By Polly Lisa Bennett.
The gymnastics beam as metaphor
The beam was not my choice. I did not choose to be good at it. It chose me.
The bars were my choice. The flow, the rhythm, the swing. So beautiful. Bodies moving in and out and through and with gravity. Over and under, around. It looks effortless. When you watch you want to be in it, to feel the swing.
I couldn’t be in it. I rarely felt the swing.
It’s not just timing that is critical on bars. It’s a physical balance between upper and lower body. I was too bottom heavy. The arms couldn’t hold my swing.
The beam doesn’t require this balance in strength and weight. It requires a mastery of fear.
This body can master fear. It can master fear with precision. Beam requires this precision.
The mastery did not always come. It was just the first power to come in this sport. It came before mastery over my physical strength
Four years before the mastery came, there was only shaking and wobbling and terror. On the beam you are so exposed.
You are the tallest of all the apparatus. Everyone can see. They can see your wobble, your fall, your shake. They see right into your fear and shake hands with it.
The mastery came through a raging desire to hide the fear. To make use of it. To direct it. To train it into precision. To break the handshake. To (re)claim the fear as mine.
The mastery comes through your feet. Everything comes through your feet: connection to earth, to stability, to knowing where you are, to knowing who you are.
Thud. The feet land. You’re there. In different time and space. Slower. Stable. You. Quiet. Everything fades. Three dimensions become one. A single line.
Thud. You’re on beam. It is underneath you. You control it, not it you.
The trick to beam is to think in straight line. To be the line. To hold the line.
Safety and mastery is in holding the line; a single line.
The fear still comes to distract you. To confuse you into another space. To question you. To challenge you. To unbalance you into space beyond the line.
Deep, slow breath. There is time. Stare them down. Stare down the line. You are the line.
The beam chose me. It chose me. So I stared it down and held the line.
No fall. No falter. Feet on ground. Walking forward and back, over it, and above the watchful eyes.
I sent the fear to my feet. So I could see the line.
I held the line. And it held me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Polly Lisa Bennett (they/them) is a researcher and sociologist, with a passion for social justice. They also write creative non-fiction. Their writing is usually semi-autobiographical or in current affairs. They are published in Overland journal. Polly’s recent research has involved working with LGBTIQA+ people, particularly those who are young or with disability, to improve health, education and community services for themselves and their communities. In 2021 Polly completed a PhD thesis exploring, what is it about roller derby that changes skaters’ lives? Polly lives on unceded Waddawurrung Country (Geelong) and contributes to Pay the Rent.
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