I was an athlete and I fucking hated it.
Something that’s not widely spoken on is how dysmorphic you can feel in your own body when you’ve been doing sports from a young age. I felt like I looked masculine. I felt I had too much muscle tone. I didn’t feel like a woman at all, much less myself. For better context, I was a competitive swimmer for four almost five years straight. Starting in fourth grade, ending around the beginning of highschool. My body had no softness or curves. I was stick thin in some areas and bulking in others (think inverted dorito with a flat tummy and like a-cups because I couldn’t manage to keep on enough fat for tits att). I was always hungry. And I’ve never been physically competitive in my life. Practices that I once enjoyed (because they were for children and had fun games like sharks and minnows) and eventually tired of went from one hour almost immediately after school, to an hour and a half and two hours on weekends, and then to two hours everyday for the entire week. Recall: I didn’t choose this sport. My step sister did. I wanted to try other things, was told “no this will help you get into college you’re good at this.” I was not good at that, I was OK at it. The other part of that: I would likely have to swim in college if it did help me, and I wanted to GTFO not swim for a college team. I fought with my mom a lot as a result. I was already in a bad spot mentally. There were many practices where I just got so upset I would swim and cry because I didn’t fucking want to be there, and I would backtalk my coaches if they pissed me off, and then my mom would get mad at me for making the coaches mad and making her look bad. Fun fact about swimming in Florida! THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS AN OFF SEASON!
That’s right. I was swimming in pools and attending practice year round, no fucking breaks to be a kid. Everyday. Middle of the afternoon. Yippee. I had no friends at practice, some kids would claw at anything they could grab and yank you backwards. FUN! Everyone was always so about it and very competitive. (Recall: I am not a physically competitive person unless we’re talking hide and seek or cops and robbers back when I was like 7 and I couldn’t go home till the streetlight came on). Everyone judged me for my lack of enthusiasm. I didn’t really care because I genuinely didn’t want to be there. My mother made me attend every meet. I almost got hypothermia at one meet, my coach had to force my mother to take me home because my muscles locked up and I had to start forcing myself to shiver. (For context; yes this was in Florida, it was a December morning that was devoid of sun, strong winds, grey sky no sunlight all day, slightly rainy, 40° F ambient temperature, outdoor pool with a shitty pool heater, and opposing teams had used all the hot water left in the showers. All my gear was soaked through and wouldn’t dry— remember no sun, it was cold and rainy— so I just stayed wet in-between events. Events that were very delayed and had hours of gap time between them. This is not even including windchill. I had been there since seven in the morning. My mom just told me to do laps before my events to warm up- my body was no longer producing heat I’m pretty sure, because I would jump on my toes, and I was so terribly cold in my damp parka that the cement felt like it was bending under my feet. I didn’t leave until just after twelve I think). There were meets like once or twice a month and unless I made plans and begged (recall: no friends on the team, very few irl) I was going regardless of whether I wanted to attend or not.
I had five panic attacks while at that pool :) each on separate occasions due to stress from homework and all the other shit I had waiting for me at home.
I was once sexual harassed by a group of girls who thought it was funny and chased for a short while by them while walking to my practice once. Didn’t tell my mom or the school, they wouldn’t have believed me or done anything anyways so I didn’t see a point.
Towards the end of my swimming career I was skipping practices whenever I could get away with it. I really hated it by then. My mom actually once told me people were judging me for my excoriation disorder from my step sisters team, and that I should just stop picking my skin, because it was making my step sister look bad because our parents were dating and I have ocd from trauma. :)
Anyways. Yeah. I wore glasses, had braces and exertion induced asthma, so I literally do not like most sports. I usually ended up with a ball hitting me in the face because some jock kicked it without looking while I walked the track. I now work around a pool and that was the best thing to ever come from my swimming career, and I mean that with complete sincerity.
Feel free to talk about your experiences in tags/replies/ect, and reblog if you'd like. I've been quite curious about this lately