How the Summer Olympics changed my life.
I have never been into sports. Sports were not my thing in high school. Sports were not in my very slim, almost nonexistent choices of hobbies. Sports were irrelevant to me.
The past me would have smirked at myself for wanting to watch the Olympics in the summer of 2021. I wanted to though. I wanted to keep up with, track and follow every American Sport that was televised. If I were at work, I would rush home to watch highlights and root the teams on unknowingly to how it would change my perspective on the relationship I was in.
Simone Biles.
I can openly admit to prior to the Summer Olympics, I knew very little about her. I knew she was an athlete. I knew she was a gymnast. I knew she was pegged to take home the gold metal. I knew she could hurl her little body up into the air and come right back down. She was amazing. I knew that.
The news heard around the world.
Simone withdrew during the group finals. There was so much talk about the whys and the hows. The shame that followed. How could she?
I had to know more.
“The twisties” is the term. This is psychological phenomenon where a gymnast loses air awareness and control of his or her body.
I was not a sports person, but how and why did I understand this term.
I understood what it felt like to not know up from down even while standing with my feet firmly on the ground.
Not until a few sessions of therapy and a lot of secret book readings later did I realize I had fallen into a pattern with my narcissist boyfriend. The idealize, devalue, discard and hoover.
“The twisties” made perfect sense to me.
Questioning what is real and what is not is no different than not knowing where your body is while tossing yourself in the air. You are essentially lost with no direction.
The narcissist isolates you to make you feel alone, so there is no one there to guide you. You have to depend on yourself and yourself only. What if yourself is so deep within the depths of phycological abuse that you can’t tell what is real or not?
You do what Simone Biles did. You face the hows and the whys of the world and you remove yourself. I am still cheering for you, Simone. I am cheering for myself as well.
