I've officially decided to come out of swimming retirement!

Me and Ryan Lochte at Nationals my senior year of high school (I look completelyyy different now which is why I haven't blurred this photo). Yes, I swam at this meet. Yes, this was before he was famous and there was a show making fun of him.

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I was recruited to college for swimming. High school would not have been the same if I wasn't a swimmer. My days revolved around waking up at 4:45am to be in the water at 5:45, and ending my school day with practice from 3:30-6pm. Tack on 6 AP classes to that equation and you have quite a busy schedule! My teammates were my family. It was awesome.

There was a whole other side of swimming though. Never feeling like I was good enough was a continuous problem that I battled (I started swimming when I was in 6th grade, considerably later than the average swimmer who starts when they are in 1st, so I was playing catch-up from day 1). My coaches also made the situation worse. They told me to my face that I would never swim D1 (WHICH I did, seriously messed up right?!) and they always pitted the girls on my team against each other. I was never good enough and never appreciated any of my successes because I was always focused on what I wanted to achieve next. Getting second at club state championships didn't matter to me - I wanted to go to nationals. It was a sick mentality, but that was all I knew. I always wanted to be one of the best.

Why did I stay with that program? All my coaches did was put me down and I always felt like I wasn't good enough. Because the girls on the team were my favorite people in the entire world. We all spent so much time together and knew each other to the extent that it was scary. We were basically sisters. And on top of that, my coaches were actually good at their jobs. We didn't swim THAT many yards a day but were one of the best teams in the state. We weren't burnouts like a lot of swimmers at our level. My coaches did know what they were doing, I will give them credit. They were one of the reasons I was able to catch up and be one of the better girls my age.

And then when I got to college, my coach was AWFUL. I got so slow. It was a disaster. I hated every stroke I took, and being a distance swimmer, that was a lot of strokes to hate over the course of a practice. I did not get a single best time at my championship meet at the collegiate level. Which was terrible considering I was at a D1 program and you are supposed to get a lot faster. I was completely miserable.

So sophomore year, I
quitretired. I just couldn't do it anymore. I never wanted to get into a pool again, and college was amazing without swimming all the time. I have no regrets about retiring AT ALL. If I would have swam, I would have missed out on A LOT. I never missed swimming a day in my college life.

But now that I am a real person, I have been wanting to get my life together. Working out has obviously been a complete fail (if you've been reading my posts, need I say more about this?!). And I've been feeling like I want to do something other than work and going out. It's just so unfulfilling to have my days be so monotonous, and hangovers are THE WORST now that I am apparently an old lady! And I am bad at all sports. Except for swimming.

So, I am officially coming out of retirement! I just emailed a team here in NYC that is reasonably priced. I want to race again. I want to succeed at something again. And I want to appreciate it this time around and know that I am doing this for me, not my terrible high school coaches. I am doing this because I want to, not because I have to.

This is the most excited I've been about something in awhile :)

<3, Charlotte