while i'm sorting out the issues in my mind via this blog, i figure i might as well with this one too. especially since it's such a big conflict to me right now. and while i can talk to other people about it, no one can make the final decision but me. and i'm actually trying to not talk to a lot of other people about it because i don't want to be too heavily influenced by the position that others may hold.
i read this book a few years ago (i promise this is related) called The Last Summer of You and Me and i wrote down this passage from the book:
Some people lost their individuality in the water, but [she] always felt most herself. Water was supposed to symbolize renewal, she knew, but when [she] swam - pared down, alone, and unreachable - she felt a deeper sense of who she already was...
The repetitive motion of her limbs was a meditation, the stretch of her muscles a narcotic. She heard her breath and even her heart...
The regular things couldn't follow you here. You could escape the demands of the world. Even the demands you imposed on yourself seemed to recede and reorient underwater. You couldn't hear and you couldn't talk. Your ears were full but it was quiet...
The trouble with swimming was that eventually you had to come out. You had to dry off and put all your stuff back on. You had to become yourself again, or, in her case, less so. The demands were still there, waiting.
at the time i wrote this down, i was in love with my sport for what it was. i just loved being in the water and in effect, my own little world. but when i read that now, it saddens me because i don't feel that way about swimming anymore. in all actuality, when i look at it from the perspective that i am right now, its even worse - swimming (competitively, for school) has BECOME one of those demands that i used to go to a pool to escape.
it's hard to let go of something that has been a part of your life for so long. i'm seeing that in more than one aspect of my life this summer. but relationships with people and things and ideas are generally not static. as you change, so do your relationships and your feelings and your understandings of things. swimming has been all that i've known since i was eight years old...i'm on my way to being 20. that's 12 years of my life devoted to this sport. but i'm not the same girl that i was when i was 8, or 15, or even that i was just 6 months ago when i turned 19. and as i change, my relationship to swimming changes too...which is why it's no longer and easy decision to swim.
i can bounce back and forth between doing it and not doing it. i've made the lists of pros and cons. but the more i think it out and the more i try to analyze it, it always comes down to one question: is competitive swimming something i see myself doing for the rest of my life? and the answer is no. yes i will always love the water and it will always be a great escape for me and a wonderful option of working out that i have been blessed to experience. swimming in itself will always be there for me. but competitive swimming...? it's not something thats even close to being in my future goals for myself.
clearly, i'm leaning toward just saying no to it for this year. i want to focus on my classes. i want to work on becoming the best teacher that i can because that is going to be the career i have for the rest of my life. i want to get a job while i'm at school so i can continue to pay for my tuition. i want to workout on my own and how i want to. i want to spend time with my friends without worrying about how much sleep i'm going to get before the next morning practice. the basic facts are that if i'm swimming 9 or more practices a week, all of that stuff gets shoved aside and has to share the limelight with the 20+ hours a week i spend in the pool.
the only thing that holds me back is the thing that holds me back in everything. a hurdle i have yet to overcome. that is disappointment. the fear of the disappointment i may bring unto others - my coaches, my teammates, my parents - and the potential for disappointment i may bring on to myself. will i look back when i graduate and wish that i would have stuck it out and been a 4 year "Scholar Athlete"? will i be disappointed and look at myself as a quitter? will i be able to face the questions and the judgement others may pass once they hear of my decision? this is where i still have a lot of pondering left to do. this is the only thing that stands in my way from saying no.
and after all...if i take a year off...it doesn't mean i can't come back my junior year if i decide to, right?
"Most decisions are seat-of-the-pants judgements. You can create a rationale for anything. In the end, most decisions are based on intuition and faith."
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