I still wake up at 5:20 every morning. I don't set an alarm anymore, but my body is ready to go, as if there is somewhere I need to be. There isn't. I just lie there, sometimes for an hour.
Technically, I'm still on the swim team. I wasn't cut. I have the gear, I go to team things, and my coach told me I was important to the culture. But I'm in the group that doesn't compete. I'm not injured; I just got slower, or everyone else got faster. I don't know which, and it probably doesn't matter. My best time was when I was seventeen. I'm twenty now.
In the dark, while my roommate sleeps, I look up meet results on my phone. I check on a swimmer from my old high school who is already faster than I ever was. I look at my own times, too. From fifteen to seventeen, every time was faster than the one before it. Then the list stops. The team group chat keeps going during meets. I read the messages and type “let’s gooo,” then put my phone down.
Around 6:30, I get up and make the same breakfast I ate for years: four eggs and oatmeal. I don't train anymore, and I don't need to eat that way, but it's what I know how to make. Then the day starts. I go to class. I seem normal, and mostly I am. It's really just that hour—the hour when my body remembers a life that has stopped.
I still wake up at 5:20 every morning. I don't set an alarm anymore, but my body is ready to go, as if there is somewhere I need to be. There isn't. I just lie there, sometimes for an hour.
Technically, I'm still on the swim team. I wasn't cut. I have the gear, I go to team things, and my coach told me I was important to the culture. But I'm in the group that doesn't compete. I'm not injured; I just got slower, or everyone else got faster. I don't know which, and it probably doesn't matter. My best time was when I was seventeen. I'm twenty now.
In the dark, while my roommate sleeps, I look up meet results on my phone. I check on a swimmer from my old high school who is already faster than I ever was. I look at my own times, too. From fifteen to seventeen, every time was faster than the one before it. Then the list stops. The team group chat keeps going during meets. I read the messages and type “let’s gooo,” then put my phone down.
Around 6:30, I get up and make the same breakfast I ate for years: four eggs and oatmeal. I don't train anymore, and I don't need to eat that way, but it's what I know how to make. Then the day starts. I go to class. I seem normal, and mostly I am. It's really just that hour—the hour when my body remembers a life that has stopped.
