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.
