A Butterfly is a graceful, flying insect to most children. They loved them and chased them; I did not love “butterfly.” My butterfly was a stroke, a way of swimming (torture more like it), and as I wiggled like a fish out of water, or a human in it, I pushed myself. Eventually, I was better in the water than out, and I way up into the fastest lanes on the team, my strongest stroke soon becoming butterfly. At a swim meet, a member of my team, the Otters, beat me by eighteen hundredths of a second... I know that she is on my team; however, I still wanted to win, to be first. I wanted to feel the water rush past me and know that I am pushing through by pushing myself. To know that pushing through, mentally and physically, was worth it. I believe that I have to push myself because nobody else is going to do it for me.

When swimming, I learned the concept of pushing yourself. Swimming for the seventh season, I knew how to use every muscle in ways I first thought impossible.  I knew how to feel ice-cold-freeze-my-hair water. I knew how to dive in head first every morning at 6:30 and force myself to swim: what I loved and what I hated. At my  event, the 50 freestyle, I didn’t push myself, and after wished I’d pushed through berriers and knew I could have.  I could swim faster; I could win, but I didn’t. Imagine losing the Superbowl by 1 point, that is how I felt. During the event, I remember seeing the crowd’s mouths opened and cheering.  The water drowned out, “Go! Go! Go!” and even my friend singing, “Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming,”  but their cries didn’t matter when I was swimming.  When swimming, I can’t hear the encouragement of an audience; just like I can’t hear my parents at home during my math test. Knowing that my hand filling in the bubbles, my arms swinging and pushing the water away so I could push myself forward, matters. All of it stopped when we both hit the wall; there was a moment of silence, a blanket of deathly suspense that would suffocate both of us. Waiting for the times to go up on the board, the times appeared, the death sentence for one of us, a signature of our own doing. There were family members and friends cheering and sighing as I discovered the death sentence I signed on my own. In my head, I wanted to smack the top of the water, but when I saw all of the guppies, the children  who are under 10.  They were smaller, more innocent, than my little sister.  I would never let my sister see what that side of me. I  would not only be showing these guppies pushing wasn’t enough, but also to be classified as a terrible sport, and a bad influence on so many that I couldn’t even count them all.  I sucked it up and got over myself; next time I would do better in that event, my next chance. I did it, I dangled first place in front of me and pushed even more than before. I broke the barriers of my time and my mind; and I won. 

I believe that this helped me better my life so that I could learn to push myself harder to be able to break down the walls that I had mentally built, and achieve my goals. Personally I think that this is a life lesson that anyone should be able to follow through with.