I used to be a swimmer.

I've hit the three-week mark. My life has stopped consisting of large, detached glumps and is now linear again. Classes, grades, organizations, the paper, people; it's all coming into perspective. And I'm glad of it. But I didn't realize what was missing until everything started coming together.

Swimming. It's fall, it's getting chilly and the sky is super blue and I know I'm supposed to be running and weight-lifting and working my butt off with friends every day. I'm jittery and snapish, never really hungry or sleepy. The smell of chlorine makes my knees shake, I'm turning to gangster rap instead of my usual mellow music. My body, for for the first time in five years, is not breaking into fall in the pool.

But it's more than just missing the sport. As far as relationships go, there's mentors and then there's coaches. There's friends and then there's teammates. When you spend most of your time and energy working to hear one person say, "That was perfect, that was exactly what we needed," they supercede mere mentorship. And when you spend 40 hours a week with the same people, going through hell together, doing what you love together, you get to something more than friendship. The cheers and the songs and the jokes, posters and puffy painted t-shirts, communal saltines packages, bonfires. Being on a team like that is the next best thing to family.

Since I was thirteen years old, I have been a swimmer. I wish I could explain how deeply engrained it is in me. It was part of my identity, not just an activity. I grew and learned so much in that pool, I would not be the same person without that experience. And I can't explain how it feels for it to be September, and knowing that 3 hours away my coach and my team are having practices and meets without me. I had no idea I loved it so much. I had no idea that losing it would hurt so much.

So, my college does have a swim team. It's a six-month season, training without one race for over a month, then traveling most weekends for meets. Morning and evening practices. And I don't really want to do it. I want to give everything I have to the paper, and I want to do women's flag football in October, then I want to join the sailing club in the spring. I need time to get my A-average, I have other clubs I want to be involved in. It's college, I want to do new things, find new things to sign my life over to, meet new people to get close to. But I'm afraid of life without a team. I'm afraid of the hard things in life if I don't have swimming to take it out on. I'm afraid to give up such a big part of me.