I’ve dreamed of competing in the Olympics for as long as I can remember. I would practice my salute in front of the bathroom mirror, pretending I was about to begin my routine. I imagined what it would look like, what it would feel like, how it would finish in triumph and joy.

A trampoline routine is made up of 10 skills, each consisting of a double or triple flip with countless twists and shapes in between. All 10 must be performed consecutively, the positions precise. No repeats. Toes pointed.

I was addicted to chasing perfection in the air. The thrill of learning a new skill, refining it and putting it in a routine was my life’s purpose for almost two decades. But as exhilarating as the skills were, it was in the bounces right before, the moments of pure suspension, that I found my freedom.

At the start of every routine, you have to build up to full height. You bounce, each jump building on the one before it, until you are launching skyward with such speed and energy that not even gravity can keep its grip on you. You finally reach your peak, close to 30 feet in the air, and float — just for a millisecond.

I would intentionally place my exhales here, making this moment feel something like meditation, before rushing back down to earth. Poets call it a caesura, an intentional pause taken between two phrases, a clear recognition of a Before and an After.

Within the unimaginable stress of qualifying for the Olympics, I found solace in those moments of levitation.

At the 2016 Olympic trials, I was in the lead to cinch the single spot available for women’s trampoline. I was just a month away from the competition I’d been dreaming of since I was 6. I remember thinking that this time tomorrow, I might finally be an Olympian.

During my final training session, I took off for an ordinary bounce, seeking that peak I loved so much. The moment my feet left the bed of the trampoline, I knew I’d miscalculated. I reached the top of that jump and it was as if time stopped, frozen as a photograph. If I close my eyes, I can still see it now.

A second and a half later, I was on the floor with a broken ankle. I watched the 2016 Olympics from home.

The Olympics can be both cutthroat and cruel; they will not wait for you to be ready, and second chances come around only every four years. While there is, I’m sure, a sweetness in achieving your dream just as you imagined it, my journey was exactly that: a journey.

It has been eight years, almost to the day, since my injury and three years since I traveled to the Tokyo Games as an alternate.

In the time I’ve had to heal and reflect I’ve realized what a gift it is to be able to pursue a dream with such reckless abandon. Within all that fear and risk is a singular experience that happens only when you commit yourself completely, knowing the heights from which you may fall.

I sought to photograph this year’s Olympic hopefuls as an ode to this remarkable and, at times, painful pursuit.

Here is a group of exceptional people held together by athletic tape and hope, who leap without sight of where they will land. While no two journeys are the same, this is their universal Before.

All of the trampolinists who will walk into the arena at next week’s U.S. Olympic trials in Minneapolis have at least one thing in common: a love for that rhythmic rise and fall of 10 sequential skills honed over a lifetime of practice.

When the time comes, they will salute the judges and they will jump, despite their fear, higher and higher and higher. Their eyes will find the red “X” that marks the center of the trampoline and they will cling to it like a kite in a storm — their focus on that persistent tug of gravity that will pull them down and give them the opportunity to rise again, in equal measure.

Charlotte Drury is a photographer and public speaker based in Brooklyn and was a member of the 2020 U.S. Olympic team.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.