10,429 days UNOFFICIAL

P R O L O U G U E

Everything is shrinking, and you have every idea why.

Fall is quickly approaching. Leaves are dropping onto the ground, turning the concrete back into earthly hues of brown and red. sloshing leaves around your feet, you open the front gates of your home, to find that it's 0.34 inches shorter than it should be. Your petite waist bumps against the rusted lock purposely- it's the first time you've been able to do that. Satisfied, you half-waltz into the door, or rather stumbling along with your bags of equipment. At least there was nothing in the driveway you could bump into.

Inside, there is no stereo sound. Not a whiff of your mother's bean soup, not a rattatattap of your father's typewriter. There's only the sound of wind drifting through the open kitchen window, but even the force of nature was half-heartedly blowing around the hot air.

Entering your living room you discover a lot of new things-
1. There are actual wads of cash on the counter.
2. You find out why your father's Ford wasn't there today.
3. You can faintly recall that rent costs $150 per month.
4. It's been costing a lot more since your family stopped paying.
5. Your mother and father's slippers are placed below the stairs; they are upstairs being silent.
6. Gymnastics training costs $160 per month.
7. And above all,

Your aunt Judie owns an attic.
-but in reality, more things were lost than found.

Today, your father writes only failed resumes, not stories. It's amazing how a small girl's dreams can erase all other ambitions.

8.   Your home is about to shrink again.




And finally, after 10,249 days of mindless leaps and twirls, 10,249 days of eat, work and sleep, you're there. You know this because you counted.

What you did not know was that as soon as you stepped out of the plane, you were bombarded. The screams, the flashes, the stomps were so disorienting; you had to clutch onto a railing and close your eyes. You had stepped into a battle zone.

A battle zone of admirers, perhaps. Because as your coach vigorously shook you with rough hands, you flung open your eyes to a wave of people, melting together into one frantic, excited ocean stretching across the airport. Your two teammate-sisters were right beside you, looking energized and oozing with happiness as they waved to the crowd. To people you'd have to impress. To people who have coined you on a million terms; amazing, talented, beautiful, perfect. And maybe they'll be disappointed when you're not.

And perhaps not fainting in front of a swarm of publicity would be helpful with that image as well, you thought. You had heard an awful lot of shutters clicking as you woke from your embarrassing reverie.

Step breathe blink. Focus. Step breathe blink. You do this, think this all throughout the Opening Ceremony, in your hotel, during what the British call 'brunch'. Because at least 12 pairs of eyes will be watching you at any given time. Partly because you can't seem to do anything else. And because your murderous, obsessive training is being stalled, your thoughts tend to wander.

Sipping a latte at the nearest mom-and-pop shop, You use this time to think. About emotion. About loss of money. About your colors, but never about the gold, silver, or bronze, because competition is poison in your eyes. What an irony.

At the dead of the night, while you're 'asleep', you get out of the one bed you share with your teammates and stumble into the bathroom, groping your way around the England-ish furniture fit for, well, the Queen.

In there, you collapse onto patterned tiles and cry and cry and cry, hoping that the hotel spent a portion of its profits on soundproof rooms. The hiccups and sobs come from the lower part of your spine and rumble its way up out of your mouth, bouncing across the walls louder and louder each time. You leave the lights off.

You cry and cry not because of anxiety, but of the need to empty the vat of emotion bubbling inside you.  Finally, your hysteria settles down and you just breathe. Small breaths at first, but then gasping and taking in lungfuls of air, feeling like you have to breathe for several people instead of just one Olympic gymnast.

Breathe for the small, naïve girl of yesterday who was you. Breathe for your two teammate-sisters, who need this comfort oxygen as much as you do.  Breathe for your coach, whose cancer might take away his last one. Breathe for your country, for their future and yours.




breathe.

That's what your coach tells your sister while she is down on all fours, spitting blood onto the waxed gym floor. Your bodies are sweatier than sinners in church from today's practice. The final practice.

"Breathe, Vania!" your coach's gruff voice cries as your other sister pulls up Vania's hair with a straight face. You, being the youngest, was ordered to stand aside, to hold and open a First-Aid box while watching the scenario unfold. Your sister had outdone herself too much today on the bars, not even stopping to take drinks. That was her mistake.

Eventually Vania's coughing ceased, and your coach shoos the two of you away with a flick of his fingers. One of them has a brass ring on it; it wasn't there two weeks ago. The tests came up positive only a week ago, you thought, and paled. You now have another woman to breathe for.

Your other sister gestures you sternly with a nod of her head to the gym area, even though your coach will soon call us back to leave. She's a fighter too. You follow her, because so are you.

Forcing yourself to practice as if you had seen nothing, because an empty mind is essential to good workouts.  Jump, twist, look, breathe. Jump, twist, look, breathe.
You can only anticipate the day when you'll empty out so much, and accidentally let your soul slip.




If the stadium was any more alive, it could grow legs and walk away.

It seems like a very real possibility for you, beholding the massive structure through murky bus windows on a cloudy day with wide, alert eyes.  The glass was cool as you pressed your forehead onto the window pane, deep in giddy, half-conscious thought, your mind dizzy reviewing and reviewing strategies. You crossed your arms over your chest and shuddered, even though your vibrant jacket kept you warm, with you and your jittery sisters packed into a single bus seat creating more than enough body warmth. But of course, body temperature didn't always have to do with weather.

  Once in a while you would cast your eyes outwards, just to get another glimpse at that beast of a building. Outer panels of windows and glass glimmered on its surface with a lovely brilliance of its own without the help of sunlight. The structure itself was undeniably abstract to your mature woman brain, and was more than 10 times the architectural wonder than all the houses in your country combined.

But your 12 year-old, uncontrolled self came up with a much more flaunting description.  Like a giant, spiked monster had exploded outwards, was the strange comparison you had mindlessly conjured up.  You looked up and smiled faintly. Your little joke was a nice trace of fun, and fun is precious and rare to receive at your age and situation.

Your eyes now closed, you felt the bus give a little jolt as your head lolled over to one side of the window. The bus had stopped right in front of a small doorway. There were no cheering admirers anywhere nearby, no mindless gabber. Your sisters, who had been swapping nervous, abrupt conversation for the entire ride, are now completely silent as they stood up and allowed the back rows to exit first. You should be standing and sizing up your competition, you know, but you don't want the hype of the games to poison your mind.

And what's the point? There's no real blood-and-bone rivalry between anybody, it's all televised. Some of the only real desires are to make a name, to go home without being purged by screeching fans, and to win against yourself.

And that is going to be tough, because you are very unpredictable.