Back at the athletes’ village, I tried to relax. I tried to step through the process, but it just wouldn’t come. Instead, I started listening to a song called ‘It’s Not My Time’ by 3 Doors Down, which for some reason had been my pump-up song before I raced. The song had felt really positive to me before that moment. It was fierce and defiant, with lyrics that were about surviving against the odds, but it was the energy of the song that really worked for me. After that misery of a semi-final race, though, I heard the song completely differently. It gave me chills, like a cold bucket of water pouring over my head. I listened to it over and over again, torturing myself. ‘It’s Not My Time’ was predicting the future. I didn’t deserve to be there and I would never win.
Despite all this, I wasn’t trained to quit. After the wedding, after the depression, I got back in the water and into my best ever form. I was an elite athlete, and I could push the darkness away. I’m strong, I’m fit, I’m healthy, therefore I’m fast. While all this negativity was churning, another part of my brain was thinking about Kieren Perkins at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, coming in from the outside lane to claim his gold medal in the 1500-metre freestyle. He had very nearly missed the final too because he’d messed up in the heats. He had had a panic attack too. Been consumed by self-doubt. If Kieren could come back from the outside lane, I could do it. I just had to focus. All of this would end up being a funny story, just some dramatic tension on my ‘road to glory’. No doubts, no regrets, I’m just here to have fun.
It’s not that the dark side was winning, but it was warring hard. And to be at the top of my game as an elite athlete, the noise in my head had to stop. I needed to be that finely tuned machine, inside and out, calmly stepping through the process, stripped back to the bare essentials. That’s what was going on when I raced, behind the golden girl smile. I was running a simple, clean, effective mental program, sparse but razor-sharp. What happened after the semi-finals was that my parasympathetic nervous system kicked in and my body and brain got stuck in a ‘fight or flight’ response. I was doing nothing in my dorm room as I waited overnight for the finals, but my body was under massive stress as I struggled to control my panic and negativity. It was exhausting. It broke me in a way that swimming never had. I had been trained to deal with emotional fatigue throughout my career, but the sharp emotional roller-coaster I had been on after the semi-final was just too much. I fell into fog—it felt like a heavy, damp blanket was covering my body, a physical and emotional fatigue that wouldn’t lift.
I slept as best as I could, but I was tired the next morning when I was preparing for the race. I was no longer the favourite. Yes, I was still the world record holder, but there were others in the centre lanes—Natalie Coughlin, Britta Steffen and Marleen Veldhuis. I didn’t have to worry about them; the main thing I was up against was my own inner turmoil. Ironically, I didn’t really understand how much it was affecting me. I prided myself on my ability to let things go and get into the zone, so I felt confident that I would be able to perform when it counted. But my desperation to win the 100-metre freestyle was overwhelming, and not in a positive way. I just couldn’t let it go.
There is a crucial moment when you have done all your training, all your preparation, and you just have to let your body take over. When the gun went off, I was still desperately trying to control everything, and that was how I raced.
I went out far too hard from the block, smashing ferociously through the first 35 metres. My legs felt tight at the 35-metre mark, which was a problem. When I pushed off the wall at 50 metres, I knew I was done. I was totally shattered. And what was worse was that the thought was crystal-clear in my head: I’m absolutely screwed. In my best races, I remembered nothing but the feeling of being in the water. My mind was gone completely, my body on autopilot. But I remember every thought I had during the 100-metre final, and each one was filled with doubt. I was losing the race in my head.
When I came off the wall, my legs were like jelly. This is hard. I have to knuckle down. At the 75-metre mark, my arms were dead weights in the water. Just keep going, I thought. Just keep going. At 95 metres I felt like I had come to a complete stop, just dead in the water. The voice in my head was screaming, Get there, get there, get there! I was fighting myself until the very end.
As it turned out, I led for the entire race, but Britta Steffen caught me in the final stroke. She touched the wall milliseconds ahead of me—0.04 of a second to be exact. It wasn’t my time, after all.
It wasn’t just a bad day. I wasn’t worthy. In my head, I was so shit at the sport that I couldn’t even put together a decent race in the final. I didn’t belong there, I didn’t deserve to be there, I didn’t have what it takes to win. The gold medal I had won in the butterfly two days earlier meant nothing. No one had expected me to win the fly, so I felt it didn’t really count. Freestyle was my race and I had thrown it away. I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed.
The hardest thing and the best thing about being a swimmer is that it’s all on you. If you win, it’s your victory—but if you fuck up, that’s also on you. You’ve got no one else to blame, no one else to point the finger at. If you swim a perfect race and come second, you can’t complain; you can be disappointed, but you know that you did your best. But to know that I had stuffed up the entire race process, and then to come second by such a tiny fraction of time … it felt like such a terrible waste. I had prided myself on being such a tough competitor but it turned out I was one of those people who crumbled under pressure. What was the point of any of this? Why am I even here?
I did my best to hide the disappointment. For all of my grief, I understood that there were thousands of people who would kill to win a silver medal at the Olympics, and I certainly didn’t want to take away from Britta’s achievement or spoil her moment. But I was choking back tears on the podium as the German national anthem played. My eyes were red from all the crying I had done in the bathroom before the ceremony—I saw it later in the photos. I didn’t want to be a sore loser, on top of everything else, but I was shattered. And at the same time, I was ashamed that I felt bad in a moment that should have been filled with pride. Silver is still silver, in the hardest race in the world. That day, it was just another stick on the bonfire of my self-esteem, which was quietly burning to the ground.
In the final days of competition in Beijing, I had the heats and semis for the 50-metre freestyle and the 4x100 metre medley. The 50-metre freestyle was always my celebration race. I always did well. I had always medalled. And that’s what I was telling myself, desperately clinging to whatever I could to get me through to the end of the Games.
I made it through the heats and semis of the 50-metre freestyle, but I knew I had lost my edge. The fatigue was like chains, weighing me down. I didn’t have that reserve of energy to increase my speed as I progressed from the heats to the semis to the final, which is what normally happened. Normally, I would go into the final with extra gas in my tank, twitchy and fast. But my limbs were heavy. I was off my game. I just kept telling myself, This is my race. This is my medal—I can do it.
Logically, I know I swam a good race in the final. I did the best race I could with what I had in the tank, but I just wasn’t fast enough. I came fourth in the end, and it wasn’t even a shock. My mind had pulled my body so low that fourth was the best I could manage. And when I climbed out of the pool, I was so sad and so dark that I thought I would never be okay.
Fifteen minutes later, with my teammates rallying around me, I swam freestyle in the 4x100-metre medley. I wanted to be there for my teammates, so I asked them for help and they embraced me, physically and emotionally. They reached down and pulled me up out of the dark. I couldn’t have had better women around me in that moment, young as they were. Emily Seebohm, Leisel Jones and Jess Schipper pulled me into the race process, buoyed my confidence with jokes and laughter, and reminded me that I was one of them—one of the best athletes in the world. And together, we went on to win a gold medal. Not my medal, but ou
rs.
I wish I had been able to enjoy the success I had in Beijing in the moment. I wish I hadn’t been so blinkered, so desperate, so cruel to myself. In the end, I won two golds, a bronze and a silver, which I can now say with utter sincerity was an incredible achievement. I know that now—I’ve figured it out. It was just so devastating at the time.
Chapter Seven
2015
‘This, too, shall pass.’
—Unknown
I don’t have a tidal wave of love for Poppy—that’s not my experience. It grows a little more every day. It’s a relationship that builds over time, as I get to know her—the little sounds she makes, the colour of her eyes. I feel connected to her, so I’m not worried about the slow way my heart opens up. I’m just learning about my kid. Curious. I feel deep in my bones that she is mine. It’s the same for Luke—I can see it on his face when he holds her—and it makes me so happy knowing that we are a family.
The first few nights in the hospital are a bit messy—Poppy is cluster-feeding every twenty minutes, all night long—but I’m delighted that she latched immediately to breastfeed. A girlfriend of mine had to transfer to formula pretty quickly because, as can so easily happen, breastfeeding just didn’t work out. It’s a relief that everything is going smoothly for me. The breastfeeding creates a ton of serotonin, so I have happy hormones coursing through my body, and I have nurses taking care of me around the clock, and food being delivered. I didn’t tear during the birth, and a lot of my water weight dropped during the sweat and fluid rush of the birthing process, so I’m recovering fast.
We have so many visitors, it’s overwhelming. You lose a fair amount of dignity when you’re pushing a bowling ball out of your vagina in front of six people, but I’m not used to pulling a boob out in front of people. Even though it’s mostly family and friends, I feel a twinge of self-consciousness every time. But it’s amazing to introduce Poppy to people, and to see the joy on their faces. Seeing my daughter in my mother’s arms for the first time is a powerful and heartwarming thing.
I’m nervous about leaving the hospital. Are they actually going to let us take a human baby home? I wonder. Don’t they know we don’t know anything? We don’t have a neck brace in the baby capsule—we figured it was overkill—but I can see Poppy’s head lolling to the side every time we go around a corner and I think, Oh shit, we’re going to kill her. Luke drives 40 kilometres an hour all the way home.
I’ve read What to Expect When You’re Expecting, but it was mostly about pregnancy, coming to an abrupt halt right when things start to get interesting. I know other mums so I have a network. My sister Justine’s kids—Matty, Ruby and James—are three, five and seven. My sister-in-law Georgie has eight-month-old Emma and two-year-old Lucy. My friend Jess has a three-month-old, Mia, and my friend Alice, with whom I used to compete in Olympic relays and win on the world stage, has four-week-old Vance. I turn to all of them with questions, and they give me useful and sympathetic answers—more sympathy than I’d ever had for them before I had walked in their shoes. I had no idea what they were going through. I realise that all the mums I have known have been glossing over the details, and I didn’t know enough to dig for more information, or offer them more support. Now that I’m a mother, my respect for them is leagues deep. I only wish I’d asked more questions before I stepped through the front door of my house with a newborn in my arms.
I’m learning everything from scratch, which is terrifying. And just when I think I have a handle on something, Poppy’s routine changes, or she changes, and I feel like I’m back at square one. Babies are such mysterious little things. There’s so much thinking that has to happen, which is quite overwhelming. I have to pay such close attention all the time, just to understand what’s going on. Are you wet? Are you hungry? Have you done a poo? Are you too cold? Are you too hot? Why are you grizzling? I really haven’t been much of a thinker, so it’s like the muscle is underdeveloped, and this constant vigilance, constant learning, is exhausting.
Luke goes back to work a week after we come home. We made the decision together and I am perfectly happy with it—Luke runs the business alone, so if he’s not working, nobody is. He takes responsibility for all the laundry, which is a considerable job because we thought we’d try using cloth nappies. The rest of the house quickly becomes a bombsite. Poppy is doing well at night, solid two-hour blocks between feeds, but she doesn’t sleep much during the day, so it’s hard to get anything done. She will sleep for 40 minutes at a time during the day, at the most, and she never really settles properly, so I’m lucky if I can manage a shower or a quick bowl of cereal before three o’clock in the afternoon. She’s doesn’t have colic, nothing that severe, but I would describe my daughter as a cranky baby. The other newborns I know seem super chilled by comparison—good sleepers, and seemingly always content. I try not to make comparisons, though, as I know it doesn’t help.
Two weeks in, I get the baby blues, just the natural dip that comes as the tide of birth hormones start to leech out of your body. Luke walks in the door after work and I hand him the baby and burst into tears. ‘Oh my god, what’s wrong?’ he asks.
‘Nothing, we had a good day,’ I sob. ‘I have no idea why I’m crying.’
It’s not rational, it’s just my body taking over. But I decide that we need to get a dummy. A lot of the literature says that dummies are a bad idea before the baby is six weeks old and breastfeeding is established, because they can create something called ‘nipple confusion’. But while we were doing very well with the breastfeeding, the days are full of fretful, cranky, unsettled whimpering, and I don’t think it’s good for me or Pops. A dummy helps considerably.
She needs to be moved every few minutes and entertained constantly—which, by the way, I find can be terribly boring. All mothers, I discover, learn this pretty quickly. Your baby, the pride and joy of your life, is actually kind of dull from moment to moment. Of course, it feels like an incredible privilege to watch her develop and grow, and every time she does something new, my heart jumps a little. But again, I had visions of binge-watching televisions shows I had missed while I was at home on maternity leave, relaxing and cuddling my baby, and drinking cups of tea, but every ten minutes Poppy and I have something else to do—a change, a feed, a walk, a burp, a little bounce, a change of scenery. This routine kicks off at 5 a.m. and continues pretty much unbroken until early evening, day after day, which requires quite a bit of endurance. I’ve always been better at sprints.
At least we’re mobile. From when Poppy was about nine days old, I started taking her out. We visit my mum or catch up with friends for coffee, and go for long walks in the park. It adds to my general tiredness, but it doesn’t feel unmanageable to me. Come six weeks, Poppy is sleeping eight to ten hours a night, which is just marvellous. She still doesn’t sleep during the day, but what a masterful night sleeper she is, and it’s amazing how well I can cope when I’ve had a decent night’s sleep. All in all, I’d say it’s a challenge but I’m up to it. I think I’m nailing this motherhood thing.
If Poppy holds my finger, I think, Oh my god, you are literally the most beautiful thing in the world and I cannot deal with how much I love you. Two minutes later, I think, Oh Christ, why are you being such a little shit—why won’t you stop crying? The extremes are wild, but both reactions are completely honest, and it genuinely can happen that fast. She goes from gooing and gahing to doing explosive poos in a heartbeat, and my feelings do the same. It’s intense. All the feelings are happening at once.
I know this experience is universal. I am not special. I’m no longer the golden girl athlete I once was, with the eyes of the world on me. I’m a mum like all mums, which is fine. It’s great. Except, actually, as time goes on, I wonder if it’s completely true. Poppy doesn’t stop grizzling. It actually gets worse, which is really difficult. She needs constant attention and distraction, whereas my friends seem to have these placid, docile babies, and she rarely seems completely happy for more than a pass
ing moment. I’m used to getting feedback for my work, and the feedback she’s giving me isn’t great. But I don’t know how to course-correct or improve my performance. I’m starting to feel like she’s annoyed with me, or annoyed at something that I can’t fix. And a deep, subconscious thought starts to take root: I’m not good at this.
I’m especially thrilled when she progresses a little, because I’m doing all this work. When she smiles for the first time, when she lifts her head just a little bit, it feels like everything is worthwhile. I weigh Poppy every week just to get some sense that things are moving forward. It’s something tangible I can see, a number on the scale, and it gives me an enormous sense of pride and satisfaction. I realise that there is still an athlete in me trying to control an outcome, echoes of who I was in a past life that need to fall away. Meanwhile, I’m attending a baby sensory class every Monday to learn how to play with Poppy better. On Tuesdays, I attend a mother’s group to try to connect with other people like me. What I learn is that every baby progresses at different stages, and every baby has its own challenges. Me and my baby, we’ve got to be our own team. Assuming she doesn’t hate me.
I feel quite smug about the fact that Poppy has slept through the night from such an early age. I assume I must have established some great routine with her—that it was somehow my doing—so it’s a little disconcerting when, at four months old, she starts waking every two hours at night. I have no idea why it’s happening and I have no idea how to stop it.
They talk about a four-month sleep progression, so maybe that’s what we’re dealing with. Whatever it is, it gets worse and worse over the next few weeks. We go from a full night of unbroken sleep to 1.5-hour blocks, slowly, incrementally, unfolding over days. An hour and a half, and then she wakes up and cries, and only the boob will calm her. An hour and a half is the most sleep I will get before I wake up to settle her again.
Beneath the Surface Page 13
