Catch
There are so many girls that the room is full. I am small in the midst of all these girls, these warriors who have been fashioned of lightning, sculpted from clay; thick thighs, strong stomachs, beautiful rounded calves that have been molded for power.
These girls spend hours standing, pulling, weightless in boats. They fly, they swim, they dance. The river sprays up from the whip of the blade.
It is a racing day, which means braids. Thick ropes of hair have been elegantly woven by torn, jagged, fleshy fingers. Calluses from the oar handles brushed by wisps of blonde, auburn, brunette. These girls are artists; they paint with their bodies, they smash the surface of the water into mosaics, they weave crowns on their heads to keep sweat from falling into their eyes and hair from sticking to the backs of their necks.
The older girls walk around the locker room in just their bras. They are fearless in a world in which their beauty comes from strength and ability. They are allowed to take up space and consume and unapologetically be. These girls, these gorgeous athletes, sweat and cry and ache and scream.
We stretch out, legs reaching miles long, backs twisting, arms longing to snap at the tendons and grab the future. Lunges, calf raises, presence, always presence.
Racing day. We line up the stationary machines in rows, imitations of skulls, harbingers of the pain that we are volunteering to feel.
The coxswain, the consciousness of the boat, stands in the center of the room, clears her throat. She is a tiny, tiny thing, small so she can fit in pockets, yet she is the leader of all of us, a Tigerhawk painted on her forehead. These girls will follow her into hell and back out, hang off her every word. She commands, and we obey. It is the strength of our backs and the push of our legs that move the boat forward, but it is the voice of our cox that drives us.
“Ready at the catch,” she says.
My toes are primed. I stand.
Drive
I am a bullet in a chamber, waiting to be fired.
This requires all of my weight, all the power I have the ability to command. There is less and less of me these days.
I am sixteen, and all I want, more than anything in the entire world, is to be thin.
This started eight years ago, when I was standing near the bathtub, and my mother told me to suck my stomach in.
“You don’t want to look fat, do you?”
I didn’t know that my body was something to be ashamed of, but I never forget after that. I quit dance, because another girl makes fun of my extended tummy in the leotard. I quit gymnastics, because the coach never pays attention to the stocky five-feet of me that will never be weightless like the smaller girls. I hide my body. My brain figures out that it is the best part of me, that it is too quick to ever be diminished by my body. It runs everyone else to the ground before they are able to get close enough to see exactly how my stomach bulges at the bottom.
My hips morph to match with my shoulders. My legs are baby trees. My face stays round. My stomach is sucked in. It’s never stopped.
I am sixteen, and there are rooms with girls in them, and each of them is better, is prettier, is thinner, and wouldn’t I just be happy if I looked like that?
I am sixteen, and my whole world is a five-foot-eight prison that I keep trying to squeeze the space out of.
And now, at eighteen, perched on the edge of the stroke, I am desperately trying to reclaim my body for myself. I am awkward and dissociative, but I no longer want to be thin. I want to be strong. I want to own the space I take up. I want to see the muscles in my legs and shoulders and think, I made those. I create myself. Why would I destroy a work of art?
I haven’t quite gotten to the point of being a work of art, but the paintbrushes at my fingertips are a start.
Finish
Some of these girls on the team are intimidating. They are queens who have taken their place in this world. I know they must have insecurities, but it’s hard to see them past their lashing tongues and laser focus.
When I join the team, my mile time is ten minutes and seven seconds. Four weeks later, it is nine minutes, twenty-seven seconds. We are pushed and pressed to the limit. We grow. I grow.
It’s small enough that I don’t notice it happening, but when we go in for a physical evaluation at the end of the semester, I weigh twenty pounds more than I did at the start of the school year. The ice of self-loathing pricks at my skin, but I close my eyes and step off the scale, and ignore it. Or try to.
Recovery
This body is mine. And it is glorious.
I still avoid her in the mirror sometimes. I still don’t like wearing tight clothing. But I have gotten better at not condemning her whenever I don’t feel like loving her. I have gotten better at remembering what my body can do.
She can run. She can lift. She can hold me up and carry me past any limits that I set for myself, carry me over the water, over the finish line. She can take direction. She can sync to the girl in front of me and the girl in front of her, in front of her, in front of her, in front of her. She can laugh, she can create stories, she can rest. She can be present. She can go and keep going, for as long as I can.
She is a complex system, a masterpiece, one that I have formed and will continue forming. One that, maybe, I will learn to love.
“Ready at the catch,” the coxswain says, to each of the girls sitting, alert, focused, in their prime and prepared to fly.
My torso is a kindled fire. My hands are frozen to the oar handle. I am centered in my body, and there is something that sparks blue in me.
We stand, and we row.
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