Part 1-- The Fire
I was 10 years old when I made the executive, personal decision that I was fat. I had been walking to the playground of my elementary school with my bright blonde messy ponytail swinging back and forth with the same rhythm as my backpack hanging down to the tops of my knees. My backpack was always twice my size- I was always tiny for my age. On that day, though, I looked down at my thighs and decided that I didn’t like what I saw. My figure skating had started to take off, my body started the process of evolving into womanhood, and my tiny frame was growing into the muscular, athletic build that it is today. “My thighs,” I thought, “they touch.” The day before, I had stumbled on an MTV Episode of True Life: I’m Getting Plastic Surgery. One of the women they followed was getting liposuction on her inner thighs because she hated the fact that they touched when she walked. Even then, I knew plastic surgery was something I’d never be interested in, but I couldn’t help but compare myself to the woman on the TV screen. This was before the “thigh gap” epidemic hit the mainstream, but my 10-year-old self already hated the body that she was living in.
I’ve carried this much-too-big backpack, this burden, with me all my life.
I’ve always struggled with my body and trying to have a healthy relationship with food. My participation in aesthetically focused sports and activities—figure skating, dancing and cheerleading—absolutely played a role in putting a magnifying glass on my body as it has evolved and changed over the years.
While I’ve carried with me a deep sense of insecurity much of my life, it didn’t start having a profound impact until my adult life when I made a comeback in figure skating.
I had gained a lot of weight in college, during my time at UNLV. I was drinking heavily, eating fast food, and spending my days in bed. I isolated myself from my friends and the walls outside of my Vegas apartment. My physical activity was minimal, and my self-loathing and deep sense of sadness was at an all-time high. Coming from an athletic and active background, I couldn’t have been farther away from myself and happiness. My years at UNLV are blanketed with a murky and cynical lens—although there were some good times, it was a dark period. After I left college, I didn’t know what to do. I was uninspired. I was lost. I knew deep down that I wasn’t supposed to live a life that was designed for me- finish school, get a job, get married, have kids, buy a house. I wanted to live by my own plan, but I had no idea where to start and no confidence to get there.
I left Vegas and moved home. I got a job as the Head Coach of my high school’s cheerleading program and took on the arduous task of rebuilding the program after a series of bad coaches and advisors. What else was I supposed to do?
A few months later, I got a boyfriend.
He was an addict.
When we started dating, it was mostly healthy addictions as he was in his recovery process. His addiction was the gym, as he came from an athletic background and was a personal trainer. His addiction drew me in, and the gym became a place we spent a lot of time together. At the time I wasn’t necessarily concerned with losing weight; I just did everything I could to spend time with him. I started to lose weight. I wasn’t really trying. I was getting noticed, for my body, and I had a new-found confidence in myself. I had a new relationship with my shrinking body.
Then my boyfriend started to slip back into his addiction. Not the gym this time.
I know people talk about rock bottoms. To me, it’s different than a dark period. Dark periods have glimpses of light. Rainbows after the rain. Laughter AND tears. Rock bottoms have no hope. When we hit those rock bottoms, there’s no treading water, and there’s no hope for floating, It’s a downward pull with a current so aggressive that there’s no use trying to swim in the other direction. It’s a sinking with nothing catching you on the way down.
He did whatever he could to make my world shrink, to turn everyone in my circle against me. It can seem that way when you’re at the mercy of an addict, that they will do the best they can to bring you down with them as a product of their addiction. Honestly, from the place I’m standing right now, I can say that I have never had a self-worth so low in my life as those couple of months. I have never felt more ashamed to be in my own skin. Looking down at the big picture of this time, as we do to make sense of it all, there are two big truths. One, this relationship left its mark, trauma with a capital “T” when it comes to relationships. Two, it reinforced the belief that I was only lovable if I looked a certain way, and the only thing I could control was how my body looked.
I don’t want to get too esoteric or “woo-woo” here, but the universe will do whatever it can to put you on the path you’re meant to be on. It starts with a pebble. If this pebble, or nudge isn’t paid attention to, it’s going to move to something greater. It’s going to move onto a rock. If that’s not enough, it will throw you the biggest boulder to knock you on your ass to get on the path you’re meant to be on.
My boulder? It brought me somewhere I never guessed it would.
It brought me back to the ice.
I started skating when I was 9 years old. I got the idea that I needed to skate from watching Kristi Yamaguchi in the 1992 Olympics, and my cousin, Richelle, who was a skater. I was enamored by her competition videos and encouraged by the few times we skated together. Starting figure skating was the product of sheer persistence and begging my parents to let me skate, which was difficult since the closest rink was 40 minutes away. I won in the end, and I proved it was the right thing to do since I progressed extremely rapidly. There was no doubt that I had a gift. I relied on my natural talent as the years passed on, only to find when I hit puberty tackling double jumps cannot be done without hard work. I didn’t want to work that hard. I wanted to choreograph programs instead of working on jumps and those moves in the field (Ew!). I would say things like, “Why do I want to do something over and over again when the outcome is the same—wet tights and a sore body from clashing with the ice?” My frustration and fear of jumping was only magnified after I broke my tailbone, twice, within a 3-month time period. When people ask me if it was painful, I can still wince and remember what it felt like, even after all these years. I remember, vividly, walking down the halls of my middle school to class and stopping in my tracks because the pain was unbearable. I think that memory is still clear because it’s the moment I gave up. It was time to move on.
Just like my skates that I kept in the back of my car during my entire time at UNLV, the ice and skating always had a space reserved in the back of my mind. It was at the top of my “should” list for almost a decade. I started thinking about skating again when one of my cheerleaders I coached was also a figure skater. She skated at the rink that I was raised in and even took from the drill-sergeant-skating-skills coach, Steve. My world felt small, and now I know why she was supposed to come into my life. She put skating back into my periphery, but I didn’t know then how important that would be down the road.
I felt the pull then, more than ever. I was ready to get back on the ice.
I told my Mom that I wanted to skate, mostly because I know she was scared for me as she’d never see me sink that deep; I was never the girl who couldn’t get out of bed.
Figure skating has a special place for skaters and their mothers, tied together as a team through the enormous cost, practices, competitions, dance classes, and car pools. While I was growing up on the ice, she was the backbone behind every trophy and crushed velvet skating dress. As a kid, though, I didn’t appreciate it. I could not stand being hassled to practice my Moves in the Field when I was perfectly content choreographing programs to everyone else’s music. I don’t blame her, though. I was always on my own agenda.
Mom came with me that day. It was a pretty symbolic moment walking into the rink with her, over a decade later. There was so much sadness in my heart, but she held my hand as I stepped back into an old, familiar place.
There’s something to be said about the smell of an ice rink. Those who haven’t grown up on the ice might call it a stench, but when I walked into those doors— it smelled like home. The crisp, cold, combination of wet blades, cleaning products and sweaty hockey pads seeped into my nose, and for the first time in a while, I was a kid again. I didn’t feel the pressures of life coming at me. It brought me right back to the beginning of my childhood skating career as I wheeled my skates in the rink, wearing my favorite practice dress and matching scrunchie, excited to get on the ice and get carried away in the music and movement.
It had been 12 years since I had laced up my skates; I couldn’t help but think about how overdue that day was. I stepped on the ice, glided somewhat gracefully a few times although I had felt more like Bambi trying to get my legs under me. It took me all but a minute to hit the ground, (or the ice) running. The first lap felt strange but familiar, like an old friend you don’t skip a beat with. Time had taken away the comfort of those first laps, but as my legs and heart started burning, I could feel the pilot light in my consciousness turn on. It was ready for the fire that had been waiting to be lit again after all those years. An hour later I was kicked off the ice by the Zamboni, and I sat down, red-faced and frost bitten, to take off my skates. In that moment, I realized I had forgotten everything. The only thing that existed in that hour was the ice. “Wow”, I thought. “That must mean something.”
I came back the next day.
And the next.
Before I knew it, I was a figure skater again.
At the time I was so desperate for something, anything, to validate me. I had developed a belief from my relationship that I was a terrible, worthless person, but I could still throw myself into the air on foot-knives, and that had given me a tiny morsel of self-worth. I found the slightest bit of healing in my gapping worthiness wound. I found it in the hope, the possibility, that skating--could bring me back to life.
I don’t want to paint the picture that it was all sunshine and rainbows--that skating made me forget everything and completely fixed my life at the time. It didn’t. It was really, really hard. I got frustrated when my body couldn’t do what it used to. I got angry when fear kept me from getting most of my jumps back.
But it gave me something to live for. It started to give me faith. Mostly in myself.
After a few months I had started taking from an old coach who had become impressed with my improvements in such a short amount of time. My strong, adult body had a new sense of power and speed that wasn’t there before—I had become a better skater than I was when I was 14. Not only did Coach Steve help me harness a part of my skating that would ultimately become my secret weapon, but he was responsible for putting an idea in my head that would essentially change my life.
“You know, Amanda. They have competitions for adults. They cater to all levels, and I know it can get really competitive. I haven’t taught an adult at your level; it’s been mostly beginners, but the more advanced levels have some amazing skaters. They even have their own National Championships.” Then he said something that got the attention of that pilot light.
“You could win Nationals.”
My eyes got wide, and I felt chills down my spine.
Boom.