Rebecca B.

Photography by Aneesa Wermers

If you’re reading this and you are scared to slow down for fear you’ll never speed up again, it will be okay.

The word “over” has always been thrown around a lot in reference to me. Over-dramatic, over-achieving, over-thinking, over-doing. In a lot of ways, I have always really loved this quality in myself. But during my freshman year of college, as my ‘normal’ became overdoing, I lost sight of where the line was between pushing myself and pushing myself too far. To me, pain was a choice and fatigue was an option. And I wouldn’t be choosing or accommodating either.

I had been dealing with the overwhelm of my perfectionist tendencies since my 16th birthday dinner when we got the phone call that the woman who had been a second mother to me and helped to raise me since I was a baby had cancer. A few days later, we learned it was Stage 4c ovarian cancer (the kind of thing you don’t get better from). In response, I resolved to be perfect—its literally written in my diary—to keep her from having to deal with any extra stress. For the most part, I kept my resolution, my grades were perfect, I was on the varsity sports teams, and I was running volunteering projects. On the surface, I was excelling. Behind the scenes, though, I was watching while the person I loved the most withered away.

She died the second week of my freshman year of college. I actually got the call (and answered it) on the bus ride home from practice for the rowing team which I had become a member of six days earlier. From how I answered the phone call, though, I don’t think that any of my teammates could have guessed that my life had just fallen apart. I was so humiliated by the idea that I could be in pain that I held fast to “being fine”. I had just joined the rowing team. I had never done this sport before and suddenly I was doing it at a Division I level. That was terrifying enough. I couldn’t stomach having to admit to my teammates, the people I desperately wanted to succeed in front of, that I was breaking into pieces.

So, I worked. I believed so strongly that I was fine that I blinded myself from seeing that I was endlessly overworking to escape the pain. I persuaded myself that if I could just push harder, pull faster then I would get better. There was no benchmark to reach. I aimed at perfection and, as perfection always does, it evaded me. The workout on the training plan says 90 minutes. I’ll do three hours. Could I do it? Yes, but then I was too tired to do my homework, so then I had to nap, and then I had to stay up late to finish my homework. Then I was tired at practice, so then I got more tired. Then, the cycle started over again. I don’t think that anyone else could have really seen that something was wrong. I don’t even really think that I knew. I wasn’t paying attention.

Things started catching up with me when I tore my shoulder during the winter of my freshman year. Then, I started on an endless cycle of physical therapy and reinjury. Then, we got sent home for COVID. Then, in the fall of my sophomore year, I got surgery to repair my shoulder. Then, it all sort of spiraled.

While recovering from surgery I had to rest. I had been holding myself together by exercising and I had to relinquish that. When I (finally) was allowed to exercise again, rowing was out of the question until I had healed. I was left with biking which, when I was training alone, was mindless enough to let my anxieties swim free.

I just kept thinking that if I could push myself a little harder then I would feel more okay. But, I was aiming toward perfection, which is an impossible goal, so in trying to pursue it something will always fall by the wayside.

As a freshman, I had completely cast aside my social life to steer myself toward what I hoped could be academic and athletic perfection. As a sophomore, I had to deal with the fallout of that isolation. Luckily, the people I was left with were the best kind of people. The kind of friends who will see you at your lowest and will reach out and pull you back up again.

When I came home from one practice where I hadn’t been able to go as fast enough and was so tired that I was slurring my words and almost fell out of the shower, it dawned on me that I might have a problem. I couldn’t keep bouncing between overtraining and complete exhaustion. It wasn’t sustainable. I knew I needed to tell my coach just how deep a hole I had dug. I was guessing she would understand. I so badly did not want to reach out to her because it felt like admitting defeat. I almost didn’t text her at all. Right before I pressed send, I texted one of my best friends to ask for advice. I told her I wasn’t sure I could text my coach because I didn’t want to bother her and besides “I’m fine”. She reminded me that “it’s literally her job, Becky”. So, I texted.

Then, I sat on my floor on the phone with my coach and had to face what I had been trying so hard to avoid for about 4 years. I wasn’t fine. I was miserable. I had a problem that I couldn’t solve all by myself. I needed somebody to help me find my equilibrium. To me, that was rock bottom. From the outside things looked okay: my grades were good, I was healing from surgery, I wasn’t going SLOW at practice. But, I was so overwhelmingly miserable that it didn’t really matter.

My coach listened through my begrudging admission that began with “I’m fine. I don’t even know why I called” and moved towards “there could possibly be some issues” and ended with “so maybe I have a problem”. She told me to go talk to one of the sports psychologists. I told her I was NOT going to do that. But I couldn’t really win that argument, so I went.

I hated it. Or at least proclaimed to my mom and friends that I hated it. Mostly I hated that it helped. It gave me outlet to actually talk about everything that had piled up. Gradually, I started to feel okay with having some things to work through. The exact process of that is ongoing. Figuring out how to talk myself through mini panic attacks during hard workouts, how to navigate injury setbacks, and how to not over-train is something that I haven’t perfected. There are good days and bad days.

I am learning how to forgive myself for not being able to be perfect. It’s hard, but it’s helping. I’m starting to get to a place where instead of escaping my feelings by training I can just be happy and grateful to be at practice. Learning to see needing to take care of myself not as a sign of weakness but as a reflection of my strength has also, in an almost ironic way, made me faster. I have been able to hit and sustain speeds during workouts that are fast to a degree I did not think was possible for me. By letting myself get help when I knew I needed it, by trusting that when I fell there would be people there to help me get back up again, and by learning to admit weakness I have found new strength. I’ve also found joy, because exercising to escape is miserable but training to see how fast you can go is like flying. It’s fun. So, if you’re reading this and you are in a losing battle against perfection, that’s okay, and it can get better. Rest does not erase your hard work. It strengthens it.

Rebecca B., Boston College ‘23

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