Ready or Not

 Ready or not here it comes.

I've been putting this post off for a week now and I think it's time I face it.  A week ago, I tried for the final time to make Olympic Trials and I missed it.  It's a hard pill to swallow- accepting that it's over.  But what's harder is the balance between being grateful for your supportive friends and family and being able to express your emotions.  And there are a lot of them.  There's the first and most obvious emotion which is raw and painful disappointment.  Within that one glance at the board that reads your times, you see your entire swimming career before your eyes.  In that one moment you understand what it means to fail at something that you've put your entire heart into.

In that next moment, you feel a sense of pride.  Not because you've made it, but because you've tried.  You've put everything into the sport that you could put in.  You've missed countless high school dances, 90% of college parties, school clubs, spring breaks.  But in the end, even though it doesn't feel like you have anything to show for it, you do.  You have the memories of your college teammates rallying behind you, screaming at every turn.  You have complete strangers that have become family, sober bus rides that feel just as fun as drunken studies overseas that you only saw on Facebook (well, you convince yourself that they were just as fun).  But most of all, you have a new confidence in yourself.  You know you've done something others haven't.  You've had the courage to do what others won't.  What others can't.
                 

Above and Below: Just a few of the "strangers" who have become family because of swimming

This year, I put myself out there entirely.  They say that love is a terrifying thing because you make yourself vulnerable to another person.  Whoever says this has never competed in swimming; the cruelest love out there.    

At least when you put your faith in to another human, you can have rational, reasonable discussions.  You can sit down and make your case.  Swimming is indifferent towards your feelings.  It feels no remorse for leaving you in the dust.  It feels no obligation to love you, the way you love it.

But the emotion I did not expect to feel came tonight; the first night of Olympic Trials.  As a seven-year old, my parents took us on a vacation.  Not to Europe or the Bahamas, but to somewhere we cared about even more: the 1996 swimming Olympic Trials in Indianapolis, Indiana.  For my swimming family, there was nothing better.  I vowed then, just as I vowed at the 2008 trials that one day I would be at that meet.  One day, I would swim with the best of the best.

Playing around with a friend at the last Olympic Trials

So tonight came denial.  An emotion that blindsided me completely.  For the last week, I realize, I've been in complete and utter denial.  Towards the end of my swimming career, towards missing trials.  I've winced every time I've seen a status on Facebook with someone heading to Omaha.  It's felt like a knife every time someone posts a picture of them in front of the pool.  But still, denial took over.  If I didn't think about it, trials would not happen.  I could continue in the world of complete ignorance.  Until tonight, when everything came to a head.  I wasn't meant to watch them from my home TV.  I was supposed to be watching them from the pool deck, soaking in the feeling that I'd succeeded in accomplishing the highest goal I'd ever put on myself.

And as I write this, I understand I'm entering towards the grief stage.  Which is okay.  When you've put so much in to one single goal, one should expect to feel these things.  My boyfriend encourages me to feel all the emotions coming my way and embrace them.  To not shy away from a single one of them.  And that's what I intend to do.

But I made a promise.  Not only to myself, but to the sport I love.  In four more years I'll have just turned twenty-seven.  And I intend to stand on that pool deck, looking at the thousands of fans, watching with awe the talent sprawled before me and knowing with absolute certainty, in that moment, that I had not given up.  That it had all been worth it.

The moment I took this picture, was the moment I knew I'd dedicate the next four years to reach my dream.

I made a promise.  And I intend to keep it.  See you in 2016, Omaha.