My Fight / Your Fight (20 page)

I looked to the stands for my mother and found her across the arena waving an American flag. It was so big she could barely hold it open.

After thirteen years, the American flag that had been placed on Dad's coffin at his funeral had been unfurled and was fluttering in the arms of my mother.

My dad had always believed I would shine on the world's biggest stage. And for one moment, seeing Mom holding that flag, I felt like we were all together.

I had not won a gold medal, but there was a sense of accomplishment I would have never believed could come from third place. Of all the third-place finishes in my career, the bronze in the Olympics was the only one I took any satisfaction in.

But still, there was a void. I had not won the gold I had dreamed of.

That Olympic loss still eats at me. It will follow me forever. But, I'm not ashamed of how I lost. I don't wonder about what I could have done differently. I have no regrets about the match. I had to do a haymaker at the end. I made the right decision. It's just sometimes even the right decisions don't work out.

When you're in the middle of the hustle, there are going to be times when your life is complete shit and you've got absolutely nothing to show for the effort you've put in. I don't just mean tough times, but the moments when you have to swallow your pride and check your ego. I'm talking about the kind of times where, if it were happening to someone else, you would silently be thanking God that it wasn't happening to you. There were times when I knew that I was in a terrible situation, but I also knew that it wouldn't last forever. Those are the moments when you have to remind yourself that this experience is a defining moment in your life, but you are not defined by it.

I stood on the medal stand and watched as the American flag was raised into the third-place position. The Olympics were over for me, but I was not over the Olympics.

The day after I won my medal, I was sitting in my room in the athlete village. It was late morning and I was just sitting on the bed, when my heart started beating fast out of nowhere. I couldn't catch my breath. I was overcome with guilt and anxiety, but I couldn't figure out why. I felt like I had done something terrible, but I couldn't remember what it was. The wave of panic passed, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something had gone very wrong, that I was an asshole.

I got back from Beijing with a bronze medal and no home, no job, no prospects. I quickly learned I had no boyfriend either.

Bob and I took a break before the Olympics. It was his idea, and came completely out of left field. He said the long-distance thing wasn't working out and we would pick up where we left off when I moved back to L.A. after the Olympics. I was devastated. When I got back home I called him and he told me he and his girlfriend had been cheering for me. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

It felt incredibly unfair.

I had gotten $10,000 from the US Olympic Committee for earning a bronze medal, which came out to roughly $6,000 after taxes. I used all of my Olympics money to buy a used, gold, four-door Honda Accord, and I still had to finance half of it. I was crashing at my mom's house while I looked for a job.

I finally found a bartending job working at a pirate-themed bar called The Redwood. It was something, but before I'd made it through my first two weeks I was on thin ice. I had been late one day, so my shifts had been cut for the week. Then the manager asked me to come in that weekend. The message was clear: If you don't, you're fired.

I had promised the guy who ran the judo club in Baldwin Park, the club where I first started judo, that I would grand marshal a local parade. He was a friend of my mother's and had wrangled me into doing it.

I didn't want to get fired, especially over a parade I hadn't really wanted to do in the first place. I told my manager I would be there. I told the parade people nothing. Every time their number came up on my phone, I sent it straight to voicemail. I was hoping they would give up. Then, Blinky Elizalde, my first judo coach, called. I explained the situation to him. He understood, but no one else did.

When I got off my shift Saturday afternoon, there were six missed calls from my mom. I was putting my phone back in my pocket when she called a seventh time. I hesitated, then answered. She ripped into me, demanding to know how I could think of ditching out on the parade.

I had a knot in my stomach. I couldn't answer her. She was fucking pissed. Mad enough that I didn't want to go home. I drove to Hollywood and went to a bar. I drank by myself and realized that I couldn't go back to my mom's house. But I had nowhere else to go.

I am a homeless Olympic medalist
, I thought to myself.

After several hours of drinking, I walked to get a pizza and ate it in the back of my car. Then I curled up in the backseat. The next morning the whole car smelled of pizza and I had a crick in my neck.

It was midday. I just lay there, sweating in the backseat, staring at the ceiling.

I camped out in the car for a couple of nights until I got paid. I deposited my money in the bank and set out on my mission to find a non-automotive home. By the end of the day, I had signed the lease on an apartment.

The apartment was a step up from the car, a baby step. My first apartment was a twelve-by-twelve-foot, first-floor studio. The only sink was in the bathroom and it constantly fell out of the wall.

I picked up two more jobs just to make ends meet; even then things were tight. I was a cocktail waitress at The Cork in Crenshaw, and on Sundays I'd work till the predawn hours, then crash for a few hours before working a morning bartending shift at Gladstones, a fancy restaurant in Malibu.

On more than one occasion, sewage would come up out of the toilet and shower, and I'd come home from work to an apartment filled with shit.

I didn't think I could get any lower. Some days I would come home, look around and promise myself that this was temporary, remind myself that I was better than this moment. I knew I would make something of myself. I just had to decide what that was going to be.

For years after Claudia Heill beat me in the 2004 Olympics, I harbored all this animosity for her. I convinced myself that if only I had won the medal, everything would have been better.

Years later, Claudia jumped off a building and committed suicide. Her death hit me hard. The main reason I was so angry with her is that I felt like she had robbed me of not just an Olympic medal, but of happiness. When I lose, I feel like that win, that happiness, is still out there and that the person who took it from me is walking around with it. But Claudia had that medal and whatever was making her unhappy was still there. By the time she died, I had my own Olympic medal. And I had quickly realized just how little happiness it brought me.

When I came back from Beijing, I decided to take a break. I spent a year doing everything I could to destroy all the work that I had put into my body. I didn't know exactly what I wanted, but I knew that I needed things to change. Building up my body and chasing the Olympic dream had made me unhappy. I wanted to have a normal life. I wanted to have a dog and an apartment and to party.

From the end of 2008 well into 2009, I did not aspire toward anything. My plan involved drinking heavily, not working out, and cramming everything I thought I had missed into as short a time as possible. I was going to take a year off from judo, from structure, from responsibility. I was going to do what
I
wanted for a change.

One of the things that I wanted was a dog. I had my heart set on a Dogo Argentino, or an Argentinian mastiff. They're a big, white, beautiful breed and the kind of dog you don't have to worry about hurting if you accidentally step on it on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I didn't have many requirements; I just wanted a girl.

A breeder in San Diego, a married couple, sent me an email with photos of two girls from a recent litter; they were too big to be show dogs, so they were being offered at a discounted price.

I clicked on the first attachment.

“That's the one,” I said. “That's my dog.”

I didn't even look at the other photo. There wasn't a single doubt in my mind. I just knew. I went out that afternoon and bought her a crate, bed, the best dog food they had, and a couple of chew toys.

Three days later, I drove down to San Diego to pick her up. The breeders lived in a subdivision out in the suburbs. They were waiting for me in the open garage with the puppy's mother. She was a gorgeous dog.

Then the wife brought out my puppy and without even realizing it I cooed aloud. This was her. This was definitely my dog.

“You can hold her,” the breeder said.

I scooped up the puppy. She sleepily opened her eyes, then nuzzled against my chest, settling back to sleep. She was a big, fat, white puppy.

“You're not too big,” I whispered to my dog. “You're absolutely perfect.”

I named her Mochi after the Japanese ice-cream balls covered in rice cake, and true to her name, she is the sweetest dog, not to mention loyal and loving and one of the most grounding and comforting presences in my life. I instantly fell in love with Mochi, but being in charge of another living thing took some getting used to.

The night I took her home was her first time away from her mom. She cried all night. I relented and let her sleep in my bed.

“Don't get used to this, Mochi,” I said.

She slept in my bed for the next few weeks. Then one morning, I rolled over sleepily and opened my eyes. Mochi was already awake next to me, resting her head on her paws.

“How's my little puppy?” I asked in a baby-talk voice.

She lifted her head when she saw I was awake, opened her mouth, and threw up a pair of my underwear she had eaten out of my laundry basket.

I had gotten a dog with absolutely no understanding of how much responsibility it would actually be. But I committed the first $35 of every shift I worked to pay for her doggie daycare. That was probably the only responsible decision I made that year.

I started my morning with a smoke on the way to work. Camel menthols were my cigarette of choice. After I dropped Mochi off at doggie daycare, I smoked menthols up Pacific Coast Highway on my way to Malibu. When I got to Gladstones, I would go behind the bar and start my day with a concoction I called “Party Like a Barack Star.” Obama had just been elected, and the drink was a mix of dark and light ingredients. It tasted like the most delicious iced mocha with vodka in it. I would sit and drink that all morning.

PARTY LIKE A BARACK STAR

2 shots espresso

1 shot (or 2) Stoli Vanilla

1 shot Kahlua

¹
/
₂
shot Baileys

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

2 shots ice cream milk (half-and-half and simple syrup can be used as a substitute)

Combine ingredients with ice. Shake. Blend. Enjoy. (Unlike I did, please enjoy responsibly.)

BARTENDER TIP:
How much is a shot? Pour and count to four.

On Sundays, these two hip-hop producer dudes would pedal up on Tour-de-France-caliber racing bikes and order surf-and-turf and Cadillac margaritas. They tipped me thirty dollars in cash and enough marijuana to get me high for several days. During the week, one of the regular bar patrons sold Vicodin to servers and would slip me one or two for passing the cash and pills between him and the waitstaff, without our boss knowing.

I would gaze out at the ocean while rolling on Vicodin, drinking whiskey at noon, and watching dolphins in the waves. The TV over the bar played an endless loop of SportsCenter. I was riveted by the MMA highlights.

“I could totally do that,” I would say out loud.

Everyone at the bar kind of nodded to humor me. It was obvious that no one believed me. The fact that I was doing absolutely nothing with my life was apparent to everyone.

I had endured so much to get to the Olympics. All along the way, I told myself that the result would be amazing; that it would all be worthwhile. But the truth was that it had been amazing, but it hadn't been worth it. Realizing that crushed me. I had dreamed of the Olympics since I was a little girl. I won an Olympic medal, and yet I felt like I had been let down.

My disappointment haunted me. I didn't know how to cope with it. I was trying to drink myself into contentment, but I still wasn't happy and I didn't understand why. I spent that whole year lost. I couldn't figure out what it was, but there was something missing.

When I am in a fight, my brain is picking up a million things at once. The volume of the crowd. The brightness of the lights. The temperature of the arena. Every movement in the cage. Any pain my body is feeling. A lesser fighter would be overwhelmed.