Personal Narrative: My High School Swim Team

I don’t know exactly where I am going. Maybe this comes as a shock to those who think that because someone has good grades, they have their live figured out. It astonishes me just how mistaken this view is. Being born in Cuba I was limited as to what options I had for my life path. Consequently, the transition from one country to another when I was just twelve years old was very frustrating and tough. Somehow I managed to get a grasp of the language and progressively ascend from the lowest English classes to the most advanced in my school. I never failed to be hard on myself though, and I apply this concept to almost everything I do. However, this way of thinking has not come at no cost. My thinking process can be quite obsessive at times.
My invasive thoughts bully me in excruciating ways. I bully me. And so I came to face the greatest wall. Myself. Let me ask, when you don’t like a song, you turn it off, right? But what do you do when your mind is racing far ahead of anything you could even think of reaching? Learning to turn off your own mind can be an asperous road. Nonetheless, I am a very persistent and focused person. Like this, I have been able to bring about great achievements, but also vanquished my hopes whenever I couldn’t. My mother is to thank for making my adaptation to reality easier, as she was the one who had the courage to accept before anyone else, that I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, and yet my father spent months trying to think of a reason for it, or a solution. But I understand his reasons and I appreciate them, after all he did teach me most of the things I know in life. However, I hate it when he emphasizes every day that he was who taught me to jump rope and the one who taught me how to swim. It reminds me that I need him. But the enormity of my need for him terrorizes me. My father, from whom I take most of my qualities, was part of a water polo team when he was younger. Fascinated by many things as an observant child, swimming always seemed intriguing. Isn’t it beautiful? How they fly in the water, how their bodies just… float?
At this young age I decided to join the swim team.
To this day I compete in my high school swim team, and yet I can’t seem to forget tryouts. All I remember is that I wasn’t sure of just how good I needed to be, so I spent five hours a day in the pool, burning my back just to make sure that I had done everything I could. That is to say that I see myself as a highly competitive individual, and I also have seen myself limited by my financial background. Maybe I couldn’t compete in the swim club, or maybe I couldn’t go to the FCCLA (a club) national competition this year because the trip to California was too expensive, but if something I am sure of, is that if I could, I would have. Now, surely I am unique, as it is technically impossible for someone to be exactly like anyone else, and what separates me from the rest, I think, is my tenacity, my need to grow. As a young child, I was constantly compared with to my older brother. He had good grades, he was smart. Being the youngest in probably most situations (I started school early) I was never heard, I was to follow examples, but I wanted to be the example. I want to be great, and I will be regardless of what challenges I have to face, or what barriers people put in front of me, I will be
great.