Swish by Joel Derfner Page A

I was delighted to have suffered an actual sports injury and, even better, to have physical proof thereof. But after the cast came off, I no longer trusted my body, and I was never able to tumble with quite the same élan.
    And then something else unexpected began to happen: heterosexual girls started joining the squad. As a rule I adore heterosexual girls, but these particular ones were three feet tall and twelve inches around, so when they joined they became flyers. This meant that I sat more and more often on the sidelines, watching as Laura and Katie and then Melanie and then Jessica were hurled higher into the air than I had ever reached. I hated Laura and Katie and Melanie and Jessica for this. I hated them even more because they had all been cheerleaders in college.
You had your chance already,
I thought bitterly.
Why are you taking mine away?
I tried basing once or twice, so as not to feel completely useless, but since I was all of two inches taller and thirteen pounds heavier than the actual flyers, my efforts did not inspire confidence. On top of this, the new flyers were all engaged in noble, self-sacrificing pursuits, so eventually I spent my practices bubbling over with venom for cute girls who worked in extended-care facilities for the developmentally disabled and spent their free time volunteering at homeless shelters. I leapt into nobody’s hands and nobody cradled me. Flying was for other people; I was earthbound.
    Meanwhile, I finally felt so guilty about my manipulation of the TMS study that I confessed the truth to the doctors running it, who were unfazed. “Oh, okay,” they said. “That happens all the time. We design the studies to take it into account.” I sobbed with relief for three hours and the next morning I slept until six-thirty.
    I went back on medication, and my anxiety and OCD subsided somewhat, and I no longer felt as if my body might fly apart at the slightest provocation. But I was a broken man. I lay on the couch in a blanket all day watching television and eating chocolate and unable to motivate myself, no matter how hard I tried, to pick up the piece of scrap paper on the floor by the window. I turned down every invitation I received. I didn’t answer the phone. I gave up cooking, I stopped going to the gym, I wrote nothing. I tried to make a will so I could commit suicide, but the whole process required far more energy than I was able to summon, so I gave up; I was too depressed to kill myself. Then I decided my medication was actually making me feel worse so I stopped taking it but didn’t tell my psychiatrist or my boyfriend. My final effort to feel better had failed, and now the only choice I had left was to live the rest of my life in unceasing torment.
    I took a leave of absence from the cheerleading squad. I couldn’t bear watching other people soar through the air while I was unable to stop falling. Princess called and e-mailed several times to ask how I was doing but I did not answer his messages. Finally he sent me an e-mail that said, “I thought we were friends and I am OFFENDED at your actions. I’ve tried to get in touch MANY TIMES and you have never responded, so I will assume you don’t want to be on the squad anymore and I am REMOVING you from the squad list!!!!! Love, Princess.” I felt a dull twinge somewhere deep in my small intestine that resembled the ache I get when I find out I have made somebody angry at me, but mostly I was just relieved that my life had become even smaller.
    (Though when I complained to my friend Jen about being kicked off the squad, she said, “Well, you weren’t actually kicked off the squad. You were just mean to it until it broke up with you.”)
    Eventually I began to ease out of my despair, at least a little bit. I went to a birthday party for a friend and had a shadow of a good time. I switched psychiatrists, went back on medication, started writing again, returned a few calls. It took a Herculean effort to drag myself to