I must have been 5 or 6 years old when I took the executive decision to inform my parents I wanted to swim. Fast-forward to high school and this is the point in the story in which my teammates would stop me from talking and stare at me in disbelief. “You’re insane, why would you ever tell your parents you wanted to swim?” Unlike me, many of them didn’t have a choice. Swimming to them was just another activity their parents made them do like piano lessons on Saturdays or soccer on Thursdays. Sure, I must admit 6-year-old me couldn’t fathom what life would look like 10 or even 15 years later, but to be fair, I was just a little kid who wanted to swim without her pink, unicorn floaties around her arms. Once upon a time, I turned to swimming for freedom. If you happen to be a swimmer reading this, you’ll understand the irony in that.

I can’t say I love swimming, but just because I struggle saying the “L” word doesn’t mean I hate the sport. My relationship with it goes deeper than love. The pool and I, we’re like a couple that has been together for years. We’re way past the honeymoon stage, and we’ve hit bumps in the road and even broken up. Twice. In fact, we’ve been together for so long, I can’t imagine a life without it, as fed up as I may get on a daily basis.

Have I ever thought about quitting? Of course, I have. I think about quitting all the time, especially on Wednesdays because it’s pulling day and I can barely hold on to a buoy with my legs for dear life. Come Friday night and I contemplate what life would look like with 20 extra hours to spare every week. I act like I don’t care when deep down my swimming career is something I hold on to oh, so dearly.

If you’ve ever been competitive at a sport, you come to value things outsiders never seem to understand. You see, at this point in my life, there’s a bag somewhere in my house, and it’s filled with medals. Age group medals, championship medals, some shinier than others. But, truth be told, I’ve got no idea as to where exactly this bag is nor do I have any interest in finding it.

As years have passed, I’ve come to learn the real treasure isn’t within the prizes you get for reaching the wall faster than your opponents. That’s a payoff for your effort in practice. The real treasure is within the people you get to share this crazy journey with. This sport has given me a family, old-rivals-turned-friends and the opportunity to travel to different countries and meet people whom I would have otherwise never crossed paths with.

I guess that’s why I still do it. There’s quite nothing like the energy that invades the air when I get to stand in front of the blocks with three other girls who for a few minutes in time work as one entity. Or the sound of fifty voices merged into one as we do a team cheer. Or even the crazy jokes and goofy moments we are able to muster doing a hard set.

I’m faster and stronger than I’ve ever been before, but that’s not what I live for anymore, at least not entirely. I went from being the girl with the pink floaties to the girl in the pink racing suit, and if there’s anything I’ve learned in the past few years is there will always be someone faster out there, and there’s always going to be someone who’s more than ready to bump you out of a podium, a final and even a relay, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t fight to get to where you want to be.

We can’t all be Olympians and if we measured our success based on how many times we’ve been the best in the world the vast majority of us would find that 10, 15, and even 20 years of our lives have gone to waste. But that shouldn’t be the case. I dare say anyone who’s ever competitively swum has won more than they’ve lost (no matter how bad the first meet of the season can possibly go). We’ve won discipline, ambition, serious time management skills and goal-setting habits. We’ve developed the ability to stand up after being knocked down, to confront our worst fears, to seize our days and to dive into something knowing the journey won't be easy, but will definitely be worth it.

I’ve gotten to know soul mates who met in the pool and bonded during practice, people who went from owning a cap and goggles to owning a business in a foreign country and coaches who can lift the entire spirit of a team with a single sentence.

There’s no metal shiny enough to overshadow a lifetime of friendship, rivalry, adrenaline and adventure. That’s why I swim. I don’t do it for the medals or the prizes. I do it to become the best I can be and watch others better themselves every day. That inspires me. I do it because I know in a few years when I have a job I’ll most likely miss the sometimes glorious and sometimes twisted world I grew up in. I might struggle saying I love swimming, but deep down I know I do. I’m sure we all have parts of ourselves we seem to hate on, but that doesn’t mean they’re not part of who we are.