“It seemed like you weren’t there mentally during that fly. Your strokes were sloppy, you barely kicked off the walls and your drive wasn’t straight.” [My coach] was trying to make the feedback a little nicer. I just stared at her, having no excuse for my awful swim. In the weeks following the meet, I started to accept that I was no longer the fast 10 year old breaking records left and right and always winning my races no matter who was in the lane next to me, which only made me detest the sport more. It got to a point where I no longer wanted to get out of my bed in the mornings because I knew I would be going to swim later that day. I also dreaded the weekends because that meant early morning longer practices that took up my whole day. I had begun a spiral of hatred of something which I used to love and was once my whole life.