Body Lengths

by Leisel Jones

  Marty is playing for the Brisbane Lions when I meet him. Very early on in our relationship, I go along to a match with Jodie Henry from my squad. Jodie is going out with Marty’s teammate, Tim Notting. During the match, Jodie has to explain absolutely everything that happens on the pitch. Or the field. Or whatever it is they call it in this code.

  It’s an eye-opener for me – all of AFL culture is – so when Marty mentions several weeks later that the draft is coming up, I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  ‘Draft?’ I repeat.

  ‘Yeah, you know, the draft. The pick. I could end up anywhere.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘For what?’ I’m imagining a training camp, like event camp. Or perhaps some sort of team activity.

  ‘To play. To live!’ He laughs at my ignorance.

  Wait – he could end up living anywhere? I’m stunned. I had no idea this was how AFL worked.

  And sure enough, a few weeks later Marty is drafted to the Western Bulldogs Football Club in Footscray, Melbourne, about 18,000 kilometres south of where we are, lying on Marty’s couch, when we find out. I am gutted. But Marty is more philosophical: ‘Ah well, babe. It’s closer than Perth.’

  This is true, but it’s not much consolation. Not when I really like this guy. Not when my life is contained in about a 20-kilometre square radius here in Brisbane. I’m still training with Stephan in The Valley, still studying at Stones Corner. I own our house on Wollundry Place in The Gap. And, sure, life isn’t perfect here – I’m not loving swimming right now, and Stephan and I have been clashing more and more in the past few months – but ever since I met Marty things have been good. Really good.

  ‘I like you,’ I say quietly. ‘And I want to be with you.’

  One month later, Marty moves to Melbourne.

  Those first few weeks after Marty moves are awful. I miss him like crazy, and it shows at training. My attitude is bad; my headspace is worse. And there is tension between me and Stephan. I start to wonder if I want to do this anymore.

  Then one night I wake up at 3 a.m. in terrible pain. I can’t breathe. My chest is collapsing. I feel like someone is sitting on my chest, like I’m being crushed. Like my ribcage is squeezing the life right out of me.

  Oh my God. I’m having a heart attack. I am – no joke – dying of a heart attack right now.

  My heart feels like it wants to pound right out of my chest, but my ribs are holding it in; they are gripping it tight. I can’t breathe. The air is stuck. I am gulping and flailing and drawing ragged breaths. I’m drowning. The room is going black.

  I try to stand, but my legs crumple underneath me and I slump uselessly to the bedroom floor.

  Have I been training too hard? Have I done this to myself? I am twenty-two years old and I’m dying of a heart attack.

  I drag myself across the bedroom floor. The pain in my chest is searing; it’s alive. It’s grabbing my ribs and cracking me open for the world to see.

  I crawl on my elbows, dragging my legs behind me, pulling myself towards the stairwell and towards Mum. Towards help. Didn’t Flo-Jo die of a heart attack or something? Didn’t she roll over in bed and die just like that? I am Flo-Jo. I am dying.

  I make it as far as the bathroom.

  ‘Mum!’ I yell. ‘Mum, we need to go to the hospital. I’m having a heart attack!’

  Silence. And then: ‘Leisel? Where are you?’ There is the ruffling of bed sheets and a thud as her feet hit the floor. ‘Leisel?’ I hear her clatter down the stairs. ‘What do you mean “a heart attack”?’ she calls. ‘Are you sure?’

  Seconds later she is by my side.

  ‘Yup, I’m dying. I’m actually dying,’ I tell her.

  ‘We need to get you to a hospital,’ Mum says.

  But I dither around, not wanting to call an ambulance. Not wanting to call an ambulance but dying all the same. What if it’s not a heart attack? Who has a heart attack at twenty-two?

  But then why is my chest being ripped apart? I recall all the messages I’ve ever heard about heart attacks: minutes count; just get help; it doesn’t matter if it’s a false alarm.

  ‘Okay. Let’s go,’ I agree.

  ‘I’ll drive you,’ Mum says, pragmatic as ever. ‘That way, we won’t have to pay an ambulance call-out fee.’

  We won’t have to pay an ambulance call-out fee? Is she kidding? Maybe she’s trying to keep calm. Yeah, that’s it, she’s trying to stop me from freaking out.

  Or maybe she’s in shock. I know I sure as hell am.

  Mum bundles me into the car and heads to the Mater on Coronation Drive. But on the way there I start to feel better. The pain loosens its grip and my breathing gets deeper. The air is cool and sweet and I gulp it down.

  Well, this is embarrassing, I think as we drive. Perhaps I’m not dying after all. I’m relieved that it’s Mum and not a paramedic sitting beside me.

  At the hospital they do an ECG, check my blood pressure and measure my oxygen saturation levels. ‘You’re fine,’ they tell me. ‘You’re the fittest person here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I say.

  ‘Positive. There is absolutely nothing wrong with your heart. With any part of you.’

  I am embarrassed, but also grateful to be alive. ‘Thank you, thank you so much.’ I accost everyone I see – doctors, nurses, the guy mopping the hall – and thank them for their help. Mum and I go back to the car. She drives, while I lean my burning face against the window. We slink off home: I’m not dying after all.

  A few days later, my aunty asks, ‘Have you thought that maybe it was a panic attack?’

  ‘A what?’ I don’t even know what a panic attack is.

  She explains, and I dismiss the idea. ‘Nah, I don’t think so. I’m not that kind of person.’

  She raises an eyebrow, but I don’t offer an explanation. I don’t need to. Isn’t it obvious? I’m not that kind of person. You know, the stress-head kind. The panic-attack kind. The kind of person who’s fallible or vulnerable. The kind of person who’s human. That’s not me.

  I am someone who can lift 100 kilos and chin-up thirty-six. Pain doesn’t faze me, and neither does hard work. You think I baulked when Ken pushed me into some the hardest training in the country? You think I flinched when Dad up and walked out on us? I am tough. I am a survivor. I am as hard as old nails.

  So what if my boyfriend has just moved interstate? I’ll live. You think I’m going to fall apart over that? And anyway, the doctors said there was nothing wrong with me. Not with my heart and not with my head.

  And so I go on, invincible as ever. A fish out of water, but somehow still breathing.

  But after my faux heart attack, my heart is slow to heal. Sure, it pumps okay. It does the job. But it aches whenever I think of Marty and how far away he is. I am miserable and alone.

  But I stuff all these feelings down and get on with the job. I try to focus on Worlds: the World Championships in Melbourne. Where my boyfriend is.

  Our squad heads south with Stephan at the beginning of March to train at the Monash University pool in the weeks leading up to competition. We’re in orientation camp again, so I’m staying with the team at the Novotel in Mount Waverley. But I don’t want to be here. I want to be with Marty.

  Then one day, only a week before Worlds, I have a particularly bad training session. I’m in a bad mood and I have a foul mouth. I want to be curled up on a couch with Marty, not ploughing up and down some boring old pool. The team is in taper, so we’re restricted to light sessions ahead of competition next week. Even so, my times are especially slow today. I am frustrated and aggravated, cranky and cold.

  ‘You need to work on your attitude,’ Stephan says to me as I vault from the pool.

  I rip off my cap and shake water from my ears.

  ‘Pardon?’ I pretend I haven’t heard him.

  ‘Your attitude,’ he repeats. Stephan is all about having a good attitude and giving your best. Today I have given my best, but my times are just awful and my stroke is horrendou
s. I have given my best but I’ve given much more besides. I’ve given lip, I’ve given cheek, I’ve given plenty of attitude.

  Today, frankly, I’ve been a shithead.

  ‘I’m over it,’ I tell Stephan. ‘Over. It.’ I grind out the words. ‘I’m sick of training. Sick of racing. I am tired of the whole bloody thing. I don’t want to do it anymore.’

  ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t,’ he says calmly.

  ‘Then maybe I won’t!’

  ‘Perhaps you should retire,’ he says. Just like that. It’s so simple, so obvious. Coming from anyone else this might sound like a challenge: like calling my bluff, like winding me up. But Stephan’s not like that. He is serious and earnest and he means what he says. He’s not trying to provoke me. He’s just being honest.

  I know this and yet I crack it. Badly.

  ‘Well, maybe I will! Maybe I will quit!’ I shout.

  Last year was only my best year ever, I fume quietly. I broke PBs; I broke world records. My times have never been better than they have in the last twelve months. But whatever. No biggie. If you want me to quit, maybe I will!

  I flounce around the pool deck making a big scene out of packing up my stuff. I slap around in my thongs, scoop up my towel, then sweep past Stephan to the showers. But even as I exit stage left, I know I’m in the wrong. Stephan and I butt heads all the time, because we’re not necessarily the best fit personality-wise. He is quiet and calm. I am loud and enthusiastic. Plus, he’s not always as sympathetic or as understanding as I’d like.

  But for all our differences, we work well together. Stephan gets the very best results from me, for sure.

  Deep down, I know that today is not his fault. I am tired, fed up and sick of bloody swimming. I’ve been doing this for more than ten years now, and it’s hard to maintain enthusiasm every single day. It will be my fourth World Championships next week and all of a sudden it feels like I’ve been swimming for a long time. A very long time. It’s not fair for me to take that out on Stephan.

  But it makes a change from just stuffing it all down.

  Before I left Brisbane, I woke up one night to discover I’d had a stroke. At least I thought I had.

  What’s going on? I panic. My face is paralysed and the right side of my body is numb. I can’t move my right arm or leg. I tumble from bed and stagger to the door, dragging my dead-wood leg behind me. I can’t turn the knob; my fingers are limp. I can’t scream for help; my mouth is numb.

  Is this a nightmare? Will I wake up? I am desperate and I scrabble at the door with my useless hand. Finally it occurs to me to use my good hand, and I open the door and stagger up the stairs and into Mum’s room.

  ‘Mum! Mum!’ I grunt. The words loll stupidly around in my mouth, flattened by my dead tongue.

  Mum is groggy but alarmed. She sits with me until the numbness fades, till I tingle and burn and my feeling returns. It’s not a stroke, then. But if it’s not that, then what is it? Something is seriously wrong with me. I know it.

  ‘Go back to bed,’ Mum says to me eventually. ‘You need to rest and take care of yourself.’

  ‘I can’t.’ I’m confused. Mum knows I have training.

  ‘You can’t train today, Leisel. Just look at you.’

  Sure, I might have thought I was having a stroke, but only a mild one, my foggy brain argues. Nothing worth missing a training session over.

  ‘Bed,’ Mum instructs and I know better than to argue.

  I pad back down the stairs and get into bed. Everything feels wrong. I don’t like this at all. I think about my body and the way it’s suddenly failing me. First chest pain and now this. I think about my mental state and my attitude to swimming. I’m ‘train at all costs’. I’m ‘get on with the job’. I’m not ‘start falling apart and retreat back to bed’. I sink under the covers and try to block out the world.

  If I can’t train, I don’t know what else I can do.

  17

  Taking Risks

  The 2007 World Aquatics Championships are held at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, home of the Australian Open and one of the most famous tennis courts in the world. That’s right: a tennis court. We are swimming on a tennis court. Somehow, the court is now a sparkling blue pool.

  The first five row of seats are submerged under water, and it’s lapping gently at the foot of the sixth. It’s a stunning sight, it really is – one I couldn’t have imagined if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

  I have a good meet in Melbourne. I win silver in the 50-metre breaststroke, coming second to my friend Jessica Hardy from the United States by only 0.07 seconds. Then I make it a clean sweep by winning gold in both the 100-metre and 200-metre events as well, and setting a new Commonwealth record in the 100 metres. Plus, Emily Seebohm, Jessicah Shipper, Libby Lenton and I win gold in the 4 × 100-metre medley relay, breaking the world record with a time of 3:55.74.

  I never thought I would compete at Rod Laver, but when I do I leave with four medals clanking in my bag.

  And yet, despite my performance, despite the great pool, even despite the Chapel Street shopping we squeeze in during our days off, I feel unmotivated in Melbourne.

  My relationship with Stephan is worn out. It’s not that anything has changed – Stephan is as reliable as ever – but I get the impression he’s not loving working with me anymore. And if I’m honest with myself, the feeling is mutual. I can’t fault Stephan for the training he’s providing. But that conversation we had when I was being a diva and he suggested I quit … somehow that was the start of a downward slide.

  I am not enjoying training. I’m not even enjoying racing, which up until now I have always loved. I’m not enjoying anything to do with swimming, in fact. I can’t seem to find happiness anywhere, except when I’m with Marty.

  ‘You don’t need to feel like this, you know,’ Marty says to me one day. We’re on the couch at ‘home’ in Toorak, where we are house-sitting for his business mentor. It’s a beautiful house, all clean lines and white tiles, with expensive designer furniture and a sound system that Marty drools over. It’s such a luxury to stay here. It’s such a luxury to stay anywhere with Marty and not be at the pool.

  ‘Feel like what?’ I ask.

  ‘Like this,’ he waves his hand in front of my face like whatever ‘this’ is, is right before my eyes. ‘Like: miserable. And frustrated and tired. You don’t need to feel like that. Your sport should make you happier than this.’

  I stare at him. ‘But I am happy. I’m so happy with you. I’ve never been happier in my life!’

  ‘Sure, I know you’re happy with me. But the rest of the time you’re miserable. Your training, your swimming: you’re not enjoying them. You should be loving your sport. This,’ he waves his hand again, ‘is not normal.’

  Later that night, I lie in bed and think about Marty’s words. This is not normal, he said. Until now, I hadn’t thought there was anything wrong with me. I thought it was totally normal for people to feel like this. To feel sad and tired and miserable and trapped. To feel like they have to get up at 4 a.m. and get on with their job, otherwise how else are they going to pay the mortgage that month? Isn’t that how life is? Isn’t that what being an adult is all about? I thought it was totally normal for me to not love swimming and to feel trapped in my career; to feel angry and powerless and anxious and bored. I had never thought to question it.

  I had certainly never sought help from a professional such as a sports psychologist. I am stuck back in the Ken Wood mentality, where sports psychs are for weak people. And I am not weak. It would never in a million years occur to me to ask anyone for help.

  Besides, what help do I need? There’s nothing really wrong with me, is there?

  But Marty thinks there is, and a few days later he tries again.

  ‘You know, maybe Stephan’s not right for you anymore,’ he says.

  We are back on the couch again. I’d be alright, I think, if I could just train from right here. I have a vision of myself on the couch, with Marty bes
ide me, floating along a narrow pool lane. The idea makes me feel relieved.

  ‘Maybe it’s time to think about a change,’ Marty says.

  ‘A change?’

  ‘Yeah. Like a new approach or a new coach. Babe, why don’t you move down here to Melbourne?’

  In my head, I am still on my couch floating in the pool, so Marty’s words slap me like a wave. Move? To Melbourne?

  ‘But what about my training? What about Stephan and my squad and Mum and my whole life?’ I stutter. Everything I have – everything I’ve ever known – is in Queensland.

  Marty shrugs. ‘Start a new one,’ he says. ‘Start a life here in Melbourne with me, and with a new coach. Start a life where you’re happy.’ It sounds so simple when he says it.

  We write a list of pros and cons.

  ‘You could really do this, you know,’ he urges.

  Con: The Olympics.

  ‘Write that in capitals,’ I instruct. The 2004 Beijing Olympics are less than eighteen months away and I have my eye firmly on the ultimate prize: individual gold at an Olympic Games. It’s what I want, what I’ve been working towards. I have not trained my whole life in order to throw everything away at the last hurdle.

  Con: Where to train?

  Con: Where to live?

  Con: No family support here in Melbourne.

  Con: Coach???

  ‘Don’t forget the cold weather here in Melbourne,’ I say. Then I realise the ‘pro’ side is looking a little thin.

  Pro: ‘You!’ I say happily to Marty.

  Pro: Uh … A fresh start!

  I drum my fingers on the arm of the couch, summoning inspiration.