I worried that twenty was too old to start college, but I had been recruited to one of the country’s top gymnastics programs at Los Angeles State University, and it seemed a waste not to go. I had assumed that my reputation would precede me, that I’d be the star of the team. But I had been out of practice for more than a year by that point, recovering from my injury. I was flabby and weak, soft both physically and mentally. The other girls kept their distance; at first, I think they were intimidated to talk to me, but by the time they realized I was no queen bee anymore, they had already formed their own cliques. Practice was lonely and humiliating as I struggled to whip myself back into shape without my coach, Dimitri’s, help. His methods had been extreme—punishing exercises, a cold shoulder if you didn’t perform your best, rage if you failed—but I found myself missing them. My new coach asked us to call her Miss Marge. She began each workout with a mandatory dance party to get our hearts racing, and ripped open bags of Twizzlers as parting gifts at the end of every practice. The other girls loved her. But none of them had what it took to be truly great. Without training under the intensity of a legendary coach, how were any of us supposed to become champions?

I wound up randomly assigned to live with a scarily peppy girl named Krista. She was an LA native who claimed to be “ob-sessed” with everything, including my near brush with fame as an almost Olympic gymnast. She begged me to join her at the campus gym, where she clutched three-pound dumbbells while strolling on the treadmill, and stocked our room regularly with boxes of Franzia Sunset Blush she bought with her fake ID. Krista walked in on me in the shower one day by accident; she’s the first person who brought it to my attention that normal girls shaved their legs with their foot propped up on the ledge of the tub, not at eye level, pressed against the shower wall.

I floundered through Psych 101, Intro to Mass Communications, and Human Physiology before my GPA dipped low enough for me to get kicked off the team. I watched myself fail with a perverse sense of curiosity: I had pushed myself to superhuman lengths for years; I had never seen myself falter before. Letting go was easy when you didn’t care.