water; filled to the brim

Dedicated to my best friend whose dreams are that of water filled to the brim and nothing more.

She tries, tries and tries so many times until her limbs are ready to drop and she wants to go back home and sleep on her comfortable bed and make up for the hours that she lost, waking up early that morning. She tries so hard to impress her coach and achieve her final goal and ultimately, be where she wants to be. She tries too hard and too many times to beat her personal best time. She spends sixteen (and one of her less athletic friends would exclaim ‘Sixteen!’) hours a week on training. Well, sixteen was the bare minimum because some weeks she would do more hours than that.

She knows that what she’s doing is hard but she doesn’t mind at all. She finds it enjoyable that she is not only receiving good grades but is also winning most of her races and being the fastest girl in the school. She likes that she’s made good friends and has tried to fit into as normal of a life as she possibly can, but she knows that she’ll never be as normal as the rest of her classmates, because she wasn’t made to be normal. She was made to be exceptional, just like everyone else was. But she was made to be exceptional when it came to swimming.

She knows that she has a natural talent for sport in general, but most definitely water-related sports. She knows that she isn’t the best. When you’re in a squad with people who are just as good as you are, if not better, that’s when you want to improve and be like the rest. It’s fair to say that after a few years of continuous and hard training that she’s probably one of the better ones in her age group for the squad. But that doesn’t mean her journey has been easy.

She’s made sacrifices that most of her classmates would never sacrifice. She sacrifices her sleep, her time, her limbs, her energy and her schedule all into this sport that she loves. Almost every morning she has to wake up at four thirty, because training starts at five in the morning. She spends most of her time in the water, rather than out, all to obtain that precious dream of hers. She sacrifices her limbs at every training session she does, on land or in water. Most of the time she’s in water, she’s swimming and tumble-turning until her arms feel like they’re dead. Sometimes she’s on land, jumping around and lifting weights so that she can build her core muscles. She sacrifices her energy going to every one of these sessions and along with it, her schedule. She doesn’t have a lot of time to spend on assignments and homework. She barely has any time at all because not only does she spend most of her time on swimming, she also does netball.

But all those sacrifices have been worthwhile because she has a dream. She dreams of standing on a platform, the gun going off before the cheers from her nation stand out from the crowd encouraging her to swim at her greatest, and even beyond. She dreams of the adrenaline rushing through her veins and the time being a mere minor obstacle against her finally pushing the wall and her head coming up to be welcomed by cheers of those from her home land. She wants to be an Olympic swimmer, representing her country and standing on the highest platform with the national anthem blasting through the speakers. She wants to be the one who will make her country proud for what it used to be predominating in.

And so, while her limbs might ache and she might complain to her friends about her training, she decides that every little push and every little bit of motivation she can grasp is all that she needs. Every sacrifice she makes will all be worth it, no matter how many times she complains now. With a smile on her face, she hears the gun go off and on a primitive instinct, she dives into the pool and begins to swim. The crowd is muffled by her desire to be the first person to finish. The only minor obstacle that remains in her path from reaching her ultimate goal is time.