The years I spent as a gymnast were some of the most incredible years of my life. I experienced the ultimate highs and the lowest of lows. From the age of three, I knew that gymnastics was for me. I know what you’re thinking, how can a three-year-old possibly know that they had found their first love when they still needed to take naps during the day? My simple explanation for this: I don't know. It just happened. If you were a gymnast, you’ll understand what I mean. You don't know what kept you going back day after day, you don't know why you put yourself through the hardships that come with the sport, but you did. And for my fellow gymnasts who stuck it out, I applaud you, because I know just how hard it was to do that.

Leaving a sport you spent 15 years of your life committing yourself to is not an easy feat. I spent months going through what I can only assume was an identity crisis once I graduated and left gymnastics behind. Gymnastics was who I was, it was everything that I ever wanted to be, and when suddenly my life didn't revolve around gymnastics, I was lost. I didn't know how to spend my weeknights; I didn't know what to do with myself, I didn't know who I was anymore. Don't get me wrong, the first few weeks were nice, being able to spend nights with my family, actually being home for dinner with them and not stuck at the gym all night, but I left a different family behind, and a piece of me with it. Since that day, I haven’t been the same.

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Somewhere between my first jumps on the trampoline and my last beam routine, I became who I am today. Gymnastics takes a different kind of strength. Our bodies are put through hell and back, and yet, we keep striving to be better. Why? Because there is always something to improve, someone to beat, even if that someone is who you were yesterday. This is what kept us going back, what pushed us to do one more bar routine when our rips were so bad we got blood on the bar, what made us do another flight series even after straddling the beam three times in a row. You could call it insanity, most gymnasts would agree with you, but to us, it didn't matter, because we loved what we were doing, even when we hated it.

We wouldn’t have done what we did if it wasn't something that we loved. The four-hour practices after school, doing our homework in the car rides to the gym, getting home well after 9:30 pm and still having to eat dinner and shower before waking up and doing it all over again. The five-hour meets, waiting to compete for a grand total of about 10 minutes. The agonies of watching our teammates succeed while we failed, the tears for them when the situation was flipped. The physical, mental and emotional pain we put ourselves through every day; it’s been almost four years and I still can’t move in the mornings.

Through it all we kept going back. So thank you, gymnastics, for teaching me determination. Thank you for teaching me how to not only succeed with grace, but to fail with grace as well. Thank you for showing me what I can handle, and what I can’t, for showing me that I am stronger than I think I am. Thank you for teaching me things I don't think any other sport would have. Thank you for showing me what it's like to be great, for giving me my first love. Thank you, gymnastics, for making me who I am.

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So, what do you do when you’re done? You live. You try to find something that makes your blood sing as much as flipping over a four-inch balance beam did. You take up new hobbies, you throw yourself into something completely different, you try your hardest to find the piece of yourself you left in the gym. But the truth is, that piece of you is gone. You wont ever be that same girl, the one who chased Olympic sized dreams, and the one who happily gave her whole childhood to something she loved. The hardest part of this whole process is realizing that that is okay, because you’re not meant to be that girl anymore. You’re meant to move on, to grow as a person; it’s what all of our years as gymnasts shaped us to do.

If you haven’t yet graduated or left the sport behind, enjoy it while you can. Gymnastics isn’t a sport that you can do long term; its something that we can claim is ours for just a short time, and then we have to move on, let the girls behind us leave their mark. They’ll follow the same path we did; they’ll just leave their own footprints in the chalk.