Personal Narrative: Trying To Change Myself

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Lately I’ve been reflecting a lot over things that have happened over the past year or two, and how much I’ve changed since then. I guess the biggest difference that I can feel is how much happier I now am. For my entire freshman year at Trinity, my life basically followed a downward spiral. I was thrust into a completely new environment: new school, new swim team. And I knew nobody and nothing. I struggled to fit in and was very insecure about various aspects of my identity such as my race and socioeconomic status. I spent more time trying to change myself than I should have, and in return, spent less time focusing on school and swimming. My grades began to drop, and my attitude towards swimming was lackluster, to put it gently. I tried to …show more content…
I felt that I wasn’t good enough for anything or anyone and entered a state that was detrimental to my mental health. I plodded through each day, going through the same motions over and over, without purpose, just waiting for the day to be over. This dreadful cycle continued on for several months. Let’s skip forward, shall we…to March 2016. My last JO’s. 363 days ago was when the 3 most hellish days of my life began. I still remember my first JO’s. I was 9 and I was elated to have qualified for such an *elite* meet. I had made only 2 events, both breaststrokes, and was seeded last, yet I still swam with pride and confidence. I gained time in both, but I couldn’t care less—I was 9, it was my 3rd swim meet, my life wasn’t affected. Many other kids shared the same mindset as me—for them, JO’s was the most fun meet in the whole season. Anyhow, 5 years later, I had come full circle and was competing at my last JO’s. My first event was the 400 IM. Before my event, I was a complete emotional wreck. My hands were shaking, my teeth were chattering, and I felt sick to my stomach—I had a mini panic attack, caused by my own insecurities and the fear of not doing …show more content…
Swimming didn’t bring me any joy anymore. I finished the meet out weakly and marked it down as a definite failure. After JO’s, I really wasn’t the same person anymore. I entered a stage of depression and barely managed to finish freshman year. Looking back, I see that it was the worst year of my life. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I had been more honest with myself and admitted that I needed help instead of ignoring my problems and pretending that I had everything under control, but I can’t change that now. Over the summer I began to analyze what went wrong that season and concluded that it was my lack of confidence. I trained my ass off that summer to boost my morale and convince myself that I would see the results of my hard work soon. Whenever I didn’t see my expected results right away, I had a sense of deja vu and wanted to quit swimming. But I pushed those thoughts away. Soon enough, I did begin to see results. I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think I’ve broken out of my plateau now. I’ve been so much happier since freshman year, and my swimming and most of my grades have improved drastically as

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