexible as a child, like most children are, but i was supposed to keep up that flexibility. i sprained my ankle a couple of times and skated through it, getting one of those quick ice things if it hurt too bad. my friends and i all lamented getting our periods, because it meant our weight would shift. i was always told i had strong thighs in the worst way possible. we waited to eat sugary foods until after comp season, which made halloween the most depressing holiday.
later when i was in my early teens i started complaining to my parents about joint problems. i was told to work out to strengthen the underlying muscle, which maybe would have been good advice. but to me working out meant skating and impact and stretching. when i was fourteen i finally went to physical therapy, where i was told to stop stretching. it wouldn’t help, they told me, i was already flexible enough. i just couldn’t believe it. i still don’t, in some ways, and on my bad days i stretch until i cant feel much of anything. my parents told me to do the alphabet with my ankles to relieve pain. by the time i was thirteen i was afraid of liver damage because of this one girl at the rink who had been taking so much NSAIDs she had to go to the hospital.
all this is to say, my body was irreversably changed by skating. my period was delayed, and so was most of my puberty. I still have joint problems and ankle issues and a fucking eating disorder. i met a friend at a summer camp when i was fifteen who was also a figure skater, and we could just switch clothes whenever we wanted to. perhaps it was coincidence, but we had been molded into the same body type. she’s still skating, might go to the olympics. i hope she does, she loves it. i loved it, too, and there’s nothing as freeing as gliding on the ice.
so why the hell did my father tell me changing both my name and my pronouns was too much? that was so much more reversable than the permanent damage skating did to my body. let kids have fun with their names.
