From the moment I touched the water, I hated it.
At least that’s what my mom has always told me.
She said I kicked and screamed, that I splashed and cried. The chlorine burned my eyes and my tongue stung. Tears cascaded down my cheeks; I wanted out. Yet, for some reason, I don’t remember it like that.
It may be the way I choose to picture it; all I remember is the moment my toes touched the water, I knew I was never going to stop. Before I wanted to be a singer, a police officer, or a scientist, I was always a swimmer.
Ever since then, I have never left the chemical-filled atmosphere known as a pool deck. It was the comfort of the water that wrapped me—the pressure, the blurred splashes, the nauseous peripheral vision. I loved it all.
Swimming was what I would call challenging love. I could love it with all my heart, yet in return, I would learn countless lessons, and with those countless lessons, there would be numerous more failures. Attempting to love swimming was attempting to love pain; to love strength.
I was so afraid of this pain, not in a way that I resented, but in a way that I embraced. You can’t love anything without learning to hate it too. It was the balance of such that allowed me to admit that everything that I desired in life had to be fought for.
I admired this sentiment because swimming is more than the countless repetitive, painstaking strokes that fire out my soul; it was also the resilience of hatred.
I hated the times on the board after I slammed my hand into the tiles as I sprinted towards the end of a race. I hated how my hair would be parched, and the bags under my eyes would somehow encompass my entire face—yet I loved it all, because I’ve learned to welcome it all. I embraced the hate and the love, and it became a complicated friendship that still persuades my effort. A result of my resilience was the spread of love I found within every one of my teammates. I could see how my efforts inspired them, and I could understand how they inspired me.
I love my sport and every hardship. From every single ache in my joints to the dizziness of a lactate set, I found that my love for it all turned the hate for the tiny things into goals. The result was a mindset in which difficulty makes achievements meaningful.
Instead of hate burning down love, it was turning the hate into positivity that fired my love. For every slight thing I could ever hate about swimming, all of it together built a temple of respect for the sport and inspired a respect for myself.
