AN: Okay I was working on a chapter for Love and Sacrifice and I came up with this idea. I'm planning on writing an autobiography of sorts for Sasha. It won't be too long, maybe four or five chapters at most, but we'll see. I've had one-shots turn into massive stories. I plan on getting Sasha's thoughts and ideas of the pre-MIOBI world. I want to try to discover what makes Sasha...well, Sasha. I hope you guys read and review letting me know what you guys think.
Some say that dreams are that of a subconscious wish or a subtle idea that morphs into an obsession, a fixation, but really a dream is your greatest hopes and desires that you wish to fulfill in your lifetime. . .no matter the earth shattering, pain filled loss or triumph you face in getting there. As long as you get to that one place, that one moment in time you will some how feel like a king who inherited the world.
I remember where I was when I figured out my dream and where I wanted to go with my life. I was a boy of only five when I saw my father, Dmitri, in his gym working with athletes that could do incredible things with their bodies. They could control their bodies and push themselves to the limits on a daily basis. Even at my young age I could see that it took great dedication to do what these athletes before me did. To have that much power and that much control was an amazing idea to me. When I mentioned to my father that I wanted to train in the sport of gymnastics I thought that my father would never be happier with me. My mother just looked at me and smiled before hugging me. My mum's words on that night still ring in my head even after all these years. Her soft voice like a beautiful lament whispered in my ear: "Don't let the sport of gymnastics take your life. Just as long as you are happy and healthy, you'll achieve great things. No matter what you do."
I had no idea what my mother was talking about that night, but over time I began to realize causes for my mothers concern. The sport of gymnastics can take a life and break it into a thousand pieces. It's like a tornado ripping through the peaceful valley destroying every beautiful thing in its path, never to glance back at its destruction. Over the next few years I began to eat, sleep, breath, and bleed the sport I came to love. I used to lay in bed at night and listen to my parent's argue over the choices that my father made concerning my life in the gymnastics world. My mum always came to my defense when I wasn't, according to my father, pushing hard enough or believing enough. She would always say I was only a boy and that I needed time away from the sport in order to love it again. After she would come to my defense I would here glass shatter and my father say random things in Romanian that always made me cringe. I would always tense up, waiting for some form of impact of skin against skin, but thankfully for my mother's sake, it never came.
My parent's marriage seemed to fall apart at the seams when I started competing at the international level. In traveling at the junior level at the age of fifteen my goal and desire become more clear as my parent's marriage became less defined. After watching the 1994 Olympics, I knew that one day, I wanted to be standing on that podium with a gold medal around my neck. As I focused all of my pain and turmoil of my parent's wrecked marriage into my gymnastics, I didn't realize how focused and good I was becoming. In a way, my parent's downfall led to a major downfall of my own. After two years of striving for elite perfection in my sport, my whole world turned upside down in less than twenty-four hours.
In the spring of '96 a few days after my sixteenth birthday, my parent's told me they where getting a divorce. To say I was surprised would have been a lie. In truth I was lurking in the silence waiting for them to tell me for months. I foolishly thought that they would try to work it out, but the distance and damage that grew between them in resent years became irreparable. That same day, a talent agent walked into my father's gym requesting to see me. To spite my father and to show him I was growing up, I walked past him and up to the talent agent. When she turned around to look at me, my world change for a second time that day. Suddenly I felt that the powers above was trying to do right by me in sending me someone to help me achieve my dreams.
Throughout the day I learned that Mary-Anne Johnson, or more famously known as MJ, was interested in representing me. I found myself wanting her to represent me not only because she could really help me with making it to the Olympics, but because, at the time, she was breathtakingly beautiful. After I agreed to work with her, against my mothers' warnings and my fathers' disapproval I would realize over time, that things are not always what they seem to be.
