not a window, but a path

If I had to pick one word to describe my relationship with swimming over the past nine years, it would be tumultuous.  I don't want to say that the moment I swam my first 25 yard backstroke in a tiny NSSL dual meet at the old, crumbling Wyoming Municipal Pool, I was destined to swim for the rest of my life -- because I didn't know that.  What I did know the moment I touched the wall was that I loved swimming in a way that I had never loved the other recreational sports I had played.  My long, basketball-player limbs felt far more comfortable in the water than they ever had on the court.

I cried and cried when that first summer ended.  That was the first indication, I think, of the fact that I never did swimming because I was good at it.  I did it because once I started, it was so hard to know who I was without it.  The water embraced me like nothing else, and my love for its acceptance and easy companionship kept me going; kept me swimming back and forth across the pool, again and again.

It is not to say that my career has come without obstacles.  Like any relationship, my love affair with the sport wavered, at some points uncontrollably.  I struggled with being the youngest member of my national team; I struggled with having few friends because of this age gap.  I struggled with the pressure of being thrown into a world of higher competition so suddenly.  I struggled with the fact that people used swimming to define me, when there was still a student, an artist, a writer, a friend hiding inside of me, waiting to be recognized.

But my love for swimming, my love for the natural ability and comfort that I find within the water, has tethered me in so many ways to the pool.  I always come back.  And so to me, swimming does not mean two state championships in the 100 back, or 11 YMCA national meets.  It does not mean a state record, or an MVP award, or a Cincinnati Enquirer Swimmer of the Year.  Instead, it means an old friendship and the lessons I have learned because of it.  It means figuring out how to manage stress; learning the importance of teammates.  It means realizing that success comes from loving something, rather than the other way around.

And it means not only a window to my future, but a path, into college and beyond.