Page 7 of Where We Belong

I didn’t always see the uneven bars as my nemesis. Before last year, I’d even enjoyed them. They’d always been a challenge, but a good one. When they almost break your neck, though, you start looking at them from another perspective.

I’ve gone through all my other events for the night, so I can’t stall any longer. I’ve waited long enough. Nostrils flaring, I take another gulp from my water bottle, one that still wears the logo of my old gym in Phoenix, then get to my feet and head toward the bars, turning on the lights in this section of the gym as I go. I know I should always leave all the lights on during practice, for safety, but I hate how a bright, empty gym feels. In the dimness, I can pretend I’m not entirely alone in this place.

The neons flash up one by one, and once again, this feels like the final confrontation of an action movie.

I shouldn’t be feeling shivers all over my body just looking at the bars. Technically, they didn’t bring me to the brink of death. I did that all by myself. As Andy, my old coach, would say, “You master the apparatus, not the other way around.” But that’s much easier to say than to actually make my brain believe.

Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I put on my grips, the sequence of movements as familiar as breathing. The moment I’d heard the sound of Velcro tearing for the first time, after so many months away in physical rehab, felt heavenly. That is, until I’d realized I didn’t master the bars any longer.

I spray water and scrub chalk over my hands and grips as I stare at the apparatus, going through the routine I want to do in my head. I’ll start easy. A few release moves, two basic transitions, and a simple dismount. Something I could’ve done at twelve years old.

My heart starts beating quicker as I walk in between the two bars, facing the lower one, and as if on cue, a twinge of pain pops into my neck and shoulder.

Don’t get into your head, kid.Andy’s old adage resonates through my head, a sentence I’ve heard countless times over the years, but even more so after I came back this year. I try not to let myself focus on what happened the last time I heard it, which was only a few weeks ago. He told me not to overthink, so of course, I did just that and choked my dismount, and that was the final drop for him. He didn’t even spare me a glance, only turning back toward his office and saying we were over.Uncoachable. The word still hurts, even weeks later. Who knew an injury followed by a major mental block was going to be what ended me? After years of pain and sacrifice, my freaking head got the best of me.

“You’re not done,” I say out loud even though I’m alone, just because I need to make myself believe it. It doesn’t matter if I don’t have a coach, or if there isn’t a single person on this planet who believes my dream is achievable. IfIbelieve it, then not everything is lost.

Now, I just need to remaster this bitch.

Eyes closed, I breathe in once, nice and slow. Then, I let my muscle memory take over, and I jump to catch the lower bar.

The first part of my old routine goes well. I don’t have to think through most of it, Andy’s corrections coming back to me naturally. My wrists are killing me, especially after two hours of floor training, but the pain is good. It means I’m doing the thing. Getting one step closer to being ready for New York in five months.

God, five months. Andy was right. Thisiscrazy.

I go through my Maloney transition, a movement that almost feels like flying backward as I move from the low bar to the high one. My grip isn’t as strong and confident as I’d like it to be when I catch it, but I’m still good. Still safe.

I go through one giant, where I complete a full rotation around the high bar, my posture nowhere near close to perfect. My head’s stretched in a hundred directions at the same time, which means I can’t do a single thing right. I try to focus on tightening my core and making sure my hands are at the right width when I catch the bar after a ray—yet another release movement I used to be able to do in my sleep—but the only thing that fills my head is images of falling. Of not catching the bar the right way and seeing my life flash in front of my eyes. I didn’t believe in that concept until I found myself falling through air and seeing flashes of a little girl pulling at the loose strings of her mom’s jean shorts, begging her to come outside to play, and of a teenager hiding in her closet because her half-brother was back home and had had a drink or twelve, and of a young woman who wanted to win more than anything in the world, because winning would mean it had all been worth it.

Nothing like a near-death experience to make yourself realize how much your life has sucked.

I try to catch my breath as I go through the motions, but the blur of fearful thoughts has thrown me off. As I’m rotating, I lose track of where I am in space, until I can’t tell what’s up and what’s down, or even where I’m supposed to be. Gritting my teeth, I blink, then push through and force myself to transfer to the low bar with a sequence of kip cast and bail, except my proprioception isn’t right. I let go of the bar a millisecond too late, which is enough to mess everything up.

Palms not close enough, it’s the tips of my fingers that snap against the low bar instead as I fall. I hit the mat, which I’d thankfully put under the apparatus, face first, feeling the impact from my neck down to my toes. And don’t even get me started on my fingers.

“Fuck!” I shout across the empty gym, the sound of my voice echoing through the equipment, only silence answering me.

I don’t know how many times this exact outcome has happened to me since I returned to training. A hundred? Two? It starts well. I think I can actually do the motion. And then I mess something up, and I can’t get back to where I was, which leads to me falling one way or another, always afraid that the body part that will hit the ground first is my neck, and that this time, I won’t get as lucky.

Biting my tongue, I flip onto my back and stare at the neon lights as I run through the last minute in my head, all the while massaging my poor bruised fingers.

What would Andy say if he were here?

You got lost inside your head. You don’t listen when you get this way. Your technique was horrible. Your grips were all over the place. You waited too long to get back to it, and now you’re fucked. Fear’s ruling over you now, and there’s no way you’ll ever win a competition again.

I wish I didn’t have to think about what his feedback would be, but I don’t know how else to reflect on my routines. I’m so used to hearing his voice the second I dismount, telling me all the things I did wrong and all the things I didreallywrong, it’s like I’m not me without him.

I’d thought practicing alone wouldn’t be so bad, but I might’ve underestimated this thing.

I scrub a hand over my face, probably smearing chalk all over my skin. At this point, it doesn’t matter since my thighs and simple black leotard are already covered in white too.

This has got to stop. It doesn’t matter that I’m great on the floor or have a solid balance beam routine. There are two types of athletes that can make the US Olympic team. Either you are great all around, which means you have good chances of having competitive scores in all disciplines, or you are the best at one event and have a pretty sure shot at medaling for it. Unfortunately, I’m not option B, which means I need to be good enough in all four disciplines to have a chance at even the Olympic trials. In simple words, if I don’t get my shit together at the uneven bars, I can wave goodbye to the dream I’ve carried with me throughout the years.

Pushing myself to my knees, I crack my neck left and right, staring at my most hated equipment again. At least thingscouldbe worse. Two weeks ago, I didn’t even have a gym to practice at. I had no coach, barely enough money in my bank account to make it through the end of the month, and no opportunity to even try and get back to where I was before my accident.

And then I saw Shelli’s ad, offering a position as a full-time gymnastics coach in a small town in Vermont, and I knew this was my opportunity. I negotiated rights to use the gym whenever it was empty, and she must’ve been desperate enough to find someone, because she agreed right away.

As much as I don’t want to, I get back into my starting position in front of the low bar. I run through the routine in my head again, and just as I gulp air in before starting, the sound of my phone ringing from my bag on the floor section stops me in my tracks. Not many people have my number, and even if people from here did, I don’t see why they would call me this late at night. That can only mean it’s someone from another time zone, which means I have to take it. Might be Josie.

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