Freefall by Edward Whitfield

  If I should die or become utterly incapable of living in the near future,

I may well say that I was the one to tear myself to shreds.

—Kafka, Diaries

The star golfer who fudges a regulation putt. The tennis ace who inexplicably double faults. The otherwise clinical striker who cannons a penalty against the crossbar. As you watch from the edge of your seats — cheering or jeering, demanding more — please bear in mind that these are ultimately only people. Athletes may be conditioned for the rigours of elite competition, but we are flawed, just like everyone else. Forgive us our failures, for they are precisely what make us human, much more than our triumphs ever could. What follows is the brief story of my own. 

I am a diver. I specialise in the 10m platform event — the high board, as it is commonly referred to, that lonely plank up in the rarified air of dares and forfeits. Only a maniac would voluntarily jump off that, people always say. You would have to be a lunatic. Mentally unstable, wrong in the head. Which, as it happens, I am.

When only sixteen — entering my competitive prime, fully focused on the 2028 Los Angeles Games — I suffered a severe mental breakdown. I was diagnosed with depression and have been under treatment ever since. Different medications, therapies, psychiatric wards, the lot. There have been multiple suicide attempts, the first of which came after a period of incapacity prevented me from attending a crucial training camp, ultimately costing me a place at the Olympics. I hurled myself off a roof, only for motor memory to kick in at the last moment. My arms pencilled out, as if to elongate my form and streamline my entry, in this case serving to protect my skull and save my life. I suffered two broken wrists, a shattered right elbow, and the doctors predicted that I would never dive again.

Well, I soon showed them. Only two months later I leapt off another roof, then a balcony, then a bridge, before resigning myself to the diabolical irony that I was not even capable of diving to my own death. I attempted a series of overdoses, the most foolish of which was on antidepressants, a strategy I would advise even my worst enemy against. The ensuing surfeit of serotonin provoked an entirely logical surge of positivity, a desperate and radical desire to live, such that I made the emergency call myself in a panic. Suddenly I was lying in hospital with my arse hanging out of a gown, forced to drink charcoal, every second feeling like a thousand heart attacks.  

Throughout this time, my family made relentless efforts to convince me that life was worth living. I would soon bounce back, they said, and countless other tortuous diving metaphors besides. Nothing was my fault, I would not always feel this way, and depression did not need to be the defining feature of my life, despite what it had already cost me. I acquiesced, made the occasional vague proclamation about wanting to heal, but never did I truly believe that was possible.

Years passed in a blur, as if time was nothing more than air for me to chute towards the ground through. I felt totally alienated from the world, numb to beauty and happiness, sensitive to nothing but pain, such that the only emotions I ever felt keenly were guilt or shame. I had already concluded that I was nothing but a burden on those around me, and the only thing I craved with any sort of commitment was death. Not because I honestly believed people might be better off without me, but because I would be better off without constantly having to wonder whether that were true.

I grew bitter. The only thing I had ever felt happy doing, been good at or cared about, had been taken away from me. Perhaps my obsession with diving goes some way towards explaining my depression, or vice versa. Years previously, after competing at the Junior World Championships in Italy, I joined my family for a holiday near Naples. My parents dragged me around the temples at Paestum, where I became fascinated by a famous ancient wall painting. It depicts a man plunging off a rickety board with catastrophic form, neck craned up and away from his body, spine inverted. To the Greeks, though, what mattered about this image was its representation of the moment of death, when the soul dives from life into the sea of eternity. For as long as I can remember, I have felt ill at ease — in the world, in my own skin — unless and until I have found myself high above water, toes curled over a ledge. Now I realise that each dive, every impact, was a small and symbolic attempt to erase myself, to somehow start anew. I could twist and somersault, but ultimately all I ever wanted to do was fall and crash.

Beyond the act of diving, competition became a way of sublimating life. The most vulgar personal needs, the most mundane practicalities, could all be subordinated to a quest for unsullied perfection. Just as with a painter, for example, that perfection exists in a vacuum, ony in the mind of the artist, and the idea of ever attaining it is as impossible as it is futile. Yet still we strive.

I remember when it was announced that athletes suffering from mood disorders would be deemed eligible for the Riyadh 2032 Paralympic Games. My parents broke the news to me in delirium, as if I had won the lottery, but my initial reaction was one of pure contempt. Never had I really believed that I was ill, let alone afflicted by something so grotesque as a disability. I had problems, issues, fine — but it was my opinion that these existed in my mind as opposed to my brain. They were of my own making, and not some neurological defect with which I was saddled at birth.

The world is what it is; those who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. Depression, to me, seemed like little more than an invented pathology. Something to explain away the rampaging sense of estrangement felt by so many of us in the West, our rank inability to tolerate life, at a moment in history when notions of the Self have become bloated beyond all measure, and we have been stripped of the consolations of God or the state or ideology. So much the better if said pathology delivers a boost to Big Pharma, or creates new economies, all of which lets the big wheels keep on turning. This was how I saw things, even if the truth was becoming increasingly evident in my continued unhappiness, in my fundamental inability to feel any differently.

I agreed to go to Riyadh, but only because of a cynical desire to prove people wrong. I no longer possessed the raw, gymnastic strength of my adolescence, but injuries had if anything rendered me more flexible, blessed me with a freakish agility, and in every relevant sense of the word I was able-bodied. Nor did I have any concrete mental flaws. I was not psychotic, nor did I think I was someone else, nor was my ability to make decisions impaired. I was capable of crystalline focus and pristine coordination.

In training I found contentment, and I was impressed by my level of performance. Frankly, you could have lined me up alongside the very best in the world, and still I might have been a contender. I would go to Riyadh, and by decimating the field I would prove that the decision was a farce; depression was not a disability, nor should it ever be considered as such. 

I hated the first few days in Saudi Arabia, the incessant fawning from fans and officials alike. They addressed us like invalids, and wherever I went wearing my lanyard I would receive saccharine compliments and sycophantic pats on the back from strangers. What an inspiration you are to others. How brave you are. I dispensed pithy retorts about the thousands of labourers who had died from heatstroke while digging the Olympic pool. They were brave. The journalists and dissidents murdered in broad daylight for criticising the same regime we were now allowing to bask in the success of a multibillion-dollar PR exercise. They were an inspiration. 

It was a relief to finally enter the bubble of competition. I eased through the preliminaries and the semis without ever really pushing myself, while still qualifying in first place. In each round there were six dives, one from each category: forward, back, reverse, inward, armstand, and twisting. Already it was apparent that I was vastly superior to the remainder of the field, and to win gold I would only need to execute the most routine manoeuvres. But the morning of the final, I decided that I would treat the crowd and judges to a spectacle. The desire to compete is never merely about beating others; it means striving for that aforementioned perfection, which is principally a matter of taking on and conquering yourself.

My first dive was a flawless armstand reverse four somersaults in pike. Then, a reverse four and a half somersault in pike, which I could have executed better — my feet were flat, my back a tad arched — but still scored highly due to the degree of difficulty. My advantage was already looking unassailable. I realised that to win by a margin of more than fifty points would be absurd, crass on my part, so I decided to ease off for the forward and back.

But going into the fifth dive, my lead was still gigantic. Which was when it hit me — the disgusting tastelessness of my stunt. I was overcome with guilt. This was a group of incredibly courageous athletes, all of them overcoming legitimate setbacks, and here I was making a mockery out of them. It was not clever or funny; it was a disgrace. I was a disgrace. Always the same, always a slave to my voracious ego. And to what end? So I could return home with a tainted gold medal, draped around my neck by some venomous sheikh. 

I shuffled along the board for my supposed inward, leaning slowly over the edge until I fell. I plummeted down, hitting the water like a depth charge, arms at my side. The crowd looked on in silent disbelief, the judges showed no mercy, but somehow I still maintained a slender lead. And this shambolic act of attention-seeking self-sabotage only compounded my shame. Everything always had to be about me. I could not be happy, therefore nobody was allowed to be. I was barely even able to face the charade of the final dive, but suddenly there I was, hoisting myself up the ladder for an alleged twist.

And what a twist I gave them. I bounced once, twice, then sprang upwards and tilted, letting my horizontal body slam back onto the board like a clotheslined wrestler, whence I rolled backwards, finally careering ten metres down to the water. I longed to remain under, to drown in front of everyone. Nothing less than my complete self-destruction would suffice now, as if only such a dramatic end could justify all this madness. But I hopelessly floated to the surface. On the scoreboard I saw that I had lost not only my lead, but a place on the podium as well. Good.

I lay there floating on the surface, until an official came swimming towards me. She cradled my chin and ushered me towards the side of the pool. This is not your fault, she whispered. You may refuse to believe it, but please try to remember that none of this is your fault.