Body Lengths

by Leisel Jones

  ‘I’m not going,’ I say.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ says Mum.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ say the head coaches from Swimming Australia.

  ‘Let’s talk about how you’re feeling,’ says Rohan, and I love him for it. He always says exactly what I need to hear.

  In the end, I am persuaded to go and the security is fine. In fact, it’s very efficient. Our buses are escorted by armoured cars to the pool each day and there are guys toting machine guns, wearing bandanas and army boots, riding alongside us in the trays of white utes everywhere we go. We are chaperoned in and out of the pool and the athletes’ village. I have never felt so safe in my life.

  But it’s not long before I decide I’d rather take my chances outside with the terrorists than in the athletes’ village. Inside, things are far more dangerous. For a start, there are balconies with no guardrails, and we’re on the fifth floor. There are bandaids in the pasta (Alicia Coutts finds one and returns her bowl to the kitchen, where the kitchen staff promptly stir it back into the communal pot!). And there is God knows what lurking in the cloudy swimming pools. My feet are always filthy: a big deal for me. Dirty feet is my biggest nightmare, my strangest phobia. And, just as I feared, the food here is so bad that we have swimmers diving into the warm-up pools at one end, getting out at the other, vomiting and then getting back in the pool again. It’s so gross.

  Everyone is sick and exhausted and still trying to compete. I swear I’ve never had so much Imodium in my entire life. We are instructed by our team managers and nutritionists to avoid all fresh fruit and vegetables because of what they’re washed in. For almost two weeks in Delhi I eat nothing but baked potato wedges, because I figure at least the germs should have been slow-roasted to death. It’s a restrictive diet, and not one that I would recommend. And I have never been so constipated in my whole life.

  But somehow I win three gold medals and a silver at Delhi, making me the third Australian in history to win ten Commonwealth Games gold medals. Susie O’Neill and Ian Thorpe are the only other Australian athletes to do this. I am joining some esteemed company.

  But honestly? As I board the flight home from Delhi, I think I’ll just be happy when I can poo again.

  As well as a return to racing, 2010 marks the beginning of a couple of new professional relationships for me. The first is with Lisa Stevens, a – gasp! – sports psychologist. My friend Marieke puts me on to her and, to start off with, she is just someone to chat to. A friendly ear. But we don’t talk about swimming: we talk about life. Lisa works out of her home, a beautiful house in Port Melbourne, just outside the city centre. We catch up every few weeks, and each time we meet in her downstairs office, a room tastefully decorated with pictures of horses on the walls. Lisa was a show jumper and an Australian champion at one time. She tells me stories about her horses, and about competing and what that felt like for her. I listen, enthralled, when she talks. It’s such a relief. It’s all so familiar. When she tells me about the pressure, about her perfectionism, about always striving to be better and better, I think, Oh – that! Yes, that. You felt that too? It wasn’t just me! I want to cry when I realise I’m not alone.

  Lisa is so inclusive, so generous. I am never given the sense that I’m crazy or strange or isolated in what I’m feeling. I tell her I’ve been feeling the strain of the pressure for years.

  ‘You’ve been sweeping a lot of things under the rug,’ she observes. ‘A lot of dust. One or two crumbs. Maybe even a mouse under there.’

  ‘Lisa, there’s a whole moose under the rug,’ I say with grim humour.

  Lisa just gets it. We have so much in common and it’s so easy when we talk. Plus, she is the only person I’ve ever met that loves shoes more than I do.

  Lisa has a dog called Stewart, a gorgeous Blue Heeler-cross-Collie. During most visits, Stewart has to stay upstairs and I can hear him clattering across the floorboards while Lisa and I chat in the office below. But sometimes he’s allowed downstairs with us, and I love it when he is. Lisa jokes that Stewart would make a better psychologist than her because her patients’ moods always improve when he comes to say hello.

  The other person I meet around this time is Anthony Barnes, who becomes my new flatmate. Barnsey is a fun-loving psychiatrist and he is responsible for introducing me to such things as traditional Jewish family dinners on Friday; Yiddish words; a repertoire of practical jokes I could never have dreamt of; and shopping and coffee on Chapel Street, dah-lings.

  The first time I meet Barnsey is at D.O.C. Pizza Place in Carlton, when a mutual friend realises we both need a flatmate. We shake hands and I sit down.

  ‘Just so you know,’ Barnsey says by way of a conversation-starter, ‘I like to have a bath with my housemates once a week. To just get naked and get all our issues out.’

  This is his opener. And I’m straight onto it.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ I say. ‘I’ll bring the wine. And the soap. You scrub my back and all that …’

  Our friend looks faintly aghast but Barnsey laughs. ‘We’re going to get along just fine, you and I,’ he says to me.

  And we do. We rent a place together just near Chapel Street, and for a while life begins to look up.

  Barnsey and I are like ships in the night. I’m up and out at 4 a.m., and by the time I’m back at 9 a.m. he’s already headed to the office. In the afternoons I’m hard at training when he gets home, but we meet afterwards and go out to the latest popular fancy-pants restaurants. He takes me to Jacques Reymond for my birthday, and we both nearly die because the serving sizes are so small. (We have to have a second dinner of toast when we get home to our flat.)

  But despite the expensive restaurants and the shopping – even despite the Jewish family dinners – by the end of 2010 I am feeling worse than ever. I am not well at all.

  For the life of me, I can see no end to this depression.

  24

  The Depths in the Heights

  In 2011, I head to a high performance sports centre in Sierra Nevada, Spain, with my squad from Nunawading. Sierra Nevada is ridiculously beautiful. A spectacular freak of a mountain range, erupting on the wrong page of the atlas, its snow-heavy peaks popping up at the southernmost tip of Spain, right where the country is slipping on its togs and plunging into the Mediterranean Sea.

  Being here makes me think of where I was born. Strange, because the Northern Territory is nothing like this. The landscapes couldn’t be more opposite. They’re from different hemispheres, different planets. But I have the same sense of displacement. If I was a fish out of water in the desert back home, then how will I go in the snow?

  We are here to do altitude training. It’s fifteen to twenty per cent harder to swim at altitude, and this place sure does offer height. Much of the mountain range is 3000 metres or more above sea level. We step out of the airport and straight into the sensation that we’re breathing through straws. Gasping for air.

  It’s going to be impossible to do the same sets here that we do at home: it’s just too hard. Walking – even sleeping – will be a workout, we’re told. And as a result our coaches expect we’ll all shed some weight. Up to a kilo a day, even. I look up at the glowering sky, heavy with clouds and grey as my mood. The weather forecast is foul, we have been warned. I shiver and hurry onto the bus.

  I’m still shivering later that day when we sit down for lunch. I can’t get warm in this place. Everything I touch is cold and dead. It’s like my fingers are numb right through. And I can’t remember anyone’s name either. I can’t shake the sensation that my brain is numb too.

  I am foggy, cloudy; I am not myself at all. And worse, I am teary and fearful and I don’t know why. When the woman at reception hands me my room key and tells me to enjoy my stay, I am overwhelmed by the sense that this place is not going to end well for me.

  Why? I think, as the elevator pulls me even further into the thin, thin air. What’s your problem? Get a grip. I give myself a shake and tell myself to get on with the job.
>
  And yet when I walk down the corridor and into my room, I am full of blank dread. It is a bare room, with twin beds, a TV and a single desk that runs along one wall. There is a large window that looks out on an empty running track and the mountains in the distance. There are mountains in every direction, in every vista in this place. Mountains looming down at me whenever I turn around. I dump my bag on my bed and begin to unpack. It’s cold in here; it’s like a cheap motel room. I’m rooming with Ellen Gandy, a UK swimmer who is new to our squad, but there’s no sign of her yet. I try to remember if I saw her at the airport. Try to remember any details from my morning. Landing, going through customs, the bus ride out to the sports centre, even the flight – all twenty-five and a half hours of it – it’s just a blur. Focus, I chide myself. C’mon, Leisel. Who did you sit next to? You must remember that. But my brain is as thin as the air around me.

  This visit to Sierra Nevada is the first time I’ve tried altitude training. We’ve been told it will affect every physiological system in our bodies – cardiovascular, nervous, endocrine, the works. ‘Even your mental state will be affected,’ we’re advised. ‘Training will be hard and that can screw with your head.’ That must be why I’m feeling so horrid, I think. I ignore the fact I was feeling like this long before our plane touched down at Málaga on Tuesday.

  The idea behind our camp is that we train up here for a couple of weeks, and then when we return home, when we come down from on high, we will swim like gods. We will redeem Australian swimming glory. It’s been a quiet couple of years in the Aussie swimming camp, after the golden era of Sydney and Beijing, and the powers that be at Swimming Australia are prepared to do anything to stop the rot.

  But altitude training is not just for swimmers. There are runners, footballers, basketballers, even gymnasts here, too. Cadel Evans, the Aussie cyclist, is staying in a hotel nearby while he trains for the upcoming Tour de France.

  One day our team goes on an excursion to a nearby coastal town. We are rocketing down the side of the mountain in our van, heading for the flat below, when we see Cadel Evans riding on the road ahead.

  ‘Maaate!’ Michael Klim has wrenched the door of the van open and is yelling out to Cadel as we rattle down the mountain. ‘Mate, how are ya?’

  Apparently Michael and Cadel go way back. Cadel sidles up alongside and reaches out his hand. He grabs on to Michael’s arm and the two of them cruise happily along, chatting away, shooting the breeze like they’re not hurtling down one of the steepest mountains in Spain at 80 kilometres per hour. Cadel is flying along, really picking up speed, and he’s yakking away, telling Michael what he had for breakfast. Crazy cyclist. I’d like to chat with Cadel properly while we’re here in Sierra Nevada. I’ve met him before, at an Olympics somewhere, and I’ve always been a fan. Maybe there’ll be time to chat to him when he’s not pelting down a mountain.

  From day one, training is a slog. It’s slow and tiring and terribly frustrating. My lungs burn, my muscles ache, my body won’t do what I want it to. Everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves; there’s a buzz, a good vibe among the team. And I try – God, I try so hard – to be happy. To fit in, to keep up, to keep the laughs coming. Because no-one wants to hang around with someone who’s dragging their feet. But nothing seems to work.

  One of my friends takes a photo of me in the lunchroom when I’m pretending to wear a banana for a smile. We laugh and muck around, but behind my fake smile I am desperate, hollow. I can’t find a real smile for the life of me. I am using what little energy I have to try and be pepped up and positive and fun and myself. My old self. Wherever she is.

  Even my friends can’t break me out of it. My good friend Tay Zimmer, a backstroker from Warrnambool, can’t get me to crack a smile, and Tay is the funniest person in the world.

  Get over it. Just get over it! I say to myself as I plough up and down the pool. It’s not forever; you’ll be home soon. You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and make the most of this. But that’s not it either. I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I’m not feeling anything at all. I am cold and exhausted and empty and grey. I’m disappearing into the landscape. I am drifting away.

  I call Lisa daily from Sierra Nevada. I skype her in Melbourne when it is early morning for me and late evening for her. As always, she is patient and kind. She wants to know how I am feeling, how I am coping. I tell her as much as I dare to let out.

  ‘We are going for a hike in the mountains tomorrow,’ I say. ‘Jeremy’s got us walking twenty kilometres to some mountain.’

  ‘Do one thing for me?’ Lisa says.

  ‘Sure. Anything.’

  ‘Try and take in your surroundings. Really take it all in. I want you to notice everything, all the details, then report back to me what you saw. Don’t skim over anything. I want to know how it smelt, how it sounded, what the air felt like on your skin. Everything.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say slowly. ‘I think I can do that.’

  The next morning we assemble for our hike. ‘Pack your ski goggles?’ Jeremy, our gym coach, asks us on the way out of camp, by way of a pep talk. Apparently there will be plenty of snow and ice.

  ‘I’ve got mine!’ Tay shouts and twirls her swimming goggles round her finger in the air. That gets a laugh from just about everyone. Everyone except me.

  ‘Forget the goggles: you need a bloody snorkel,’ I mutter. The air today is thinner than I could ever have imagined.

  We trek for four hours and being outdoors is good, but I’d still rather be at home on my own. It’s all I can think about: getting home. Some of my friends have been playing soccer in between training sessions during the last few days, and they can’t understand why I don’t join in. Usually I would. Usually, I’d be the first person out there, organising teams, assigning dumb nicknames, revving people up, stirring the pot. But now I can barely remember how.

  I shake my head and try to forget all that now. Try to look around and soak it all in. Try to absorb all the details to tell Lisa tonight.

  ‘Everything was blue,’ I tell her on Skype that evening. ‘Blue and crisp and clean and fresh. I could smell pine and hear the sound of rocks and ice crunching under my shoes.’

  ‘That’s good,’ she says. ‘That’s all really good.’

  ‘Oh, and there was this family of goats. A dad, a mum and two baby goats. Just standing there on a rock watching us as we headed out of camp.’ These goats are the only animals I have seen since arriving in this place and suddenly they are important, they are crucial, they are so vivid in my mind. I describe them to Lisa for a few more minutes and she listens quietly.

  ‘This thing, this awareness thing, this is so that I forget about my problems and just live in the moment, isn’t it?’ I say eventually.

  ‘Sort of,’ Lisa agrees. ‘Not exactly that you’ll forget your problems but, yes, it might help you to focus on where you are right now. I don’t want you to feel like we’re trying to suppress your worries or your anxieties. Not at all. We’ve swept so much under the rug again while you’ve been away because we just haven’t had time to talk about everything yet. But we’ll recap on those things when you’re back home in Melbourne.’

  ‘Oh yeah, the dead moose under the rug,’ I say. I picture a cartoon moose under a red Turkish rug, its antlers poking out. ‘That thing’s starting to smell!’ I say.

  It’s true I haven’t been dealing with my emotions. Not in Sierra Nevada. Not ever, really. I just keep stuffing everything down and hoping it won’t all explode in my face. Just because I now know I’m suppressing things doesn’t mean I can stop doing it.

  ‘Just look on the bright side,’ Lisa says, signing off. ‘There’s a lot of material here for when you write your book one day.’

  We both have a laugh at that.

  As well as treks and other dry-land training at Sierra Nevada, we do daily weigh-ins at the pool. Each morning, before we hit the water, we have to stand on the scales and see how much weight has slipped off us in the night thanks to
the wonders of altitude training.

  But despite all the promises of weight evaporating into the thin air up here, my weight is not budging. If anything, it’s going up. I’m eating less, training harder and somehow I’m putting on weight, while others around me are dropping up to a kilo overnight. What’s wrong with me? I want to scream. I’m working so bloody hard just to wake up in the morning and I’m not even losing any weight. C’mon! I’m working so hard here, people. So damn hard.

  Every day it gets worse and worse. For the life of me I cannot sleep. I don’t want to eat. If I can’t go home, then all I want to do is sit in my room and be alone. I spend hours in there. Whenever I’m not in the pool, I’m in my room. Sitting, staring; wishing I was somewhere else. Wishing I was someone else. Wishing this whole thing would end. The room is as bare and as stale as when we first moved into it. Aside from some of Ellen’s clothes and a few books that are lying around, there’s no real sign that anyone is living in here. My stuff is still inside my bag, ready for a quick getaway. Ready for an exit of any kind. And even though the room is so unremarkable, I feel like I am moulding into it. Like it’s alive, like it’s yawning and stretching and swallowing me whole. It’s an animal, a monster. It’s one of those terrible mountains outside, towering over us, casting its shadow. Making everything dark.

  I am not seeing eye to eye with my gym coach right now either. Jeremy and I have always had a difficult relationship, but up here things seem more strained than ever. He can see that I’m sad, down, whatever you want to call it, and yet he never cuts me any slack. He is so hard, so unforgiving, and I leave every gym session in floods of tears. His attitude to life is to ‘suck it up’, so he refuses to acknowledge how much I am suffering. I am not well! I am not well! I want to scream at him. But then, that’s not my style. Acknowledging weakness, asking for help: none of these things are very ‘me’. And if I was going to seek help, the last person I would go to is Jeremy. Jeremy who pushes, Jeremy who won’t see. Jeremy who drives me to tears again and again and again. After one session when he has told me to get the job done, I go back to my room and scrawl in my diary: ‘Jeremy is a fucking asshole.’ My tears spill on to the page and make the words bleed.