Age 6: My mom bought me a pair of ice skates. Out of the blue. I hadn't even asked for a pair. I used to pretend I was an pretty ice skater on the living room carpet... That's how far the ice skates went, because my mom never, ever took me to the ice rink! Maybe she was a skatesophrenic too?
Age 8: I made a new friend, Candy. She wasn't shy like me, and I never felt 100% comfortable with her, but I secretly admired her. She had a really cool pair of white rollerskates, with red and blue stars, and red wheels, very American! I thought it was so cool and brave for her to go out and skate, just like that!
Age 9: My mom bought me a pair of white Barbie rollerskates with pink wheels and a huge pink Barbie logo. This time I had begged for them! When I first saw them at the toy store, I knew they had to be mine. I wanted to be brave and cool like Candy! This was my first skatesophrenia seizure.
Age 9: My friend Candy broke her arm rollerskating. A dent in my skating bravery.
My poor, beautiful Barbie skates followed the fate of the ice skates and never saw beyond the carpeted desert of my living room.
Age 10: I went ice skating a couple of times, while in winter camp in Switzerland. I was absolutely petrified. Not much progress made there.
Age 11: My friend Natasha lends me her old school strap-on metallic skates (we're in the 80s, so old school then would be considered antique now!). I was petrified the first minutes, yet, after a short while I started to gain confidence. Next thing you know, I was rolling away, uphill, downhill, having fun and feeling very good about myself! But that was a one-off and I never skated again until about 10 years later when...
Age 21:... rollerblading became the new trend! I had bought a pair on one of those brave instants of mine. Put them on. Was brave enough to go out on the busy streets and skate on my own, my knees pointing inwards, my butt sticking out. Got laughed at, fingers pointed at me. I remember one sentence in particular, from a stranger "Oh look! She got rollerblades for christmas! hahaha!" Another dent in the skates.
age 21+: In the couple of following years, I probably went skating 5 times. Not regularly enough to feel confident. But one hopeful thought is that everytime I did go, for the first half-hour, I would feel terrified, wondering why I'm doing this to myself, that I should just give up coz I'll never be able to skate anyway! Then, after that daunting half-hour, the magic would come in, and I would suddenly feel comfortable and confident, finally having fun, and with my self-confidence at top level! And this would happen every single time! To the point that I didn't want to stop skating! Unfortunately my lazy self found all the excuses not to go out and skate and that's why I only went 5 times, and that's why more than a decade later, I still can't skate for shit!
You see the pattern. Everything in my life looks like this. Up and down and up and down. Courage and fear. Courage and fear.
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