When I first started figure skating recreationally, the rinks closest to us closed down in the summer. Because of this, save the one summer my Tot team competed at what was then known as ISIA Nationals (we had to find another rink to practice at), I'd always end up taking most of June through the end of August off. This changed at age ten, when my home rink decided to no longer offer precision team skating. Mom started taking me to the rink in the city which was open year 'round, to skate with a new team which practiced year 'round. (This was also the time of my laughable dabbling in pairs skating with Howard.) I was only on the team for a year before it was decided that I should try out for a new team affiliated with the organization then called USFSA (now simply called U.S. Figure Skating) Ever since then, there have been exactly five times when I have been off the ice for an extended period of time; that is, any longer than a two or three week vacation.

• June 1996 - August 1996: Surgery on my left wrist to remove a congenital hemangioma. The doctor was paranoid about me falling and messing up his handiwork so he didn't want me back on the ice for at least six weeks following the surgery. It was even longer until I could actually skate in line with the rest of the team.
• January 2000 - April 2000: Two surgeries and many months of physical therapy, due to a rather unfortunate incident at practice resulting in two sliced tendons in my left knee.
• September 2000 - April 2001: After not making the team at the university in Ohio (I found out years later that it had nothing to do with my skills, but rather because the coach quite rightly suspected an eating disorder), I fell deep into depression and deeper into the ED, which necessitated a medical withdrawal, months spent in a behavior health hospital (I/P and PHP). Even after discharge in January, it took me months to get up the nerve to try out for anybody new. (This was when I started with this last team I was on.)
• Late March 2004 - Early July 2004: After a rather bad year and a slight falling out with the coach (who didn't take my stress fracture seriously and treated certain team mates very, very badly), I decided to "retire" from competitive skating. This didn't last very long as Coach knew just how to break me down and to convince me to give it another go, promising for a much better season this time, and promising that she'd change her ways. Somehow "okay, but only for Mids and Nationals" turned into, "Okay, fine, I'll skate the entire year."
• Late February 2005 - Present. After an even worse year and an even bigger falling out with the coach (my only solace is that I would never have met Cori, nor been able to visit Kara, if I hadn't been involved with the team that season), now, I haven't skated since Nationals in Boston.

Over six months! Almost seven! This marks the longest I haven't skated by choice or by chance, well, ever. Come to think of it, I don't believe I've even seen a sheet of ice since Nationals. Not even on a small or silver screen. And it's not like I've boycotted competitions on TV or that Ice Princessmovie on principle; I just flat-out haven't even had the desire. Guess you could say that figure skating has left me "cold." Or perhaps a better way to look at it is that I've "grown up." Or at least grown out of it.

This is also the first time in four years I'll actually go an entire competitive season without being on a team.

This could, plausibly, be an interesting experiment.

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How do you leave the past behind...?

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