Writing for talking project; My life with Gymnastics

I started artistic gymnastics when I was two years and a half. I’ve loved this sport since I started doing it until now. Now, at this point in my life, I couldn’t live without this perfect, amazing and wonderful sport.

When I started, it was extremely fun. At that time competing was only for a new leopard and glitter and all you had to do was trying your best because everyone got a medal. The mistakes were little and could always be fixed later. And on Mondays mornings, my friends and I brought medals at school to show to the teacher. Also I used to see the “big girls” training and think “I want to be like them”

But then, things started to get hard, when you fell it hurt (and also now) and no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t get that one move or exercise. And the competitions became much more serious because only a few girls got medals, and for the requirements of the sport many of my friends disappeared and my team became smaller.

Now I have bad days and good days, it depends how I feel. In my bad days, I have mental blocks, I always wish the the conditioning hasn’t that bad, among other feelings that day. But in my good days I feel I’m ontop of the world.

For me, gymnastics is not just a sport, it’s my whole life, without it I just don’t know what my goal in life would be. When I’m at school, all I want is to be in the gym. When I’m home, I just wanna be there. “It’s like a drug, it’s killing your body, but you keep coming back for more because it’s so addicting” not literally. This sport attracts people that love to keep going and love to fight. Of course it’s hard, it’s supposed to be hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. Hard is what makes it great.

In my list of priorities, gymnastics became first, school comes second, and sleeping isn’t even on the list. So many times I don’t get my homework done, but it’s because I do gymnastics on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 4 hours a day, apart from physical education on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In conclusion my week is exhausting, but I love it. No matter how much you want to quit, there’s always that part of you that wants to stay.

                                by  Natalia Pellecchia

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