The Beeties

My high school swim coach, Bryan (as well as my college swim coach, Coach Remillard), is one of the most influential persons of my entire life.  I don’t know why, but I adored him.  I thought he was witty and brilliant and skilled and he understood me in ways most people didn’t.  He just got me in ways sometimes I didn’t even understand myself.  He allowed me to be the free person I wanted and needed to be, but at the same time wasn’t afraid to remind me I actually was not the boss of everyone all the time (I still disagree with that….).  He let me get away with things I probably should not have gotten away with, but he kept me in line with things I needed to be in line with- like for example, letting me know that while it was indeed okay for me to find the college boys hot, it was NOT okay to even entertain the idea of dating one and if I did choose to do so, he WOULD find out about it and he WOULD tell my mother, and did I want that?  HELL NO- my mother scared the absolute crap out of me.  Look at them, but don’t date the college boys, don’t touch them.  Got it.

The other thing he taught me (sensical or not) is that, like most things in life, swimming was 90% mental, and 10% physical.   If I think about that as an adult, that cannot possibly be true, but that idea has been my life’s mantra.  If you want something, go get it.  You are the only one stopping yourself from success.  There are zero excuses as to why you cannot show up for practice, why you cannot achieve your dreams, why you can’t push through moments of pain for something greater.  None.  It has helped fuel my drive for anything I want to do because, in my mind, the only person stopping myself from something I want, is me. It has given me incredible will power to say no to things I see others fall to, to say yes to things I am afraid of, to stay on an often incredibly difficult path to be where I eventually want to be- with anything in life. 

Here’s the real challenge of will power.

Gestational diabetes.

You want to really test your will power to do what you are supposed to do?  Go get yourself some gestational diabetes and then let’s talk.  That business is brutal.  Hi, I know you love chips and pasta but for at least the next two months, and potentially for life, you have to eat basically only vegetables and protein, but don’t worry, you can have -this many- carbs in a day (note the size of the palm of my hand).  OMG kill me now.

So, about two weeks in to this new starvation diet, I was super excited to have found sugar free popsicles.  OMG was I excited.  I ate two within a three minute span and I was about to have a third when it occurred to me that I also had to count the carbs- not just the sugar.  Dang, I forgot about the carbs.  I flip over the box and to my horror there were 29 carbs.  29!  In extreme frustration I legit threw the box on the counter with a very dramatic, “AGHHHHHHHHH!!!”

Gabriela Catalina, in her best middle school attitude, whipped around.  “What’s wrong with you???”

“I’m just so frustrated.  I am so hungry all the time and I finally thought I found a treat I can have and I cannot even have sugar free popsicles!!!”

She took a tween stance, and with the head roll and her hand on her hip she says with all the sass she has, “Well, maybe you should have THOUGHT about that before you went and got yourself diabetes”- as if I went out and caught a disease from being irresponsible!  Ben, from the top of the stairs, yells, “Oh SNAP!!  Gabi- you better RUN!!!”

I wanted to throttle her… and also congratulate her on her very quick witted retort.