This is not something everyone can say, but at the tender age of 21, I am currently in retirement. This is the second time I have retired, so apparently “retirement” is a loose term. Retired from what, you might ask? Synchronized ice skating, a sport no one has ever heard of. So unheard of that in high school, I did a project on it and the teacher lowered my grade because he thought I was supposed to be talking about synchronized swimming. If I can do an entire project on it and still have no one know what on Earth I am talking about, then you know it’s unheard of.
Regardless, for 15 years, it was my life and then some.
Two National Championship Medals… Five concussions and a myriad of weird injuries… Friends who are like family… There have been highs and lows, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Except, I took this year off.
So, now I am a retired synchronized skater, since I don’t have any intention of going back anytime soon. Just like that, it was an identity shattered and a new one created that I had only reserved for older people.
What does retired mean? It means people asking me what team I’m on, what I’m doing with all my free time, why I left, what illicit information I have.
It means people asking me when I’m coming back.
I have no answer to any of those questions.
I think at a certain point, I wasn’t doing it for me. There comes a time when you have been doing something for so long that it would be a waste to quit now: all the money and time put into it, you’re in too deep. That is why I continued for so long. On the inside, I despised the ice and I hated myself even more.
And now that I’m looking at it from the other side, I have never loved it more. When the nostalgia becomes unbearable, I’ll be back.
Retirement is not set in stone, it’s set in ice. Ice melts and refreezes each season, and with each coming season, I have my own decision to make, a decision that is mine alone.