Disclaimer: this is a long post. Apologies in advance.

As far as I can remember, there is only one time in my life I’ve ever quit.

I’m determined to a fault.  I pride myself on following through and finishing every last thing I start.  I do not quit.  I take on too much at a time and do everything in my power to complete it.  I ask a lot of myself and I ask a lot of others.  When I’m told to slow down, I tend to speed up instead.  Telling me I can’t do something – that’s fuel to try even harder.

I once was in a spinning class with a new instructor.  I was used to going during the week and decided to try a Saturday class out of the blue.  The instructor didn’t seem to understand that I’d done spinning before and every time there was a hard set coming up, he’d make a point to tell me to skip that set or sit it out while the rest of the class did it. Bull. That’s not who I am.  I would do the set anyways and the instructor would continue telling me not to.  Needless to say, I went back to the weekday class with the instructor who did not try and tell me to take it easy.

But, back to the story…

When I was in elementary school, I was a synchronized swimmer. After seeing a demonstration at a girl scout day, they passed out flyers for “Learn to Synchro” classes.  I woke up a few Saturdays later with the desire to learn and asked my parents to sign me up for the class.  Four weeks later, I was on the competition team and joining the other girls about  my age.  It was tough, but it was fun and I loved it.  Three times a week we would practice and on weekends there were meets in Indiana and neighboring states.

I can remember waking up at 4, 5 and 6 a.m. to go to practice, meets and traveling to different cities.  I remember going to almost 10 drugstores while it was still dark one Saturday morning before a meet to find a white swim cap, because you get points off if you don’t have a white swim cap for figures.  I loved it all, even the hot jello that was pasted onto my hair to keep it in a bun.

Fun fact: That’s how synchronized swimmers keep their hair in that lovely bun/hairpiece.  You mix hot water with plain gelatin and paste it on your hair.  My dad got the pleasure of pasting the mixture on my head, if I remember correctly.

Throughout the months of being on the team, I learned a lot and got very strong.  I loved being in the water and I really loved the team and even the sport.

What was hard, however, was that I never could get my lungs in shape.  I felt like a failure to my team and to myself when I’d have to ruin a team routine by coming up for air in the middle of a move.  It felt like I was dying, often.  It hurt, often and I couldn’t breathe.  I felt like as hard as I tried, it didn’t matter.  I just wasn’t strong enough and it just hurt.  My grades started slipping and I started dreading meets and practices because I would leave feeling not accomplished, but like a failure.  I was letting everyone down, most of all myself.

In the spring, in the middle of the “year,” I begged my parents to quit.  I didn’t know what was wrong, but I just didn’t think I could do it again.  I worked so hard and I couldn’t ever come up with a satisfied feeling like I was good at what I was doing or that I was achieving success.  My parents finally relented and let me quit, and I can only imagine the reactions my coaches and teammates gave when I disappeared.

The fact is I, to this day, regret quitting and what it did to my team. I regret, more that quitting on myself, letting down my teammates. It was 15 years ago and I still feel the guilt from letting down my teammates and the guilt form quitting.

Four years later, I was diagnosed with asthma. Retrospectively, things started to make sense as far as why I probably struggled so much and hurt so much while on the team.

It was only a year and a half ago that I got my asthma under control.  Getting my asthma under control opened up the whole world to possibilities.  It makes me sad that I didn’t have it under control back then and makes me wonder how things could have been different if I had it under control.

I’ve swam recreationally since quitting synchro and it’s usually fun.  On vacation I still scull around the pool and eggbeater.  If I’m in a particularly flexible mood, I’ll even do a few basic positions. It’s still enjoyable to me to do, but I feel as though I’m cheating a bit when I do those.  As if since I quit, I have to relinquish the time and skills I learned while on the team.

Today, I returned to the pool.  I wanted to pick up another cross-training option and decided to sign up for a “stroke improvement” type class since I’d never done any team competitive swimming.  I thought I would be able to hone my skills and add an option to my non-running days and eventually look at doing some triathlons, too.

Ironically enough, the class is in the very pool where I took my “Learn to Synchro” class.  I haven’t been in that pool since the last day I was on the team.  I was nervous, but took to the class just like riding a bike.  After class I felt good, I felt a strong that I don’t remember feeling since being on the team.  Running gives me a distinctive “strong” feeling.  The feeling I felt today driving home is not dislike that run feeling, but it’s different.  The funny thing is, it’s exactly the same as I remember from back then.

On the way out, I bought a new swim cap and goggles and heard the music over the speakers in the pool.  While paying, I looked out and saw the current synchro team practicing.  I wanted badly to watch them, but I’m not quite ready for that yet.  I still feel guilt from quitting – the only thing I ever quit and in a way I don’t feel like I have a right to watch the team, even all these years later.

If for any reason any of my old teammates or coaches should read this, I apologize.  I made things harder on you because I didn’t know how to keep going.   I regret everything about how my time with the team ended.

Today, what’s different is in that I didn’t just feel the guilt from quitting when I left the pool.  What’s different today is that I also feel the strength from swimming that I haven’t felt since those days.  It”s nice to have it back.