Personal Narrative On My First Swim

The crowd before me, my stage in sight, and the all too familiar scent of chlorine in the air; I live for these moments. All of the swim practices before now have been in preparation for my success in today’s meet. My vision is blue from my old plastic goggles that are now scratched from past meets and reminiscent practices. They are my good luck charm. I fidget with them, assuring for the fifth time that, yes, they are still exactly where I left them ten seconds ago. I take deep breaths, each one transporting me more and more into my racing mindset. Inhale the calm. Exhale the fear.
A buzzer signals each swimmer to approach their starting block. I take my stand behind my stage, which instantly sends me back to my first swim meet. It seems like such a long time ago that I stood where I am now, both the same person and not. I must have been preparing for my 100-meter butterfly at this time, four laps of me trying to look like a flying fish when I could hardly swim one lap at the time. Somehow in all of my dying fish-like swimming I had managed to hold first place all the way up until the last few yards where I choked on water and nearly drowned.
The second buzzer signals the swimmers to mount the starting block. I climb the first rung. A thought of failure flashes in my mind, my gasping for breath during my 100-meter fly, …show more content…
When you put all of your energy into swimming a race, a voice grows in your head telling you to just quit and give up. And sometimes it can be one of, if not the most difficult thing to turn that voice away, especially because that voice is your own. That voice knows your pain, it knows your strengths and weaknesses. When you’re swimming a race as hard as possible, it often feels like it will never end; it seems like there will be pain and down-putting voices forever. But when you push through the noise in your head, that is when you truly