Jennifer Sey

FOREWORD

“Hello? Hi.”

“May I speak with Jennifer Sey?” An unfamiliar voice. Authoritative.

“This is Jennifer.”

“Hi. This is Mike Jacki, the head of the U.S. Gymnastics —“

“I know who you are. Hi Mike.”

“I didn’t think you’d remember me, Jennifer. It’s been a long time.”

“Over twenty years. But I remember.”

“I’m calling because we need you. For an upcoming competition.”

“I don’t do gymnastics anymore.”

“I know. But you’ll have some time. A year. It has to be you. You’re the only one with the grace. The poise. It has to be you.”

I hem and haw a bit, forcing him to beg me to come back. Eventually I concede. I have to find a gym in San Francisco. I have to lose weight. A lot of weight, about forty pounds. I have to overcome my fear of climbing back on to the balance beam and the uneven bars. I’m thirty-seven years old. Is this possible?  I want it to be so I try.  But I can’t even perform the simplest moves. A handstand on bars sends me crashing. My weakened arms cause my hand to slip under my womanly weight. I land in a heap beneath the high bar, face bloodied from smashing into the fiberglass rail on the way down. My feet, bigger and wider than twenty years ago from having bore two children, don’t fit nicely side by side on the beam anymore. It used to feel as easy as walking on the floor, now it sways beneath me like a tightrope wire; my flat heavy foot slips with just a simple step and I straddle the beam, coming down hard on my crotch.

I can’t do this. I’ll have to call and tell them no.

I’m such a disappointment.

And then, in a panic, I wake up. I ready myself for a day of work, troubled but wistful for a simpler time.

 

For years I have wrestled with my young life spent as a gymnast. When the present seems particularly stressful or uncertain, I dream this dream of being called back to the sport. I am so special, so memorable, so unique that the gymnastics federation official needs me and only me. When, in my adult life, have I been deemed so exceptional that I am the only possible person that can fulfill a particular slot? Other than being a mom. And really, even the worst mothers are irreplaceable in the eyes of their children. So that confers nothing special. I must do it. I will train myself. I will prove that this time I can do it on my own without the reproachful glare and abusive tirades of a coach guiding my every move.

The point of this dream is not lost on me. When life’s options are either unappealing or unclear, gymnastics still seems the obvious and compelling choice. It harkens back to a time when all decisions were uncomplicated. I did it because it’s what I did. Easy. The road ahead was well lit and safe. If I persevered, simply followed directions, I’d stay on course. I’d succeed. And if I didn’t, I would not be to blame. It would be the faulty directions that caused my failure.

In my dream, I am reminded of all that was destructive and unhappy about my time towards the end of my career: the physical pain, the woozy light-headedness and hunger, the emotional desperation at having lost the only thing I had ever known. And yet, I also feel anxious because I can’t go back. It is an impossibility. I wake in a panic, riddled with anxiety.  I must find my way, now, as an adult, without anyone telling me exactly what to do.

This story – my story - is not intended to be an indictment of the sport of gymnastics. I was born with a competitive ire and near manic ambition. Often this predisposition provides an edge in a highly competitive culture. At times, it morphs into self-destructiveness. 

Gymnastics was the first excuse for me to turn on myself. I have repeated this behavior throughout my life. In college, my 3.8 grade point average wasn’t good enough; at work, my year-end review didn’t earn me a promotion so I might not make Vice President before I turn forty; at home, when my son cries, he sometimes wants Daddy instead of me. This self-criticism turns desperate and frenzied, causing a variety of physical discomforts: wrenching stomach knots, heartburn, constipation, insomnia, headaches, infected cuticles from picking until I draw blood. 

This is who I am. I am in constant psychic motion trying to better myself, beat myself, win. If gymnastics hadn’t found me at age six, I would have found another childhood outlet for these inclinations. 

I tried to tell this story in other ways. I shared it in snippets, when pressed, with friends who didn’t know me when gymnastics comprised my entire identity.  During college, I’d have to explain the lost year between high school graduation and the start of my freshman year at Stanford.

“What were you doing?”

“I was training.”

“For what?”

“The 1988 Olympics. Gymnastics.”

“Did you make it?”

“No.”

Upon graduation, with little work experience to boast of, the ‘additional’ section at the bottom of my resume listed “1986 U.S. National Gymnastics Champion”. In job interviews, this inevitably invoked questions. A former college football player who believed dedicated athletes to be the hardest working employees gave me my first job because of my gymnastics accomplishments. The interview lasted for two hours and all we talked about was the parallels between life and athletics. 

Plagued by the dreams and roused by the interest of near strangers in my story, I attempted to write a fictional screenplay. Once completed, it lacked the veracity required for emotional impact. I made a short film. And still, the dreams came. So finally, I just wrote the whole thing down.

This is a story about the ups and downs of my life as an internationally competitive athlete; as a young girl growing up in a world where underage and underweight girls were looked upon as cultural icons; as a fierce competitor in a culture where second place means losing; as a one time winner who wasn’t going to win anymore.

I was a girl who competed as a gymnast. I had fun and then I didn’t. I lost and then I won. And then I lost again. I starved and then I ate and I thought I’d never stop.

But I did. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part I

 

1986

I’m waiting for the judge to raise her arm and nod her head, signaling to me that it’s my turn. Her polyester royal blue suit with the crest makes her appear pathetically regal, like a homeless woman who used to be a traffic cop, still wearing her uniform with faded pride. Glory days.

I whip my head around when the audience gasps. Hope Spivey has fallen from the balance beam. The unthinkable has happened. Opportunity. She was the only true challenger left and now she’s on the ground, no longer perched high on the beam. She stands on the blue chalky mat, both hands on the plank, wondering how in the hell she ended up there. Her face is set with determination but she is fighting tears. Her mouth is tightly pursed to control the tremor, which, if allowed to erupt, I knew only too well would lead to hysteria. Tears have not yet welled, but they are there.  They pool behind her eyes, wet with disappointment, kept at bay with the sharp prick of her teeth into her lower lip. She must finish, despite the impossibility of winning. Despite the shame of falling, she must climb back up and finish. But for the moment, she wonders how she ended up on the ground.

I return my attention to the uneven bars in front of me. Almost time to go. The judge, head bowed, finishes calculating the score for the girl before me. She adds up all the deductions. There are always deductions. The elusive 10.0 has been driven to near extinction since Nadia hoarded them in 1976. Judges require audacious levels of difficulty to even start a routine at a ten. I am starting this routine at a 9.9, a tenth taken away before I’ve even begun. 

I fold my toes under, jamming them into the bright blue mat, cracking them. Crunch. Both feet. I run my tongue across the self-inflicted canker, smooth and hot, on the inside of my lip. I check the chalk on my hands. Make sure it’s just the right consistency: smooth but pasty, sticky enough to last the duration of my bar routine. I don’t wear handgrips like most of the girls. I prefer hands to bars. No leather separating me from the feel of the smooth fiberglass. I don’t trust that the bar is still there if the sensation of the bars beneath my hands is dulled by a leather barrier. Because of this, the skin on my palms rips more frequently. Whole calluses are torn away from the hand, leaving red, bloody holes. I trim the jagged remaining skin with a razor blade beneath my desk during math class, drawing stares from the boy next to me. I have a rip now.  I’ve sanded and smoothed it as best I can with a nail file and covered it with extra chalky paste to dull the pain of friction.

I take a deep breath. Exhale. Calm my breathing. Slow. Slow down. This is it. She raises her hand. I salute, one arm raised high above my head, chin up. “Go Jen!” I hear my mother’s squeaky voice from the stands.

I know I’ve won. It’s my last event. I’m in first place. All the challengers have fallen. I know that I’ve won. I’ve never been so certain of anything. My blood is throbbing, pouring, crashing through my veins. The way that water falls, without constraint, with limitless power. With certitude.

My heart pounds but not with fear or speculation. This is not the usual pre-event “this is it, this is everything I’ve worked for and it all comes down to right now and I’ll never get another chance if I screw this up”. Not the usual “everyone will be so disappointed but no one more than me because I’ve given everything for this and I can’t see anything else, can’t see past it there’s only this in my life.”

This time, my blood races and it roots me, tethers me to my true self. Gives me clairvoyance. This is not nerves. It is the opposite. My chest pounds with knowing. With the absolute utter certainty of knowing. With the strength and power and confidence of knowing that I’ve won. Of knowing exactly who I am. Deep in my chest, I’ve never felt so certain of anything, so sure of my existence. I am the next champion. It means everything to me.

I will not miss. I will win.

I am the 1986 USA National Gymnastics Champion.

It’s over.