I Fell In Love With The Olympics

I'll be sad when the Olympics is over, because I for one, am in love with the Games. Or maybe not so much with the Games, as the feelings the Games unlodges inside me, the wide range of rollercoaster emotions it took me through... I'm crazy in love with it, and not falling out anytime soon.

I wish I could live my life like that: going from one Olympics feel-good moment to the next. Yeah, I'm a punk-ette like that (punking out on real life... lol).

The Olympics are the Greatest Games On Earth for a reason... had me crying and motivated and then demotivated (looking at all the guys with their chiselled bodies, and all those girls just carved to a T), and then right back up there again...

I watched a woman win pole vault and keep jumping till she broke her own record because she could and she wanted to...

I watched a Jamaican man-boy become a man right before the world's eyes and watched the world turn into sour grapes gringos about it (Usain to the weerl, taking no prisoners, lol!)

I watched another Jamaican superstar, and a whole team of Jamaican and American relay super-star-ettes get humbled on international cameras and walk off that track like they were still people of colour on a mission...

I watched China get away with "bloody murder" and allegedly underaged athletes... (lol)

And I felt it deeply as once-great heroes fell before my eyes (Ato, you are dead to me), and others took their place (Usain, you are now my heartbeat, lol)

I watched all of this, in the space of nine days, and I'm left breathless and tired and emotionally drained and yet somehow pumped... even though I wasn't there.

I'm now filing the Olympics into that special place where I file all magical or magical-like moments in my life. I now look at it with reverence and deep, solemn respect. I now look forward to the Olympics as another great moment for me (even though Lord knows I ain't no athlete) because the emotional scope it offers is just any sap's dream. And that is exactly what I am: a big ole sap.

I cry for everything. So you know I cried when innocent-looking, fresh, young, first-timer Shelly-Ann Fraser took gold in the women's 100, right? And you know I cried when Sherone and Kerron missed that baton pass and rendered Jamaica gold-less in the 4x100 too? Bawled like a big ole baby, like it was me out there feeling the pressure of an entire nation and breaking...

Yep. I fell in love with Usain and Asafa (well, Asafa was always my baby, and I mean that in the most non-corny way possible, lol). And I fell in love with Veronica and Sherone (no I'm not gay) and Maurice and Chelsea. I fell in love with some Kenyan and Spanish and Russian and Belarusian dudes and chicks I dont even know the names of, and other people from countries whose names I can't even pronounce, and had never heard of before the Olympics and will probably never remember til the next one... They set my heart racing and then slowed it down and then speeded it back up again. For a week and bits, they had me eating out of the palms of their hands, drinking in their every moves... yeah, I fell in crazy, sweet love with the Olympics.

Now I HAVE to be at the next Games. And it's too late to tell me about money for plane fares and lodgings and food and expensive tickets and all that. It's already in my 4-year plan. I have to go see that for myself: up close, cause I need to get drunk like that again, on pure life and adrenaline and sweet non-drug-induced, oxygenic euphoria.

It's the natural high, baby. It's beautiful.

And I'm an unredeemable addict.