2. Nico （Age 21）
I’d been chasing gold for most of my life.
Obsessing over it, really. Like a mortal seeking divinity.
Ever since I was five years old and my uncle placed his Olympic gold medal in my tiny hands.
The weight of it. The way it caught the light.
The way everyone in the room had looked at him—like he had done something that mattered, something that would last, something that made him special in a way ordinary people weren’t.
I wanted that. I wanted it so badly it became the architecture of my entire existence.
So I worked. And worked. And worked. While most eight year olds were worrying about homework and birthday parties and who was sitting with whom at lunch, I was at the rink.
Before school. After school. Weekends. Holidays.
I learned to stretch until my muscles screamed and then stretched further.
I learned to fall and get up and fall again until the falling didn’t scare me anymore.
I learned that tired was a state of mind and pain was temporary and nothing—nothing—mattered more than the next competition, the next score, the next step toward that gleaming circle of gold.
I sacrificed my childhood. My friendships.
Any chance of a life outside of skating.
I told myself it would be worth it. I told myself that when I stood on that podium, when they played the anthem, when they put that medal around my neck—everything I had given up would make sense.
The loneliness. The exhaustion. The hollow feeling that crept in during the quiet moments when there was nothing to train for and no one to perform for.
Now I was 21 years old and the reigning Canadian men’s figure skating champion. The Olympics were within my grasp.
And I was so, so tired.
The thing about chasing something your whole life was that you didn't notice when the chase became the only thing you knew.
When the wanting became more familiar than the having.
When you'd built your entire identity around the pursuit and forgotten to ask yourself if you'd even recognize satisfaction if it found you.
What was wrong with me? I had a loving family. I had my best friend Kat. I had everything I was supposed to want. And still there was this emptiness, this gnawing thing that no medal or relationship or accomplishment had ever managed to fill.
I kept reaching for things to fill it anyway.
When Théo ended things, it should not have surprised me.
Théo and I had started dating at eighteen—two kids in the same program, orbiting the same ice, breathing the same rarefied air of elite competition.
It had felt inevitable. He was brilliant and disciplined and understood this life in a way no one outside of skating ever could.
We didn't have to explain the early mornings or the missed birthdays or the way your entire self-worth could hinge on a single jump sequence. He just knew.
For a while, that felt like love. Maybe it was.
But we were also terrible for each other. Feeding each other's worst insecurities. Making excuses for toxic habits. Mistaking codependence for devotion.
By the end, Théo was running on empty. The pressure of competing at the top level while hiding a relationship that was slowly consuming us both—it broke something in him. He collapsed after his free skate at Worlds.
He went to rehab. And somewhere in the clarity of recovery, he told me what I think we'd both known for a long time—that he loved me, but we were hurting each other, and we needed to end things so we could both heal.
I said I understood. Said all the right things to make it easier on him—he already hated himself enough for both of us. Because that was what I did. I made other people's exits easy, even when they were destroying me.
And when it was over, I hadn't taken a breath before jumping into things with Julien. Another relationship. Another failure. Another person I tried to make love me because I didn't know how to be alone.
Was it the same thing? This desperate wanting to be loved—was it just another version of chasing gold? Another finish line I thought would fix me if I could just reach it?
My mother was worried about me so I was at my parents' house for the weekend.
I had been working too hard, looking thin.
That was her polite way of saying I looked like shit.
She thought a weekend at home would fix it—home cooked meals, fresh air, sleeping in my childhood bedroom surrounded by old trophies and faded posters of skaters I had idolized.
But here I was, lying in that childhood bedroom at 2 a.m., staring at the ceiling. Just like I did every night in my apartment in Toronto. The same thoughts circling. The same failures replaying.
The botched spin sequence at practice on Thursday.
The way Coach Renaud had looked at me afterward—not angry, just disappointed, which was worse.
The interview I had fumbled last week, saying something awkward that the skating forums were probably still dissecting. The text from Kat I hadn’t answered.
My chest felt tight. Like someone had wrapped a band around my ribs and was slowly cranking it tighter. My breathing had gone shallow—quick, insufficient little gulps that weren't getting enough air where it needed to go.
I got out of bed and dug through my overnight bag until I found the bottle of pills my doctor had prescribed.
They were supposed to help me sleep. I probably needed to get the dosage adjusted because they weren’t working.
I had taken two earlier and still my mind wouldn’t stop.
Wouldn’t slow down. Wouldn’t let me rest.
My hands were shaking when I unscrewed the cap. The tremor was getting worse—fine motor control going to shit the way it always did when the panic started creeping in. My heart was beating too fast, a frantic rhythm against my sternum that made my whole body feel like it was vibrating.
I went to the bathroom down the hall to fill a water glass. Had to grip the sink for a moment because my vision had started doing that thing where the edges went fuzzy and dark. My skin felt cold and clammy, sweat breaking out along my hairline even though I was shivering.
I was just so tired. If I could only sleep. If I could only turn my brain off for a few hours, maybe I could face tomorrow. Maybe I could be the person everyone needed me to be. Maybe I could stop feeling like I was held together with fragile thread.
I looked at the bottle in my hand.
Two hadn’t worked. Maybe three would help.
I swallowed a third pill. Then a fourth. The tightness in my chest didn't ease. My hands kept shaking. My heart kept racing.
I don't remember how many I took after that.
Please let me sleep.
I'm so tired.
I just want my brain to be quiet.
Time passed strangely after that. The bathroom tile was cold against my cheek, which was odd, because I didn't remember deciding to lie down. The light overhead was too bright and then very far away, like I was looking at it from the bottom of a pool.
Somewhere, a door. Footsteps.
Then my mother's voice—calling my name, once, twice, the pitch climbing into something I'd never heard from her before.
I wanted to tell her I was fine. That I just needed to sleep.
But the words wouldn't come out and her face wouldn't come into focus, hovering above me, terrified, her hands on my cheeks.
The lights seemed to dim—