Authors: Joe Putignano
I won the state competition, and it meant everything to me because Coach Dan was there to see me take the first-place medal. I was still embarrassed competing in front of him, because I knew in my heart I could have done better. I knew I could have been a true champion, and now I was only a suggestion of that, a mere shadow of what I could have been.
The next level was regional competitions, consisting of all New England states. Chris and I were constantly neck and neck, and I was afraid he would win this one. He was much stronger than me, and resembled a body builder more than a gymnast. He also worked harder, but I felt I had more passion and had sacrificed more. I think my coach was eager to watch the story unfold, to see which one of us would win at that level.
During warm-up for our third event, Chris injured his ankle coming off the vault. He had to withdraw from the competition, ensuring we would never know who the better gymnast was. I won that regional championship, but it never felt like it was a true fight, both because Chris could not compete against me and because I had held back on some skills I would have tried in an effort to highlight my strengths. This made me hate the fact that I won. Although I knew my choice to play it safe was how you played “the game,” I wasn’t in it for the game as much as for the pleasure of the beatings. I chose to take the gold rather than to go all out and potentially screw up.
The regional win meant that I was now qualified to enter the Junior Olympic National Competition in Oakland. We would be gone for one week, with one day free to tour California. On our way to Oakland I revisited my daydream of not getting on the return flight and running away. The palm trees gave me refuge from my thoughts, and it was good to see a different environment. I thought that if I could just get away from my home, then maybe I would have a fighting chance at life.
We spent our “free” day seeing California before getting ready for our competition against the country’s top gymnasts. Practicing in their midst was pure intimidation, and our entire team felt the pressure. They all appeared confident, mature, and ready to deliver, while we all quietly fell to pieces. I don’t know if we were tired from the trip or just overwhelmed by the reality of the competition, but as a group, we did not want to compete. Yet we had no choice. We had to perform; we had worked too hard to pull out now. I realized that I had peaked too early in the season, and let myself be devoured like a small fish in a shark tank. I was all over the place during the first two events, and my performance was awful as I changed routines on the fly instead of going for solid skills I knew.
In my normal state of competing, I became deaf to sound. My mind would become a place of absolute quiet as I located the warrior within, but now, for the first time, I heard the chaos around me, and the champion never stepped forth. I couldn’t summon him. I drowned in the noise of the crowd, the sounds of other gymnasts as they met their marks, and the canned music in the background. My warrior got lost in that sea of sound.
To make matters worse, I fumbled my best event, the floor exercise. On my last tumbling pass I walked into the skill, giving up on the difficult movement and doing something basic. I don’t know why I did that, and as I left the floor I heard my dreams shatter. I couldn’t look my coach or teammates in the eye. I was so disappointed in myself, knowing how important that competition was to me . . . and to them. I had to perform exceptionally well there to show collegiate coaches that I was a good gymnast and a tough competitor, but I blew it. It was devastating.
If I didn’t have a motivation to kill myself before, I had just found one. I was nothing. Empty and completely confused by the sport I loved, betrayed by the grace and gift of gymnastics, I wanted to cry, but didn’t. Like a statue, I just sat there, solid and expressionless. In that moment, I surrendered my sword. I dropped the blade that was perfectly carved by years of training. I gave my power back to the heavens, saying, “I don’t want this fucking gift anymore; take it
back, because I cannot handle the responsibility and demands of it.” I couldn’t endure another minute of this agony, and even though I had no idea what I would do with my life, I knew that I could not remain a gymnast.
I was filled with self-hatred, and, as my animosity burrowed deeper into my bones, I had to find the warrior in my soul so I could kill him. I knew if I could exorcise this longing to be a champion from my body, it would take the obsession and desire with it. If it left, maybe I would have some peace; maybe I would get a whole night’s sleep without the fear of not performing to perfection. I had had enough.
I gave my power back to the moon and the sun, and forfeited all the golden prayers I had ever sent into the sky. In that moment, in a random stadium in California, an absolute darkness took over the space where my warrior champion had been. The passion I had felt so deeply for gymnastics died. The darkness and I became one, with the Spirit of Movement as our witness. My teammates and competitors watched me walk away from an entire life’s work, as my day turned into night. The moon would be my sun, and I felt the darkness blacken my eyes. I watched the rest of the competition unfold and smiled as the newfound dark peacefulness warmed my soul.
M
YDRIASIS IS AN EXCESSIVE DILATION OF THE PUPIL DUE TO TRAUMA, DISEASE, OR DRUG USE
. N
ORMALLY THE PUPIL DILATES IN THE DARK AND CONSTRICTS IN THE LIGHT TO IMPROVE VISION AT NIGHT AND PROTECT THE RETINA FROM SUNLIGHT DAMAGE DURING THE DAY
. A
MYDRIATIC PUPIL REMAINS EXCESSIVELY LARGE EVEN IN A BRIGHT ENVIRONMENT AND IS SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS A BLOWN PUPIL
. P
UPILS MAY ALSO DILATE DURING TIMES OF FEAR TO SEE EVERYTHING MORE CLEARLY, ALLOWING FOR A BETTER EMERGENCY RESPONSE
.
I didn’t get support from my parents when it was time for me to choose a college. They were deeply involved in the restaurant and their own lives. I repeatedly asked them for help, but they seemed confused by the concept of picking out a school. They didn’t go to college and didn’t understand the application, registration, and financial-aid process. Despite my relinquished warrior, I still had a small desire to compete in collegiate gymnastics. I thought that competing in college could be fun, and if I could keep the seriousness of the sport at bay, or rather my need to be perfect, then perhaps it could be my ticket in.
Coach Dan was a Staunton College alumnus and two of my teammates were going there in the fall, so I applied there. But my SAT scores were too low, and when I received my rejection letter I got drunk and punched holes in my bedroom walls. I hadn’t applied to any other colleges and had no idea what to do. I had attended a
gymnastics camp at Staunton when I was younger and knew the head coach, Paul. He was good friends with Coach Dan and had watched me compete for years. He called and said he wanted me on the team. And if I really wanted to get in, I should enroll at a junior college and transfer, showing Staunton that I could handle serious college work.
City Community College was the joke of our high school, considered the college for losers and burnouts. But if I didn’t go, there would be no way to get into Staunton. I finally surrendered and enrolled at the College for Rejects. My parents’ restaurant business had been faltering for some time, and they were hardly bringing in any income. Without family financial help, I had to depend on state financial aid and student loans.
I worked full-time teaching gymnastics to kids to pay for my car and school. I tried to inspire them to love the sport, but it was the most emotionally challenging time of my life. I had no time to train myself, and training for gymnastics was all I knew. Even though my Olympic dream had sunk, I still couldn’t live without the movement, without flipping and being upside down, but heaven took away my wings and I was now a civilian like everyone else. To teach gymnastics and not train was agonizing—I felt like a wingless bird watching others do what I loved through my directions. I gave them the map and design to fly, and I hated it. I resented them and myself.
During that time I pierced every possible part of my body and dyed my hair a new color every week. I looked poisonous and deadly, and I wished my stare could turn people to stone. I didn’t make any friends at City. Smiling would ruin the dangerous and tough exterior that my years of agony had allowed me to develop. My scowl was the glory I wanted to show the world, the flesh of hate and pain. As I walked around the campus, going from class to class, the words “freak” and “weirdo” floated past my ears like an ice-cold breeze. Hearing those words made me smile inside.
I tried to find consolation by the ocean, to keep my soul on the planet by watching the moon’s powerful reflection shimmering off the water. I always ended up feeling like a human shell on the wet sand. I don’t know what kept me alive. I stopped drinking and smoking pot again
because I didn’t have anyone to do it with and was doing better in school as a result. The whole time I kept two paths of choice in front of me—suicide or success. I believed either choice was better than my pathetic existence.
I embraced the moments Tara would come home from college for vacation. I wrote her often, trying to stay involved in her life. At the end of her first semester, she returned home for winter break. I picked her up in my still heatless car, and then we sat in front of her house. She had the same charm and laughter that I had fallen victim to years ago, but something seemed different that night. Tara, the one human being who could get me to do anything, pulled a piece of tinfoil with the tiniest piece of paper in it from her pocket. It was two little specks of paper. I thought to myself,
What is that? It can’t be a drug, it’s too small
.
Before I could ask, she said, “It’s acid. You have to do this.”
That was all the permission I needed, and I put it on my tongue. I had never done acid before and considered it one of those drugs that I probably should never take. We had all learned in health class about the bad trips that could destroy the brain forever, leading to a life spent in mental institutions. I didn’t know what to expect and didn’t think something so small could be that powerful. We drove to our friend Dana’s house as the paper dissolved.
Dana was watching TV and didn’t know we had taken acid. We decided to keep it a secret and pretended to look really stoned from pot. The effects of the acid still hadn’t hit and I began to doubt it would work, so we started smoking pot and drinking beer. I watched the shadows in the corners of Dana’s room, trying to see if I could feel something inside me change, but nothing happened.
Then my concentration was broken by something that was said on TV and it tickled me into a fit of uncontrollable, volcanic laugher. It was laughter so strong that it rattled the deepest places of my body. I became the translation of laughter, its muse and catalyst, and there was no stopping it. I glanced over to see if Tara had heard the same thing and saw her contorted into a fetal position, shaking and laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. Dana laughed, but the laughter didn’t
consume her the way it did us. When I looked at Dana she seemed to slip into a different time than we were in, and I could only see Tara, who shone so brightly I couldn’t stop looking at her.
I was plugged into an electrical outlet with a beautiful, Earthlike rhythm coursing through my veins, not wanting to sit still, yet only sitting felt comfortable. Dana still didn’t know we had taken acid, and I had a difficult time acting like someone who had only drunk and smoked pot. If the effects got any stronger, it would be impossible to hide, and it did get stronger.
The room changed, and colors I’d never seen before splintered into the shadows as patterns transformed my thoughts into abstract designs. I felt whole as I became the final piece in the puzzle. I felt connected to each breath, my own and Tara’s, and had a profound awareness of the great artist of creation. I started tasting individual colors, falling into a vortex of rainbows. Every object in the room had developed a depth and meaning beyond the three-dimensional world. I had never seen life from this perspective, and felt a deep sense of caring for the Earth we lived on. I cradled the world in my hands, like the strong grip of a tree, and sensed a connection to its roots. Did I really just drop acid, or was I transported into a sacred room in heaven and given the secrets to life?
It was now clear that the three of us weren’t on the same plane, and Dana asked what we had taken. Without the confining, concealing, and burdensome restraints of my past life, I exploded with a new freedom. “Acid!” Dana was getting mad, and we had to go somewhere else because we knew her anger would ruin the opening of our heaven-sent gift.
We opened the front door and stepped into the fresh winter air. A chill of ice kissed our warm skin as we took a deep hit of frozen, crisp oxygen into our lungs. Our cells drank in the perfectly delicious night haze; we swallowed the night sky, and digested the great constellations. We laughed until the stars fell from our bodies, the kind of laughter only a child understands, that vanishes at adolescence and never returns. Tara’s black pools of dilated pupils mirrored my own, and we melded into each other’s thoughts.
We got into the giant machine of my car, and though I was able to drive, I couldn’t remember how to change gears. The stick shift felt the same way Dana looked—mechanical and not part of our newfound universe. I tried leaving her driveway, but had to dodge massive colors of fabric draped in space. I couldn’t tell what was or wasn’t real as I led that metal monster along the yellow line dividing the street in half. The car wasn’t real; we weren’t real; only our laughter existed and blinded us from seeing the road ahead that led to our destinies.