I am the action and I am the choice to act

A little over ten years ago I told my parents all I wanted for Christmas were cross-country skis. My younger cousins had recently taken up downhill skiing but I was adamant that I would never want to downhill ski. I said I was afraid of the speed and the height of the chairlift. My parents (or should I say “Santa”?) bought me the cross-country skis and for a few weeks I was content to ski all over the deer trails on my family’s six acres. But once I found the hill and went down it, cross-country skiing was all over for me. All I wanted was to go down more and more hills. I wanted to go faster and to feel the wind in my face. It was then that I began the crusade to downhill ski.

            I started downhill skiing not long after that, and I found that I was naturally good at it. I had learned how to parallel ski after about a month and I was crazy about going fast. I loved to bomb the bottom of hills and I loved how my legs would ache after a day of hard skiing. I loved the way my ski boots fit; they were hard and stiff and forced my body to work differently than usual. I felt less awkward about my body when I had skis attached to the rock hard boots on my feet.

            As I got older I thought I would try my hand at other sports. I played volleyball in seventh grade but I found that it was too much pressure. My coach wanted us to win. And all I ever wanted was to have fun. I liked volleyball because I could see myself getting better. I could feel my legs getting stronger and my arms getting larger. I just didn’t have any desire to win. I didn’t make the team as an eighth grader and I told everyone I was ok with that. I considered running track but I never had the courage to go for it. For me skiing was the best sport. I didn’t have to be a part of a team, to work for some greater good, because, for me, team sports were awful as someone (either your team or the opposing team) has to lose and be disappointed. I was my own team when I skied. Skiing was also the best way to take out frustration. I never wanted to hit people to take out my anger; it was the rush I got from catching air that made me feel free from my stresses. I could feel myself free falling afterwards and that was the best feeling in the world. I have had OCD for as long as I can remember and this was letting go for me. I wasn’t mean to my body; I just let go. To go over a jump wasn’t to be perfect. It was to feel my heart sore and to feel myself drop and to feel my body thud to the ground and go speeding down the hill.

            Two years ago I started experimenting in the terrain parks. I have alpine skis, and not trick skis, and, as most people notice very soon after meeting me, almost no sense of balance. My trying out the terrain parks had a very direct correlation to my love of flying and free fall, I was seeking out my thrills. I managed a couple rails. I also managed some higher jumps than I had ever done. My favorite feeling is still the feeling of being in free fall. It is when I am most aware of body. I can feel everything about myself when I am free falling. For those few seconds I feel entirely free and entirely aware. I know how to angle my skis and how to bend my knees. It all feels instinctual now. My friends ask me how I do it and I just can’t explain. My body knows what it is supposed to do and it knows how to do it with skis on. I find it amazing how easy it was for me to incorporate my skis into my being. As soon as I put them on I move like a different person. I move as though my feet are the 170 cm skis and as though my ankles really don’t roll at all.

            The last few winters have been hard for me. I haven’t been able to ski since there hasn’t been any snow in New York. I have spent my winters holed up in my room watching television instead. And to be totally realistic you can’t free fall in bed. It just doesn’t work. I started rollerblading again my senior year of high school, I hadn’t roller bladed or done any sort of skating since a botched attempt at figure skating when I was about four. I found that the speed of skating was very similar to the rush of the free fall and I also knew that if I got to be good enough at skating I would be able to frequent skate parks. I saved up paychecks and finally bought myself nice roller blades. I skated up and down the hills near my house for most of the summer. It was something to do, a way to clear my mind and a way to move fast. I am all about the speed that I can force my body to achieve. I love the rush of the wind on my face and in my hair just as much as I love to free-fall. I also biked like a maniac this past summer. I was never much of a speed demon on my bike, but a bike is naturally faster than walking so it was good enough, and going down hills was perfection.

            When I got to Macalester I knew I wanted to play a sport. I really didn’t know what sport but I had all sorts of pressure from various people back home. I have multiple friends who row for D1 schools and they were all rooting for me to pick crew. I also have two cousins who play every sport known to man, who wanted me to go back to volleyball. Neither of these options really appealed to me. So in the beginning I just assumed that I would bike a lot. The problem was that I didn’t know exactly where I was going, and I was in a new city. I also learned very quickly that I despise going up hills. And if you are going somewhere and back you have to go up and down. I spent a lot of time wishing that I had brought my roller blades with me, but I hadn’t.

            Then I was watching one of my friends in a rugby match and I started thinking about the appeal of team sports. I know I already talked about how much I dislike them, but I was lonely and a team seemed like an excellent way to meet people. At that point it was too late to join rugby or crew, or any other club sport that plays in the fall. So I made the brilliant decision to join the hockey team. I emailed the captains and made my way onto the roster. I found that hockey skating was not the same as roller blading. I have actually found it to be more like skiing. When I play hockey I am on the ice and I hear coaches yelling to go faster I let go and go as fast as I can. It’s a harder sport than skiing for my muscles but it’s proved to definitely be worth it for me. The beauty of it being team sport for me is that I feel like the team is one body. I know we’re individuals but for the team to be effective (which honestly we’re not very) we have to work as one. We block the opposing team as though they are also a body playing parts of it that are opposite to our own.

            For me the beauty of hockey has been finding a place where my body is smaller than just a body, it is also a place that I feel like I escape from societal pressures for some amount of time. I am a unit of a whole team body. We are all covered in pads to protect our individual bodies, but the pads also serve to give us no reason to worry about looking female. I don’t need to think or worry about anything but my job as a wing when I am on the ice. My legs only need to go faster and faster, and I know that each game I play in they do go faster and faster.

            Through sports I have found a way for my body to escape from my mind. I give in to instinct and I just go. It doesn’t matter if I have added skis or skates to my body. Whether I am flying in the air after a jump, riding a rail, jumping a speed bump, or skating as hard as I can to try and get open I feel free from societies pressures and free from my own worries. The physicality of all of these activities makes me reevaluate what exactly it means to be alive. I think I have finally come up with an answer.  For me being alive is to feel your body, to be aware of it. It is to let go of your self-consciousness and to just be. For me athletics is the way for me to be just a body in a way that it totally different from the self-deprecating way that I usually feel I am just a body. When I am just a body in sports I am just a body in motion. I am the action, and I am the choice to act. Athletics make me feel alive like nothing else does. 

Disclaimer: This is a "body story" that I wrote for a class in college. I am just proud of it, so I thought I would post it.