by Leisel Jones
I stay home to spend time with my fiancé instead.
Mum is disappointed. She doesn’t say anything; that’s not her style. But before she heads home, she wants a photo with me, in the apartment, holding up my medals. I can tell she’s unhappy with the result. I’m smiling, but somehow I still manage to look sad in the photo. Sad and subdued. Not what you expect from someone holding three Olympic medals. In the photo, I have my arm around Mum. But when later we look at the pic together, I can see that she knows something’s just not right.
But if Mum knows what it is, I wish she’d tell me. I lie in bed at night wondering what’s wrong with me. You’ve done it, I tell myself. You’ve won the gold! Achieved your dream! This is the part where you’re ecstatic. You should be over the moon!
It doesn’t feel at all like I expected.
The week together in Beijing is a difficult one. Marty and I try to do all the right things and give it our best shot. And there are moments when he is so lovely and thoughtful that I think everything will be okay after all. One day, he organises a car to take us to see the Great Wall, and as we walk a section of the great monument together he surprises me with a beautiful diamond necklace.
This sure is more romantic than the way my friend Mel Schlanger sees the Wall. She was corralled into doing so, along with the entire Aussie Olympic contingent, by Laurie Lawrence. Laurie told them they were going on ‘a bit of a wander’ and so Mel walked sixteen steep kilometres of short, sharp steps in thongs. She told me later she was at the very back of the pack, with Laurie leading the charge, and all she could think was: ‘What has my life come to?’
But Marty and I do the Wall our way and it’s fun and he is sweet and I really do think we’ll be fine. So what if we fight sometimes? Doesn’t every couple? And I don’t even really know what we’re fighting about.
I’m not as happy as I expected to be – as he expects me to be – and this is hard for both of us. But I can’t help it. I’m just not happy. As proud as I am of my medals – and as grateful as I am for the support I received to win them – winning gold isn’t all it was cracked up to be. Which leaves me thinking: Well, if this doesn’t do it for me, what on earth will? Why don’t I feel amazing? What is wrong with me?
I am angry at myself and I take it out on Marty. This dream of mine – this thing I worked so hard for, that I did 12,600 tough hours of training to achieve – what does it mean? Winning individual gold is the highlight of my career. Technically, I’ve swum better in the past (at the Melbourne 2007 Commonwealth Games, for a start). But this is what I’ve worked for, what I have sacrificed so much for. I think about all the soup, all the dry-land training. All the pressure of the past, all the times I failed, all the times I came home with silver. This is what Beijing has been about: putting my past behind me. All my near-misses, all the times I was slated in the press. The times when our family was poor. When my dad walked out. All those things I’ve stuffed down so deep. In Beijing I got past all this. I got on with the job. This is what it was all for.
I did it. I won. I’m the best in the world. That’s what the Olympics means. And I’m not complaining, don’t get me wrong. Not complaining at all. But it hasn’t solved all the problems I expected it to.
Even as a gold medallist, you still have to get up in the morning. You still have to eat your Weet-Bix and brush your teeth. Life goes on. It was stupid to think all that would change. Yet somehow, I now realise, I thought things would be different now. That life might be smoother. I thought my friends would like me more and my fiancé would love me more. And most stupid of all? I thought I might even like myself.
I thought winning gold would make me feel fulfilled. That there would be balloons and streamers and media interviews galore. (There’s nothing worse than winning silver and discovering the press don’t want to know you.) I thought my self-worth would go through the roof. That my psychotic efforts in the lead-up to Beijing would be worth it. What I lost would be worth it because of everything I would gain.
But it wasn’t. It just wasn’t.
It’s a warped way of thinking, but that’s honestly what I believed: when I get that gold medal I’ll be happy. When I win, everything will be okay. You know the line: ‘When I get that job, meet that guy, buy that car, have those shoes…’ When my life changes, when it’s different from how it is now, then I’ll be happy. We lie to ourselves like this all the time. Why did I think my lies would hurt any less?
And have I looked at my medal again? Have I even got it out of the box? Not really. Do I take it out and hold it and think: ‘Wow, I’m one pretty amazing human being.’ You’re kidding, aren’t you?
Sure, I’m proud of my hard work. Of the fact I stuck with it. And you bet I’m eternally grateful for all the support I received.
But beyond that? Beyond that, I’m crazy for thinking it would truly change things. ‘A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without one, then you’ll never be enough with one.’ Isn’t that what they say in the movie Cool Runnings? I need a little Rastafarian wisdom in my life as Marty and I board the plane home from Beijing. He is not in a good place when we leave. Not a good place at all. It must have been hard for him, so recently retired, to watch me win gold and then see me struggle so much with it. I’m at the very peak of my career while he’s at the bottom. And we’re finding it hard to meet in the middle.
After Beijing, a bunch of my teammates go on holidays together. Some go to Bali, others to Thailand. Me? I pack my bags, say my goodbyes, and then head home to Melbourne to break up with my fiancé.
22
The Lonely Days
After we fly back from Beijing, things between Marty and me unravel quickly. We fight for a while, and then we stop fighting, but only because we stop talking altogether. This is a silent war. I feel betrayed and I don’t think things between us will ever be the same.
I am in the study one Tuesday night when Marty wanders in with our bulldog, Winston, trailing behind him. They sit on the floor and look up at me together.
‘This isn’t working, is it?’
‘Nup,’ I say.
‘We should break up, shouldn’t we?’
‘Yup,’ I say.
And that is the end: as simple as that. It’s utterly clean cut.
I move out and stay with my friend Sarah Katsoulis. I am miserable and heartbroken. It’s really kind of Sarah to put me up, and I am grateful to her. But I hate it there. I stay in my tiny bedroom, avoiding her cat (I am not a cat person). I feel like I have fallen very far from the high of the Olympics just a few short weeks ago.
Rohan is as supportive as ever. He is understanding at training and gives me the space I need. But Jeremy, my gym coach, is much more brutal. ‘Saw that one coming,’ he says when I tell him about Marty. Then it’s straight back to training. Enough talking about emotional stuff.
Mum is not terribly disappointed Marty and I have broken up. She tells me that I was never myself when I was with Marty. ‘You were a dulled-down version of yourself. You seemed self-conscious. Just not you,’ she says.
‘Then why didn’t you say anything?’ I ask her. But I already know the answer. Mum couldn’t tell me; nobody could. I was in love and I thought it was the greatest thing ever.
But after Marty and I break up, I wonder to myself: Did he ever cheat on me? How many times? I have flashbacks to finding a girl’s number in his jacket pocket, right at the start of our relationship. I truly believed Marty when he said it was from before we started dating. I wanted to believe him, just like I wanted to believe that he was different to other footy players. I needed Marty to be the man I’d never had in my life. He was so wonderfully supportive. He cooked for me, ate the same restrictive diet as me, and came along to all my races. He did, in short, all the things my dad never did. He loved me and supported me and stayed right by my side. So I ignored other things. I refused to consider that maybe it was too good to be true.
I last one month with Sarah before I go out and bu
y myself a townhouse in Mitcham, just east of Melbourne’s CBD. I do it because I need to get out of Sarah’s quick smart. It doesn’t occur to me that living on my own might not be the answer.
I am lonely in Mitcham – even more so than I was at Sarah’s. There is no cat to avoid for a start. And I don’t have my dog, Winston, either. I had to give Winnie away when I broke up with Marty. I really miss him. I miss everyone. I miss my old life. I miss it so much.
After the dust settles and we have untangled our lives, I never speak to Marty again.
I lose a lot of friends when I split up with Marty, as you do after any break-up, I suppose. Most of our friends are footy-related, and without footy in my life – when I’m no longer driving out to some far-flung football field to sit and shiver and gossip and read trashy magazines with my friends – I don’t have a lot to fill my weekends. I spend a lot of time sitting at home by myself.
I also don’t have swimming eating up my days anymore; it’s no longer chewing up my mornings and afternoons, feeding on my whole life, leaving me exhausted. I take four weeks off after the Beijing Olympics, but this stretches out, until soon it is eight. I decide to take a year off international competition. I don’t want to see a pool, don’t want to go near one. I have no passion to get back in the water.
‘You could be the first Australian swimmer to go to four Olympics!’ Rohan says.
Cool, I think. But that’s not enough. That’s not enough to keep me motivated for the next four years.
Four years is a long time to keep swimming if you can’t see the point. All those thousands of kilometres in the pool, all those early morning starts, just to get a record? I’m getting older, getting bored; I’m not passionate anymore.
‘Besides,’ I tell Rohan, ‘that’s never been my goal.’
My goal was individual gold and I’ve ticked that box. I’ve done everything and got everything I wanted.
So why does it feel so crap then? I wonder.
I have worked so hard, given up so much. But where did all that hard work get me? Winning doesn’t feel as awesome as I dreamt it would. Winning feels empty. I am empty. So why would I do it all over again?
‘But if you don’t swim, what else will you do?’ Rohan asks.
And it’s a really good question. It’s the question I’ve been asking myself during the long, cold hours before dawn most mornings. What will I do? What can I do? I am twenty-three – still young – so why does it feel like my life is over?
‘I haven’t got that far,’ I tell Rohan. ‘I could get a job?’ But we both know my heart isn’t in it.
I could sit around all day at home, like I am doing now. I could stay stuck and lonely and sad, like I am now. I have lost my way, lost my purpose. I am disillusioned about winning and I’ve lost my passion. I’ve lost love. I’ve lost my friends. It’s all gone. But worst of all, I seem to have misplaced my self-worth as well. I feel worthless now.
Professionally, of course, I am in a great place. At the peak of my career! I think bitterly. But what’s the point of professional success if your personal life is falling apart?
The days and weeks after Beijing – when I sit around the house feeling like Marty couldn’t even love me when I won gold – are some of the worst weeks of my life. What’s happened? I wonder. Where did my life go? A few weeks ago I was in the Olympic village, feeling on top of the world. Now I’m alone and it feels like I’m starting at the bottom again. I feel like the lowest of the low. I feel like shit. I am in a really unhealthy place, mentally.
And I’m not in great shape physically either. Rohan coaxes me back into training – slowly at first, then a little more and a little more. I start with three sessions a week, but soon it’s four, and then it’s five. I hate it, but it keeps me sane. It makes me get out of bed each day.
I am headed for a World Cup competition in South Africa. It’s not like a football World Cup – not a big international competition; it’s just a short-course meet, for a bit of fun. It’s also a chance to win some money, because most top swimmers don’t bother with world cups.
But just days before I am due to fly out, I get sick. I miss the comp. I stay home on the couch by myself, with a raging sore throat and my temperature sky-high. I have no-one to look after me, no-one to bring me flat lemonade. Mum is at home in Brisbane, and thre’s no-one else. I need to vomit but I don’t make it to the bathroom in time and I am sick all over the lounge-room floor. I have to crawl to the laundry for a mop to clean up the mess myself. There is no-one else to do it.
‘You need to get yourself to a pharmacy and get your temperature checked,’ Mum says worriedly.
I drive myself there, shivering. When I walk into the store, the pharmacist stares. I am white and shaky; I look like death. My temperature is over thirty-nine degrees. ‘You should really go to a hospital,’ the pharmacist tells me.
But I don’t. Instead, I go home and feel sorry for myself. No-one comes to help; nobody cares. My God, what has my life become?
My temperature fades, but the loneliness stays. I slide further and further into depression.
Despite everything, I don’t consider going back to Brisbane. I love Melbourne; it’s my home. So I decide to stick it – whatever it is – out here. Who knows what’s next for me? Who knows what I should do? I am aimless.
I step up my training to eight sessions a week, but only because I have nothing else to do. I have decided that this year I will not do any major international competitions, such as the World Championships in Rome in July, but I still go to trials for Rome and qualify for the team.
‘Sure you don’t want to go?’ Rohan asks me yet again.
‘Sure,’ I say.
And it turns out to be a good decision. Rome signals the advent of the ‘super suit’ era, with many athletes trialling new high-tech swimsuits. The suits, made of polyurethane, among other things, are not supposed to be performance-enhancing, but forty-three world records are broken in Rome, and championship records are bettered in thirty-eight of forty events. Events are being won by people I’ve never heard of, people who are (relatively) crap. I’m glad I’m not there for that.
I don’t watch Rome on TV. I’m not interested. I can’t pretend to care. But the strangest thing happens while I am at home not caring: I discover no-one else cares very much either. My neighbours don’t watch it; the girl at the checkout is nonplussed. The world, it seems, keeps on turning, even when there is a swimming meet on. Who knew? The sun keeps rising; the traffic is still terrible. Nothing grinds to a halt because someone, somewhere, in a pool on the other side of the world, has got a silver medal instead of a gold. Nobody cares. Nobody cares! This is something of a revelation for me.
Then my friend Meagan Nay, who is away competing in Rome, receives news that her brother has died in a car accident. It’s terrible news. I feel so much for Meagan and her family. And I recognise more than ever that being an athlete doesn’t mean you’re immune to real life. There are no guarantees that the lives of elite athletes will be happy.
The perspective I get from missing Rome is good for me. It is the slap in the face I need. I realise I need to step away from competitive swimming for a while.
But being an outsider is also lonely, and so, after spending so much time in my own company, I spiral down and down. I spiral in on myself. I hate my sport, but I have nothing else. I keep training, keep plodding, because what else am I going to do? I’m not working. I have no alternatives.
This is something my mum constantly points out. So does Rohan. I feel pressure from both of them to keep on swimming.
But swimming doesn’t make me happy. Nothing like it, in fact. I hate training and don’t like my squad. I feel flat and directionless. Ever since I won gold in Beijing, I have had nothing on the horizon. Nothing to wake up for. I can’t find my hunger. I’m a different person to the passionate, happy Leisel of the past. The Leisel who was focused, who was committed to her goals. The Leisel who took risks like moving to Melbourne – who did
anything to achieve her golden dream. Now I plod along, paralysed by my own inaction. I do nothing, say nothing. I don’t know how to help myself. And the monotony of my days almost drives me mad.
I am studying beauty therapy again, this time at Elly Lukas College on Flinders Lane, and around this time I start going to parties with my beauty therapy friends. Screw it, I think. I may as well get on the social scene. What else am I going to do? I go out to bars and clubs with the girls I meet. I am looking for fun at the college – for anything that will snap me out of this low.
And it is fun and my friends are great but it’s still not enough. When I go out, I have the same attitude as when I’m at training: turn up, get the job done, go home. Repeat.
Nothing makes me happy; nothing picks me up. I’m only twenty-three and I have lost my hunger for life.
23
Opening Up
The following year, 2010, I am back on the circuit, competing in international competitions. FINA has banned all high-tech bodyskin suits this year, so it’s as good a time as any to dip my toe back in. I train for the first half of the year; then the second half is all about racing experience.
I go to the Pan Pacific Championships in California in August and I get three silver medals and a bronze, coming in behind the Americans in all events.
Then it’s on to the Commonwealth Games in October: this year they are being hosted in Delhi.
‘Delhi? Really?’ I ask Rohan.
I am unconvinced this is a good idea. I don’t think I’ll regain any of my hunger in Delhi. I’ll get constipation, maybe. Diarrhoea, possibly. I reckon I’ll experience the whole colourful spectrum of Delhi-belly during my eleven days there. But nothing that resembles hunger.
Also, I have some serious misgivings about safety in Delhi. In the lead-up to the Games, there have been reports in the media of security concerns – rumours of a terrorist attack. This is nothing new (there seem to be threats made at just about every Commonwealth and Olympic games these days), but with Delhi it feels somehow more sinister. More real. Like something is lurking beneath the surface. In Delhi, it doesn’t feel like the threat is under control, and I am fearful something bad might actually happen.
