A Wolf Dressed in Sheep's Clothing
“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.”
Recovery is a painful, loaded word that I cringe when I use because it makes me feel like I failed at this thing called “mental health”. I was supposed to be the tough one, right? Take recovery, make it an adverb, recovered, and voila. The stigma drops. This failure has been conquered with just two simple letters to change its meaning. That’s what’s sticky about eating disorders. It’s easy to oscillate between the two, doing a little dance between the same word in different tenses. I am both in recovery and recovered. I am healed and still healing. It’s the desire to heal that is unwavering.
Have you ever heard about the wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing? I’ve always joked that figure skaters were really just wolves who happened to sparkle, so generally speaking outsiders perceived them as sheep. It’s easy to underestimate an athlete whose uniform is a sparkly, elastic, and sometimes more elaborate and striking than designer dresses you see on the runway. Probably just as expensive, but we don’t have to go there. We are beautiful, graceful, soft and fragile. I know the story of the wolf disguised as sheep is biblical, so let’s put that reference to the side. The Bible’s interpretation is not aligned with how I see it. Instead of fearing the wolf, I see the wolf as resilient. The wolf is a fighter. Figure skaters are wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing, and every one of us has a strong will, full of grit and tenacity; it’s how we survive. Ice is slippery, and it gives us no choice but to become a fighter because we fall more times than we land.
There’s this one time I competed at Nationals in Salt Lake City and wound up in the hospital before I skated.
It was before the first Open round of my Freeskate program, basically just a warm-up for the “big show”, the Championship round I qualified and earned my place for. I woke up that morning of my Open Freeskate, peered open the blinds and looked out of the hotel window to see the snow-capped mountains of Park City in the distance. The snow had excited me when I first arrived, but it didn’t that morning. I felt nothing but dread. Competition day means I usually wake up with a gnawing in my belly, heightened senses, and adrenaline starting to course its way through my veins; it takes all the zen-master training I’ve practiced to stay calm and collected. On competition days I’ll pair the nervous excitement with a fierce look in my eye—figure skater talk for “game face”. But we don’t have a game to play. There’s no play book. There’s no goal to score. We only come in contact with our real opponents in passing--one gets off the ice and another gets on. The only game we really have to play is with our minds.
As the white caps glistened in the nearby mountains and the few inches of snow on the ground melted in the morning sun, I felt like the snow. Slowly melting away, without control. As the heat, the anxiety builds, so does the ability to be strong enough to stand. There’s no firm ground when you’re standing on mush. I woke up that morning feeling like melting snow- like the grim reaper had come to cut down my confidence and determination, which I replaced with doubt and trepidation I felt the second I opened my eyes from a restless night’s sleep. This was going to be a difficult one.
I got ready for practice ice, which is usually just 20 minutes of easy skating to get my feet under me. No big deal. But I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking as I applied my mascara.
Why was I so nervous?
It was 2015, the season after I won Nationals. I moved up a level. I worked hard in the off-season and proudly graduated from Gold to Masters. I finally conquered a few double jumps, my double salchow being a big piece of my jump arsenal, which I needed to compete at the higher level. At the start of the season I had one goal: qualify for Nationals. To qualify, I had to place in the top 4 in the Masters division at Pacific Coast Sectionals in Las Vegas. Leading up to Sectionals, I had never worked so hard in my life. I had been even more prepared to compete than I was the year I won Nationals. At Sectionals, I was fierce and on fire. I put down one of the best programs I had ever skated on competition ice that day, but I was missing the more difficult jumps. My program was not as difficult as the other competitors, and they were landing double jump after double jump, which was sure to rack up technical points. I was the rookie who depended on solid, clean programs, skating skills, artistry and spins. In this division, usually that’s not enough. They announced the results over the loudspeaker since Sectionals doesn’t have the scoring system technology for live scoring. The announcer started with 4th place as I weaved my fingers together, put my elbows on my knees and my chin on my hands. It wasn’t me. My name wasn’t announced for 4th.
Or 3rd.
Or 2nd.
By then my knuckles were white and I looked at my Mom with sad eyes and said, “I didn’t make it.” She looked as disappointed as I was.
“In first place, with a score of 41.87 from the Channel Islands Figure Skating Club.”
…wait that’s MY CLUB.
“Amanda Blackwell.”
I buckled into the stands, my hands catching me on the way down. Part of me hadn’t registered that it was my name being called. I knew it was me, but it felt like I was watching the situation unfold from above. Elation. Everyone around me turned to watch my reaction as they smiled and clapped for me and this unexpected outcome. I was having, yet another, Miss America moment, as I did a combination of laughing, crying, and covering my mouth with my right hand. It was finally sinking in what had just happened. I won.
I did not only qualify for Nationals, but I won Sectionals. I wasn’t supposed to win! I moved up a level and I was supposed to be clawing my way up from the middle of the pack to get that 4th spot.
The gift and the hurdle that comes from winning a competition like Sectionals is it gives you a little bug that I like to call expectation. There’s a reason why they say, “It’s lonely at the top.”
And lonely at the top I was. While preparing for Nationals, I was a mental basket case from this self-imposed expectation, but I was also hungry. An emotional, ravenous, roller coaster. There were so many tears. My headspace and lack of nourishment caused my jumps to become inconsistent. I was missing “my levels” (or points) in my spins when I ran my program. In my mind at the time, I separated the two: my body struggles from my skating struggles, not thinking they could be related. I didn’t realize how much of my energy I used up for fighting my appetite instead of using it to focus on my skating. I lowered my calorie expenditure after Sectionals, again, so I could look even more “lean” when I got to Nationals. I started taking water pills to drop excess water weight in case I had gained weight from my ravenous appetite. Hungry and emotional is what that month of training looked like.
Given my low energy, training was hard. I still depended on my work ethic to carry me through, but with a starving body it was beginning to test me. I had been running double run-throughs multiple times a week; meaning, I would run my program, twice in a row, without stopping. That’s give or take 7.5 minutes of all-out effort with jumps and spins. To put this in perspective, a hockey player’s shift is usually between 30 seconds and 1 minute. I basically did 7 shifts in a row, without stopping. The point is—I was doing whatever I could to take on the elevation, an additional challenge I would be facing in Salt Lake City. When you compete at altitude, you have to prepare. I was prepared.
But when I got to Salt Lake, I couldn’t breathe.
On practice ice, every time I skated a lap to warm up, it felt like I ran an entire program.
I got to the rink to compete in my Open Freeskate and still felt “off”. I put my skates on in the locker room, and I wanted to run in the other direction. Walking down that long, dark hallway to the ice is usually the part that I love the most.
The tension builds as my skates move, one in front of the other, and it feels like a scene in a sports movie. My coach is next to me, my dress is sparkling, hair is in a perfect bun, and my gaze is directly forward. I’m focused and ready. But this time, it felt like a death march. It was so overwhelming that I even snapped a picture of it.
The second we turned the corner and saw the quiet stillness of the ice before the battle, it felt like someone was strangling me. I said to Cindy, “I can’t breathe.” I crouched down in the corner by the Kiss and Cry, closed my eyes, and the black felt heavy as it began to sprinkle with white dots. My lungs constricted, my heart was in overdrive, and I put my head in my hands. My face felt hot. I really couldn’t breathe. I tried to center my focus on it. “Breathe in...1,2,3. Breathe out...1,2,3.”
As it worsened, and I was gasping for air, one inhale and exhale at a time, I withdrew from my event. Cindy and my Mom took me to the ER.
The doctors in the ER diagnosed me with an asthma attack—but I knew better. While my asthma worsened in Salt Like, I should have been diagnosed with an asthma and anxiety attack. My anxiety levels were elevated, and it’s likely because I was having trouble breathing in the first place. What came first, though? The chicken or the egg? Current, honest, Amanda will put some emphasis on the anxiety, with the cause being a little friend called expectation.
I was coming in as Sectional champion. I was after an unobtainable body standard. The damn of me “holding it together” finally burst.
In the ER, Coach Cindy looked over and asked my Mom, “Do you think she will be able to compete in Championship tomorrow? I don’t see how she can possibly compete.”
“If there’s one thing you don’t know about Amanda by now, it’s that something like this won’t stop her. There’s nothing that’s going to keep that girl from competing,” my Mom answered.
She was right. Nothing would stop me from competing the next day.
There I was the next morning, dressed, hair in a bun, make-up on and ready to compete.
The 4-minute warm-up for me is usually solid. I am consistent. I can handle the pressure. I come out of the gates with shaky legs but get the nerves out with a few solid strokes and slaloms. I go through the motions, just like every day, one check mark at a time. Crossovers, backwards Russian stroking, a few skating drills to get my knees bending and feel the ice (thank you Steve), back scratch spin, warm up combination spin, do a few spirals and some warm-up single jumps. I skate back to Cindy to grab water, and she gives me a side eye because I’m still struggling to breathe. She knows I’m struggling to breathe. “Axel?” she says. I nod and skate away. Cindy’s demeanor with me changed that day. Her typical nurturing, encouraging and sweet personality became stern and to the point. She was literal. Check the boxes. Do your job. She was the boss but became my pillar to lean on. She intuitively felt that I needed something, that I needed her for stability. I didn’t need a cheerleader, I needed solid ground. Our communication became non-verbal, and her gaze told me everything I needed to know.
The Axel was shaky- I look over at her and she nods, her way of saying, to a perfectionist like myself, “leave it”. Time for my double salchow. I skate into it like it is in my program, take off and…I’m lying on the ice. “Oh god, no,” I thought. “When was the last time I fell on a double salchow?”
I look at Cindy across the arena, with a terrified look on my face because I’d let my mind win this silly little game. It was running amuck about a jump I can do in my sleep.
She cues me to take a deep breath in, using her arms as she scoops the air up, and pushes it down like she’s a conductor in the orchestra of my own private, mental, melt-down. “Again,” she mouths as she sings the timing to me. “Up, in, and out.” Her arms pull in like she’s giving herself a hug, the jump position, and sharply comes out to hit a “t”, marking the landing position.
“Skaters, you have one-minute left in your warm-up,” the announcer says over the loud speaker.
Panic.
Okay, okay. “Up, in, and out” I say to myself as I skate around the corner and set myself up to try again.
I fall.
This time I notice everyone in the crowd shriek. “Oooh!,” I hear as some of my friends verbally wince, and I could hear it all. They know I don’t fall in a warm-up.
“Come on Amanda!”
“You can do it!”
“Skaters, your warm-up is complete. Please exit the ice.”
I skate to the boards and make eye contact with Cindy. She nods and says, “It’s going to be okay!”
It didn’t feel like I was going to be okay. There was one skater between my warm-up and when I skated. I had about 5 minutes before “go time”. I paced back and forth down the hall way, shaking my arms and fingers at my side, and closed my eyes to visualize a perfect double salchow that I didn’t deliver on the warm-up.
“Okay!” says Cindy at the end of program before mine. “Let’s do this.”
We go through our ritual. I take off my jacket, my guards. I face the boards and lift my right skate behind me, so Cindy can wipe the excess ice and grime. Then the left foot. The door is opened for me by the Ice Monitor, and I step on the ice.
I sharply inhale as I put one foot over the boards, and then the next foot follows. I glide forward and do a few small laps and waltz jumps in the corner while I wait for the previous skater’s score. The announcer’s voice comes over the loud speaker to announce the previous competitor’s score, and I skate over to Cindy. Normally, it’s a light-hearted moment. But today, it was serious. She took my hands in hers, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “One element at a time. You’ve done this a million times. Breathe.” In the video, you can see me take one of the biggest gulps of mountain air I could muster, and skate away to one of the most nerve-wracking skates of my life.
The rest is a blur.
All I can remember in that moment, when they announced my name, was hearing the warmest welcome from the crowd made up of my friends and competitors. I stopped, center ice, looked up to the sky and said “hi” to my late coach Deanne like I always do before I begin. I got into my starting position, then looked every single judge in the eye, all 14 of them, before my music started. I was telling them, through my fierce gaze, that I wouldn’t go down without a fight.
My music started, my muscle memory kicked in, and all I was thinking about was breathing. As I skated into my double salchow, my opening jump, I saw myself in the reflection off the boards and laughed. Usually in practice I look in the reflection to see if anyone is in my way. It’s a good way to see my blind spot. No one was in my way, but myself. I did this every day, and I could do it now.
I took off, pulled in, and…landed.
There was a roar the second my right skate hit that back outside edge. I felt the rumble inside myself as relief washed over me, but also heard it through my ears. I wasn’t alone out there. I had the support from everyone in my skating family, rooting me on. They kept me going.
And I. freaking. landed. it!!
I ended up skating a clean program. It was both mentally and physically the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my skating career. I slammed my arms down right on the crescendo of the music and hit my ending pose. It had felt like a double run-through. I took my bows, holding my hand to my heart when I faced the crowd and bowed my chin to them mouthing “thank you”; they were as much a part of that skate as I was. When I skated back to the boards to get off the ice, I leaned over, put my hands on my knees, and let the momentum carry me. I had no air left.
I respectfully placed 3rd. I wrote on my Instagram that day with a picture of me biting my new bronze hardware:
“Name the obstacle, I climbed it—including a visit to the hospital yesterday. Masters National Bronze Medalist. Surpassed all my goals, and then some. Won’t go down without a fight!”
I will never go down without a fight.
I know what I write is painful and over-the-top transparent, and it’s easy to feel concern when someone writes about pain in this way. I’ve received some amazing messages from people I didn’t expect to follow my story, and it warms my heart to hear their concern. They ask if “I’m okay” and it takes me a second to realize how dark some of my writing is-- but how different my life is today.
The wolf in me can conquer anything, including my mind, my mental health and ultimately-- my eating disorder. I’m not immune to the obsessive behavior and anguish that an eating disorder brings, but it no longer runs my life. It tries to, and often, but I still persist. Some days it wins, but most days it doesn’t. I’m walking into a future that doesn’t revolve around the words “food”, “body” or “disorder”, at least how it relates to me. I’m stepping into this place called freedom.
My brain went into battle with itself during my healing process, just like it did before I competed. This wasn’t my first rodeo, and the wolf in me had to be relentless to get better. I dug deep, then dug my way out. I did the freaking work.
The recovery happens slowly, a slow burn, just as the onset does. It happens when I walk by a mirror one day, and don’t feel the need to check myself out. It’s not all the time, but it’s also not every time. It happens when I wear a sports bra to work out, even if I’m bloated. It’s throwing the old, smaller, clothes away. It happens when I bake some cookies and actually eat them—because life is too short. Eat the damn cookie.
But most of all, it’s in the moments.
It’s that one time I caught the biggest wave of my life, over my head, and rode all the way to the shore. I hopped off my board as I laughed off the adrenaline, the happy chemicals released and felt the vibration of bliss as it poured into my blood. I took a look around. The sun was setting on the horizon, the fog nestled on the mountains behind Hanalei and waterfalls littered between the clouds. There were greens and blues and oranges and yellows, and each color had a story to tell. Each color belonged on this canvas of a landscape that I decided I could call home. I tilted my head towards the sky, closed my eyes and said, “thank you”. It didn’t matter what my body looked like. What mattered is what it could do.
Whenever we face obstacles or hardships, the best part is the ascension. The best part of my 2015 Nationals wasn’t that I came home with a medal around my neck, it was the fact that I faced adversity and conquered it. I can do hard things. You can do hard things. We can do hard things. We can conquer those mind demons and there’s going to be nothing that can stop us.
I might look like I’m dressed in sheep’s clothing, even without the skating dress, but underneath all the “fluff”-- lives a wolf. She is strength. She’s a fighter.
So, when people ask, “Are you okay?”
I smile and say, simply, “Yes.”
And I really mean it.
