I quit swimming....

Swimming
was the sport which I fell in love with. However, this past summer I started to hate it with all my heart. I couldn't get into the water any more, and whenever I had swim practice I just wanted to run away and escape from it.

I don't really know why I started to hate something I used to love so much that I would wake up happy to get into the cold water at 4:30 a.m, and then go to school. However, I was hating it so much that I wouldn't stop thinking about it the entire day.

I had a big pressure on me, on 2013, I was Colombia's national champion in 50 free and 200 free. On top of that, swimming had given me the opportunity to study abroad and my family was proud of me. There was too many people I couldn't let down by quitting swimming. My mind was going crazy over the summer, in the deepest part of my heart I still was that little kid enjoying swimming competitions, but in the rest of my body I was hating every success, every opportunity, every recognition that swimming had given me at some point of my life. My coach back home was expecting me to win nationals this past summer, my friends were wondering if I was really training hard in Wingate, and my parents... well, I just felt that I needed to please them by supporting me so much.

So there I was in the summer, hating the shit out of what I used to love, standing in front of the block, and waiting to hear my name to step up in the block to swim the 200 free that would qualify me to nationals this past summer. "Swimmers, take your mark, go!" and I jumped into the water thinking that it was going to be my last 200 free of my entire life. I started to cry. With each struck I was moving backwards into my memories of swimming, and started being thankful with what swimming had given me so far. Of course I was so distracted thinking on all of that, and it was a really bad race, I didn't make the cuts, and I didn't qualify to nationals this past summer.

I quit swimming, and I went partying that night.

I believe that you don't find a book, instead the book finds you. And one of the days after I quit swimming, this great book found me.

I read it, and when I turned the last page, I remembered that ever since I once had been national champion, I started losing race after race. And I realized that I had been "losing" against myself. However, it all had been a learning process that had taught me to persist and keep trying. That day, having understood that everything that I had been through with swimming was a learning process, I realized that sports competitions help us to understand ourselves better, and that, should be our only motivation in order to take away our ego which brings along angers and frustrations. And only knowing that the competitions are obstacles that help us reach our biggest potential, therefore know ourselves better, we can then enjoy swimming and be happy doing it.

And from that day, swimming became something deeper than just swimming, from that day, swimming became a way of life that helps me understand myself better.