Why I'm Glad I'm Not Skating

It’s been a really long time since I’ve skated. Over a month. And the days keep passing by since I last laced up my favorite shoes. Yes it is sad and yes I do miss it but at the same time I don’t.

I long for the days when I could spend two plus hours on the ice with the wind in my face or hearing the ripping sound of my edges on the freshly cut surface. The rink is home and always will be. But at the same time I’m glad that I’m taking so much time off and am thankful for what I can do as a result. There comes a time when you spend so much time doing something that it becomes who you are, and not in a good way. It’s all you think about and the thought of failure becomes second nature so you don’t know who you are if you "fail". The subsequent fear of failure and the unknown that follows overtakes the excitement of the little successes that always happen and what seemed like fun and enjoyable in the beginning is no longer that. Pretty much, you get burnt out.

The problem with me experiencing burn out is that I wouldn't acknowledge it. Somewhere deep down I was aware of the existence but I would go back to the failure thing. "Burning out is failure so I'm not burning out because I'm not a failure. I still like skating, I go to practice every morning, I'm fine." The thing is is that thinking that isn't right. I couldn't see that my negative thoughts were eating me up inside, that I was twisting how I felt to how I wanted to feel, and that I wasn't living the way I should be.

There was a time last school year where I would skate for two hours in the morning, go to class, and then go to the gym for two more hours of off-ice training that consisted of a mixture of HIIT, dance classes, stretching, stairs, and traditional lifting and cardio. So what’s the problem then? It’s a simple question with a more complex answer. I was spending so much time thinking about how I put in all this physical effort so there was no way I could possibly fail when in actuality, I could. The physicality was there no question but I was lacking any mental training. My brain wasn’t trained to deal with what I saw as a failure and others saw as success, it wasn't trained to prepare me for competition or anything other than running stairs or doing countless burpees. I didn't train to compete, I competed to train. For me, anything other than reaching the goals I set was failure. In other words, my life was gilded.

You would look at me and think I was completely fine. Hell, looking back over the past year, I thought I was fine and I was happier than I had been in a really long time. And on the outside, I was. I wasn’t getting bullied by others and I had friends that I loved. But bullying is more than words or actions by others, it has a deep, internal, emotional aspect. And I was twisting everything that I thought and others said to eat me up on the inside while remaining my outward appearance of being a happy, bubbly person. The pressure to keep up this act of being fake happy and annoyingly fit and obsessive ate me up until last week when I just broke over Facebook messenger and Skype with a friend who will remain nameless (but thank you!). 

He gave me probably the best and worst advice I’ve ever received: “You are not a skater. You are a person who happens to skate. You are more than that though, you’re a sports fan, an analyst, a business geek, a coffee lover, someone who can talk for hours about something you're passionate about...” Honestly, it hurt but got me thinking, “Skating doesn’t define me and here I am thinking that it’s all I have. Maybe there’s more to me than ‘that skater girl.’” And there is.

Before this realization, I would never do some of the things that I’m planning to do or have already done. I’m hiking Trolltunga in less than a week. That’s 13 miles (20 km) of slippery rock, pulling yourself up over ledges, and who knows what else. In other words, it’s an injury and/ or sore muscles just waiting to happen. But I don’t care. In fact, I’m more excited about this one hike than I was about competing in my first Nationals. The fact that I’m willing to risk what could happen in order to fulfill something that I’ve wanted to do, so that I can experience something that’s once in a lifetime, means more than skating in 4 Nationals and not placing ever could. 

So maybe I’m not what you would call a “skater.” Maybe I’m less, maybe I’m more but it depends on your point of view. I’m the girl who will wear leggings as pants, drink more coffee than advised, walk instead of drive, do too much HIIT, spend a week eating pasta in Italy, and wear flannel until I die. There’s no problem with that. It takes more than one thing to define someone and I'm not the exception to the rule.

Skating has made me who I am today. Without it, I'd be another person completely, I would have gone to university somewhere completely different, I wouldn't have the same friends, the same competitive nature, the same outlook on life. But there comes a time when I have to decide what is best for my mental wellness and maybe that's taking time off to decompress and deciding to exploit who I am and my characteristics without skating. 

Yes, I miss skating every day and will until I can lace up my worn down boots and feel the cold air hit my face. But at the same time, I’m thankful for the experiences I have while I’m not “that skater girl.” I’ll take the opportunities skating gives me in the future and will forever be thankful for all that it’s given me thus far, but until that comes, I’m going to continue defining myself in ways that don’t involve copious amounts of makeup and lycra.

Photocreds to Mary Lunsford, love ya chica

PSA: If anyone ever feels something akin to how I felt...here's Queen B with some inspiring words and a really interesting article I found. Sometimes it's hard to take other people's advice but this is really good shit. My "junk food" wasn't TMZ or anything but it was self-depreciation and the article's full of some good advice for any situation.