Out of the ordinary

I have never been very competitive. I’ve never won a single competition, but to be honest, I have never truly participated in any. My best friend Amy is another story—she is a real winner. I still remember the day she came to my school in the second grade. She was so full of energy, and her bright, infectious smile seemed to fill the whole room with warmth and joy.

We became friends very quickly, mostly thanks to Amy, as she was the initiator of our friendship. I was too shy to start a conversation first, but from the moment she came up to me and asked if I wanted to be friends, I have been her most devoted friend ever since.

Ten years later, we are still friends, and today I am sitting in the spectator stands, waiting for my best friend to win her first gold medal at the Olympic Games in swimming. I had no doubts that she was going to win, as I had already witnessed her taking first place at all her previous competitions. I had been with her through her exhausting daily training sessions, and when she went back to the pool in the evenings after university to train even more. I knew she deserved first place—and that was not only my biased opinion as her friend.

I was sitting in the first row with Amy’s coach and her mother; they had also been by her side the entire time. Suddenly, a sharp sting shot through my fingers—I had been tearing at the skin around my nails again without even noticing. It was a nervous habit I could never control. Amy always scolded me whenever she caught sight of my raw fingers and my lips bitten almost to the point of bleeding after her competitions.

“Why are you so nervous? It’s me who is competing, but you are torturing yourself out of stress!”

“Exactly. You shouldn’t be nervous. All your thoughts should be about the competition, and I’ll be the one to get stressed.”

“Stop it. I don’t want to see you hurt.” Her warm hands grabbed mine to stop my unconscious movements. Her hands always seemed to be on fire compared to my always-cold ones.

And today, once more, I watched her tall, fit body step onto the starting platform for the jump. The sound of the starting gong pierced the air, filled with the tension of the athletes and spectators and eight strong women propelled their dolphin-like bodies into the cold water of the pool.

The first 50 metres were already behind. Amy was just a little behind the leader. Sixteen athletic hands were cutting water with their sharp and accurate movements. Each competitor was amazing and surely deserved to be the winner. But my heartbeat accelerated as I watched my friend hit the wall for the turn and push off with a burst of power. The competition was already nearing its finish line, just a few strokes separated the participants from victory or defeat. Amy and the Korean competitor were moving almost side by side, and here comes the last moment, and I see Amy’s fingertips touch the wall just before her rival. Suddenly, the roar of the audience pressed against my eardrums. But I was not shouting with them, I was just smiling with my widest smile, as my happiness and pride had no boundaries at that moment.

***

Later that day, we decided to have a sleepover, as both of us were too excited to be able to sleep.

“How does it feel?” I asked Amy. I realized that I had never asked her that question. But I was really curious—what did it feel like to win?

“How does what feel?”

“Winning. And not only the Olympic Games, but any competition ?”

“Well, I feel a huge relief. All the time before competition I feel like a guitar string pulled tight. I’m nervous and frightened. That is why I exercise so much—because every minute I am not working on myself, some inner voice tells me that I am not good enough to win. So I throw myself into the water and swim until that voice is silenced. And after the competition is over I feel like a string that has snapped. Yes, it’s already broken, but at least nothing is pulling it painfully anymore.”

“So this is what you have been feeling all this time? Why haven’t you been telling me that?”

“You never asked.”

“Yes, but that’s just because I didn’t know you were feeling bad. You always seemed happy and passionate.I thought you liked all that competition stuff.”

“Well, at first I did. I thought it would be cool to swim not only for pleasure, but as a profession, because I knew I would never be as good at anything else. But the problem is that the more I do it as a profession, the less pleasure I get from it.”

“That is awful. You should have told me.”

“That’s okay. You were going through enough stress yourself. I didn’t feel like adding more reasons for that.”

“But I am your friend. You can tell me anything.”

“I know. That is why I’m going to tell you first, one very important piece of information.”

“And what’s that?”

“I am leaving the sport.”

“What? Are you serious? And what are you going to do?”

“I know that I am not good enough at anything else yet, but I also haven’t tried a lot of other things. Maybe I’m going to like something else.”

“No, I don’t think that you can’t be good at anything else. It’s just… I am afraid that you don’t really want to do that. Maybe at first you need to take some time to think everything through once more?”

“I appreciate it a lot, that you are so concerned about me, but I have really thought for a long time. And I have made my final decision. The only thing I need now is the support of my best friend, because I know that my mom and coach are going to be absolutely furious when they find out about my decision.”

“Well, that is not what matters now. You are the one who matters. I want you to be happy, and if swimming doesn’t make you happy any longer, then I am going to be by your side when you quit it.”

“Thanks, May. I knew I could rely on you.”

***

Amy was right. Both her mother and coach were out of their minds when they heard about her decision, but they could do nothing to change her mind. She was a champion after all, which meant being able to resist people as well.

The moment she told me she was quitting sport, I thought that it was good she didn’t quit university, even though it was hard to manage both her swimming career and studies. But she wanted to spend more time with me, so she stayed at the university no matter how hard it was.

During the first months after our talk that night, I noticed Amy looking through all her medals again and again. And I thought how rarely we care about what happens with athletes after their wins. We focus only on that single moment when the champion stands on the podium with the medal in hands. We think how happy they must be. “I wish I were like them,” we tell ourselves. But we rarely stop to wonder how hard it must have been for them to get there as well as how unsettling it might feel to stand there in front of thousands of people, having reached one of, if not the main, goals of their life and not knowing what they want to do next. We forget that life isn’t ending the moment the champion receives their medal, it is only one of numerous distances still ahead. Those who can hold their medal and still know with certainty that this is what they want to keep doing for the rest of their lives are truly happy. But there are also countless champions who, by achieving their biggest goal, lose their sense of purpose.

The same was true for Amy. She knew she didn’t want to swim anymore. She had already reached a height only a few ever do, and I believe she went so far mostly to please her mother, who had sacrificed so much for her career. But she no longer knew what she wanted. For the first time in my life, I saw her lost and uncertain.

But I guess it is okay for anyone to be lost sometimes, and it’s our duty—of those who love them—to make sure they find their route, even if it won’t be as special and unique as their path before, because they have the right to be ordinary. But I am going to make sure that even if Amy chooses the most ordinary life, she knows that for me she will always be the most special person in the world.