Once upon a time, there was a swimmer. That swimmer was me.

I was in my last year of swimming recreationally, and this was the first year that I was going to the biggest meet for swimmers like me.

In past years, we had gone on vacations, instead, but everyone knew that this was the meet where records were broken.

The Meet of Champions. A two-day, four-session meet, where you are trying to swim fast enough to get to swim all of your events twice.

The first day of racing was exhausting. I swam four events and made finals in everything, so I swam eight times individually, plus once for a relay.

The second day, however, was not going quite as planned.

The morning went fine; I made finals in both of my events. However, as I approached the fifty-yard freestyle, I started to feel really anxious and tired.

What was really exciting about this event was that three of my teammates all made the top eight or A Final with me, but unfortunately, going into the race, that just made me more anxious.

In the end, anxiety seemed to win out on my swim. I missed the wall on my flipturn and lost all momentum, coming in last in the final.

As a very competitive person, I was devastated, but I didn't want to let my teammates see, so I said some quick congratulations and went to cool down.

Adding insult to injury, though, I banged my knees on the bottom of the pool when I was getting in to cool down, which made my mental state even worse.

I climbed out of the pool and went to find my mom. When I found her, I just broke down. The biggest meet of my swimming career to this point, and I just blew it.

My mom said that it's ok to feel that way right now, and to let it all out, but reminded me that I still made it to that final, and swam well in all my other races, and told me to pick my head up before my last race.

Later, my teammates came over and comforted me as well, and one of my friends told me that she had also missed the wall, and added time on her race, and we joked about that.