During my freshman year of high school, I decided I wanted to try something new when it came to athletics. I grew up playing soccer, dancing and always watching sports with my family. The sports I wanted to do were nearly impossible to pick up quickly and be good enough to be on a team - hockey takes years of training for skating alone, and I was way behind the ball for that. And every other sport was just blah to me. So, I decided to start swimming, and boy was it an adventure.

I could barely swim with my head down in the water, but they let me on the team and started to teach me from square one. I remember my first meet; I was swimming in a relay and that was it and I was excited and nervous and afraid I was literally going to drown. But I didn't, because the meet was stopped short right before my event for weather and a medical emergency. A few meets later I was put into the 200 free, that's eight laps of freestyle, and I thought I was going to drown. Spoiler alert: I didn't drown. The season came to a close, and I swam butterfly at a meet and learned that it was my strongest stroke other than freestyle. I couldn't wait for the next season to start.

Sophomore season rolled around, and I was better than the season before but still not great. I had made the goal to swim in conference for my county and districts for the state series, whatever it took. I wanted to swim butterfly that season, every meet, until I hurt my shoulder and was told to take a break from it. I ended up swimming freestyle at both conference and districts that year but had a desire for more and a love for being in the water. I told my mom I wanted to start club swimming outside of school.

We found a team after soccer season ended for high school, and I started with them. I had to fix all my strokes, especially breaststroke, and it drove me crazy to be at the bottom of the chain. I started to progress fast and get better every practice; I enjoyed being on the deck and in the water. I gave up my summer to go to morning practices, training camps, and afternoon practices. The hours spent in the water and doing brutal dry land workouts, like running and countless core work sets, started to show when I swam in meets. I was having the time of my life and then I hit a block. I had to go back to high school season, which was fine with me because I had goals for the season, but the separation from my club team workouts killed me and high school practices were boring and slow.

I was the swimmer in my group for my club team who was fun and talked but never talked back to a coach - that's how I was raised. You treat a coach like you would treat a teacher or any other adult (thanks mom and dad). My coach would get attitude from other swimmers and knew I wouldn't fight back, so he began to take it out on me. While this was happening, there was drama between teammates that put stress on our group bond, and the head coach wanted me to step up and be a leader so I did. However, I started to lose friends that I thought respected me. My high school coach would only put me in the 200 IM (individual medley with all the strokes in 8 laps), and it was only getting worse for me. After a meet one night, the stress had gotten to me, and I went to my high school coach begging to be put in something else. I cried and told him that I didn't feel like I was moving in the water. He switched me to swim another event.

I finished junior season by swimming the 500 free all the way to regionals where I finished 22nd in the region my school was a part of. I was happy with the growth I had made in the few years I had been swimming and happy to always be on the pool deck. I went back to club swimming and things just got worse for me. While I physically became different, my mental strength took a dip. My coach was always yelling at me and being tough on me, singling me out in front of others, and I started to become tougher on myself. I would get in the car after practices and just cry to my dad about the practice. My parents approached the head coach and things changed for a bit, but I was still scolded for things after my events at meets, even when I dropped time and swam my best.

I continued to spend my summers in the pool, pushing myself to be better for next high school season. I dropped time left and right and my strokes improved, my dry land workouts got better, and my mile times got faster. But mentally, I was still tough on myself. I became my biggest and worst enemy.

Senior season for high school was a blur. I was captain of the team and made it back to regionals in the 500 again, this time finishing 9th in the region. The season was tough on me because while I was physically in shape and lost weight and was faster than ever, teammates who I thought were friends turned against me and started to put me against myself. The sport that I had so much passion for was becoming a nightmare because of my own brain; I was glad to walk off the deck at the end of high school swimming and just compete in club swim until college. Then my club team lost our pool; I lost friends who couldn't drive an hour both to and from practices at night, later than our original practices, to swim at a pool that wasn't ours. I took this as an advantage. I got the chance to practice with higher groups because I was one of the few sacrificing my time to come so far to swim. I pushed myself through hard and intense workouts just to become better so I could try and chase a time to a championship meet and the spot to be with a higher group and a stupid yellow swim cap.

I went back to being my own worst enemy. Getting in my head before races and crying when I did poorly and hating myself because of it. I dipped back to being low in mental health, and I started thinking maybe I wasn't good enough for this sport, and I wanted to quit. My team got their own pool and my coach started yelling at me again, making everything worse, and I started to feel like I physically digressed, too. I broke one day, a day when my coach and I had a conversation that was good. He wasn't mean, but it got me inside my head even more. I sobbed in the car to my dad, and he made me go back and talk to the head coach and threatened to take me off the team. I cried for the whole car ride home, not wanting to leave all of my friends.

I didn't leave the team, though; I pushed through being my own worst enemy and came out on top. I spent the summer training with the higher level group, pushing through hard workouts in a hot pool in the morning, coaching younger kids, and then swimming again at night. I ran in the heat and was unable to move after dry land workouts. And then I graduated and started college, where I joined the club swim team. I found a group of people who put the fun back in the sport.

As I reflect on my summers and days spent in the pool and on the deck and in the gym, I wouldn't change a thing. Call me crazy, but all of the challenges I was put against in swimming - not making times, injuries, coaches yelling, becoming your own worst enemy and falling out of the best physical shape you've ever been in - made me mentally tough. It made me realize that I can live through the toughest of conditions and situations and come out on top. The mental challenges at the time felt like the end of the world, especially when it's not reaching a goal time or the hardest workout set of your career, but it's not the end of the world or the end of your story. It's just a page in your story that you'll soon forget about when you move to find something tougher. You'll look back on the challenge and realize it helped you become mentally stronger.

Stepping back on the deck and being in the water over the winter break made me realize how much I've been through mentally and physically and how the mental challenges have impacted me the most. They've made me tougher than I was before and ready to face anything that can be thrown at me in life. I may dread swimming some days and would just rather sleep and watch Netflix, but I've become a better, stronger person because of it.

I made peace with the enemy by realizing I'm mentally stronger all because of swimming.