Katrina Ann: My Beginnings: Two Alternate Universe's Part 1

As long as I could remember I had always divided my life into two parts. Perhaps it was a child’s way of making things simpler, more understandable. Compartmentalizing the two aspects of my life helped me keep them and life in perspective. It was not easy; I shudder to think of what happened to the person who told the Sun and the Moon that they had to share the day. My world began in two places. They ran parallel to each other on the same timeline. Mixing the worlds together was unthinkable, unimaginable, and unforgivable.

This is Life.

Little did I know then that life does not work that way nor did I expect my worlds’ to rupture and form tiny cracks creating a gazillion different pathways leading out of the world’s to form new dimensions altogether. However, my world did begin with just two, only two. That’s not much is it? Black and white, good and evil, yin and yang, all these two dimensional concepts are what my world began with.

Selangor Gymnastic Team at Sukma 2004

Selangor Sports (Sukses)

“Just do it” the Nike slogan was pretty much the advertisement of my life. I grew up in a gymnasium. Every day after school and on the weekends my parents would diligently and dutifully drive my sister and I to practice. At the gym I learned to reach for the sky and run in the clouds, to fall free and easy and land like a cat with nine lives. It was a challenging, nerve-racking, high flying experience and I loved it! It was the ultimate playground. Gymnasts were special, being one gave you confidence, an identity, less than 1% of the population can do what I did and it felt uplifting and unique to be a part of that elite group.

Rhythmic Gymnastics - Rope

Everything was an exciting and emotionally overblown experience.
Twirling flaming batons, flying through hoops,
and dancing with ribbons of pink cotton candy
was rhythmic gymnastics to me.

Artistic Gymnastics -Beam

Artistic gymnastics was daredevil stunts, doing death-defying acts day in and out. Bounding and twisting your way across twelve by twelve meters of springy wooden freedom. Hanging on to the uneven bars for dear life until your hands are bleeding and blisters just pop up whenever they feel like. The vault was a hulk of a beast at the end of a runway you know you cannot catwalk down.

However, I hated the balance beam; it was a high, narrow and hard instrument of torture. You would nerve-rackingly make your way across it while envisioning the tallest cliff in the world and all the things that could happen to you if you fell.

My first world taught me everything I could know about how to survive in the ‘real’ world. In a way, my sports world was my bubble. My secret haven, with secret friends and tricks my ‘real’ world friends would not understand. My first coach taught me a lot about perseverance, working hard and pushing through the tough times. The short, balding, gold-toothed Russian man and his wife Madam were like second parents to me and treated me like their own.

Mr. Vasili trying to make me feel better
when I was nervous to compete

I still remember when Mr.Vasili threw me out of the gym for being afraid to do a stunt. Most adults take years to learn how to conquer their fears. I was already conquering mine when I was a child. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said “There is nothing to fear but fear itself,”.

Farah, Me and Madam (one of our Russian coaches)

I also learnt the true definition of competition in the form of my sister or as she was known to me back then “Little Miss Perfect”. She was younger, more talented, skinnier, cuter and better than me. Always being upstaged by your younger sister tends to bruise your ego and damage your self-confidence. She was an extrovert and I was not. I had my nose stuck in a book most of the time while she had people fawning over her cuteness and talent. Needless to say I felt that I had drawn the short end of the stick.

The green-eyed monster is an ugly thing that follows you around and sinks it’s teeth in your back. Once it holds on it’s difficult for it to let go. Competitiveness and sibling rivalry made for a very trying time. In short, where my first world began taught me perseverance, pain-tolerance, co-operation, discipline, hard-work, dealing with jealousy and nerves, enjoying the good moments and learning from the bad.

All the memories, experiences, values that I learnt there during that time will always be with me no matter where I go.

I have moved on to so many other things since then (including getting over childish jealousy and my sister is my best friend btw!) but I always fall back on the fundamentals that I learnt there when I was a child. This place shaped and molded me to be the person I am today.