In the after, I turned to food, but there were other complicating factors. I was never athletic, even when I was slender. I was a child of the suburbs, so my parents enrolled me and my brothers in all manner of sports. Though they were both athletic, I never really excelled at any of the sports I tried, despite dutifully going to practice.
In soccer, I was a goalie. To this day, my family loves to recount the story of me sitting near the goalpost, picking dandelions in the middle of a game. I do not recall this, but it doesn’t surprise me that the game held little interest for me. Flowers are pretty and soccer games are long and boring, especially when children, barely cognizant of the rules or the strategy of the game, are playing.
When I played softball, I was the catcher, but I was afraid of the ball, how it raced toward me with such force and velocity. I did everything in my power to avoid that ball, which was not at all conducive to my mastering that position. I also had no interest in running around the bases. My ideal version of the game would have had me hit the ball, have someone else run around the bases for me, and never have to play when the opposing team was at bat.
At some point, I played basketball, but I wasn’t tall yet—the height would come much later, toward the end of my teens—so I had no natural advantage and was not at all adept at making baskets or defending opponents or doing anything required of someone on a basketball court. Again, I had no interest in running up and down the court. The uniforms were not flattering. My favorite position was scorekeeper. I was very good at flipping numbers over each time a new basket was scored.
In school, we played dodgeball and tetherball. We did the presidential fitness challenge and I finished the running portion last nearly every year—a mile felt like it was a marathon. In high school, sports were a significant and mandatory part of the curriculum, which was not ideal for me. I rowed crew and hated the old creaky barge of a boat we used. I played field hockey and was more interested in the merits of my field hockey stick as a weapon. Lacrosse simply made no sense to me. Ice hockey was a nightmare—spending so much time in frigid temperatures, trying to balance on two narrow blades while also basically playing soccer on ice with a small puck and awkward hockey sticks. I quickly concluded that I was allergic to sports. I still hold fast to this conclusion.
I was, however, a decent swimmer. I loved the water, the freedom of moving through it, feeling weightless. I loved being able to do things with my body in water that would never be possible on land. I even enjoyed the smell of chlorine. I once set a school record for the fifty-yard freestyle. To be clear, this was in the sixth grade, but I still feel a small rush of accomplishment at the memory because in water, using my muscles and my lungs, I was capable and strong and free.
My brothers, far more athletic, both took to soccer, my middle brother going so far as to play professionally for several years. I envied their palpable enjoyment of the sport, of athleticism, but I did not really covet that enjoyment. I’ve always been a woman of contradiction. My true loves were and still are books and writing stories and daydreaming. Sports were merely a distraction keeping me from what I really wanted to do.