Olympic Tears

a breakdown

I saw my eye doctor recently. I got lasik in 2020 to make the year mean something good and it has been a dream.

But I was having weird issues lately and I wasn’t sure what was wrong. My eyes were dry and kind of blurry. I worried I was losing my amazing vision and the thought made me want to weep but not actually weep, which turns out, would have helped me.

I sat in the chair and did the vision test. “I’ll try for the 20/15 line! I’m sure I can do it!” And I got most of them and maybe missed the stupid C’s and O’s that don’t matter anyway. So I still have pretty good vision. *whew*

Then the doctor came in to poke at my eyeballs and see about the dryness.

He explained some things about the oils in my eyes and how our tears provide a protective layer to the eyeball and helps it retain moisture better. He then gave a complicated prescription of heating up a rice bag for some-odd minutes and holding it to my eyes for some-odd minutes and then massage my eyeballs to work the oils or something or other.

I always marvel at myself in medical appointments, thinking I can retain whatever lengthy instructions that are coming out of professional mouths in an environment in which I can never relax. And by “lengthy instructions” i mean anything more than two. I always think I can do it and then when I get home, wonder what happened, where I was, and if this was real life. Verbal instructions are of little use to me without some kind of visual accompaniment.

I could take notes, and I do sometimes (I’ve even asked permission to record the doc which is probably a really good idea for many reasons), but really what I want is for the doc to recap their own prescriptions. Simply say them to me, then say them again, then write them down for me as they’re speaking, then give me that piece of paper and do a special handshake—perhaps with a witness—as an official seal of confirmation that it is, indeed, in my possession with my full comprehension. Because even with physical printouts I get from the doc, I often come home, walk through the veil of memory, and have no recollection of what this documents pertains to.

After the eye doc’s explanation, I aimed to repeat what he said:

”Ok. So I heat up the thing and hold it to my eyes for thirty seconds…”

”No, heat it up for thirty seconds and hold it to your eyes for 5-10 minutes. Don’t flip it and heat up the rice bag for ten minutes, that would be bad.”

”Roger that, I’ll try not to confuse it. But also, it sounds to me like what I could be doing is just cry more. Because that I can do!”

He paused and essentially agreed that yes, I could do that.

I’d say I’m in pretty good health generally. I work very hard at it, too. I eat well, I work full time at adding enough protein and drinking enough water, I exercise regularly and take a small mountain of pills and supplements.

And yet, with all of my research and regimenting, apparently (literally) I have been remiss in one very important health practice: Crying.

Luckily for me, the Olympic Games have begun. *cue trumpets*

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The games are always fun, exciting, and 100% guaranteed to make me cry.

Tears will be shed. And let me say that I would not consider myself an extremely emotional or empathetic person. I don’t cry at everything. Often I don’t cry when others do. But there is something about the olympics that turns me into a newborn baby who is also naturally empathetic.

As far as I can explain, here is a breakdown of the moments at which I break down whilst watching the olympics:

Watching people achieve their olympic dreams.

Sometimes I think they’re so emotional for me because obviously, each of us has harbored olympic dreams since we were young. So, more than any other sporting event, the olympics make us feel like olympians too. Somehow, we never stop identifying ourselves that way. At least that’s true for me. I live my life an un-developed olympian with untapped, stored potential. I watch the games and think, that is totally my event. I could do that one! Maybe I will? It’s not too late.

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A couple of my events:

- table tennis. I feel in my own bones, see my own face in the faces of these obvious athletes, the level of commitment and the degree of seriousness one must dedicate, to achieve olympic-level competition, into this basement game.

-steeplechase. Running and then jumping over stuff and landing in puddles? Yes. This is the closest event to obstacle course I know of and from all of my elementary school - adult years of training, I am ready. Though, I did just watch the equestrian cross country event for the first time and that is totally an obstacle course for horses and seriously fun to watch. If they don’t strictly give the medals to the horses, that is an egregious error.

-rugby?? I’ve never paid any attention to rugby until now, watching a women’s event, and it looks so fun. I was riveted. As far as I can tell, it takes out all the boring parts of american football and the frisbee from ultimate frisbee and makes a seriously fun sport. Fully into it.

By the way, this list is nowhere near complete. I have several olympic events, but for the sake of brevity, let’s move on.

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When someone makes that final lap toward the finish line, hits a ball in, touches the wall, sticks the landing, and then splash the water like children or drops their racket and crumbles to their knees a champion, I borrow a little bit of that and I win too, and I cry huge ugly tears. We did it! All of our hard work led to THIS moment! It was worth it!

Tears-on-tears go to underdogs, those who catch up from behind, who don’t give up and clinch a win. Gaah, is there anything better.

Even more than that, I think, I cry watching someone lose their olympic dreams.

This is devastating. There’s something about watching someone laser-focused, staying in the game, pushing themselves physically, mentally, engaged in the ultimate test of all their limits, and then seeing them let that all go in complete devastation as they watch their dreams slip through their fingers and break down in tears. My word, I can hardly handle it. Worse is when something stupid happens like they stumble right out the gate and immediately it’s over. Something that robs them from showing, when it really counted, what they are fully capable of. This is a tragedy I don’t know I can recover from. It guts me every time.

I also cry when people foresake their olympic dreams to help fellow competitors.

For example, in the 1988 games in Soeul, there was a Canadian sailor named Lawrence Lemieux who was racing in rough wind and seas. The waves were all over the place. He was in second place when he saw that another boat nearby had capsized. Instead of continuing his race, he sailed his boat over to the capsized boat and saved the drowning sailors. Interestingly, there is a rare 4th type of medal called The Pierre de Coubertin the Olympic Committee reserves for people who exemplify sportsmanship and the true Olympic spirit, which he was obviously rewarded.

Human stories are my favorite kind so I love hearing from the athletes who are are just hard-working humans making choices as they go.

Coco Gauff, last year’s US Open champ, told interviewers that she was raised by parents who taught her to differentiate tennis as something she did, not who she was. I didn’t cry at this (in case you were wondering) but I found it rather inspiring.

New tears

I watched a lot of the opening ceremonies, or at least had it on while I did other things. Every once in a while I’d pay attention and wonder what fever dreaming I stepped into. It was one giant free association of all things France-related, ranging from art, fashion, Marie Antoinette, to Raphael Nadal, a Spaniard who holds the record (14) for most wins of the French Open, or any major tennis tournament for that matter, which I thought was cool to include him.

My favorite France thing was the lady dressed up as a bunch of croissants. But the thing that gave me tears was when, during the boat parade of nationalities down the Seine, the boat of refugee athletes showed up and shut everybody up.

Clearly I am already emotionally compromised watching just about anything olympic-related, but when Team Refugee—aka athletes without a country— showed up, that took me down. Like, oh right. Some people don’t have a country to represent because they had to flee from it. And yet still kept their dreams and managed to get to the olympics? I didn’t even know this team existed.

This year, the team is made up of athletes from Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan, Sudan, Eritrea, the Congo, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Venezuela and Cuba. All on the same team. This statement is making me cry right now and obviously I will immediately cry at anything they do throughout the games.

So, as far as my self-prescribed remedy to my dry eyes, I have been doing very well. If you have done as I have and neglected the important wellness practice of crying, you may want to tune in. To your health! and your Olympic spirit.

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