Lucie v.

If you are reading this, I wanna talk about “what people think about you”,

When I was young, my father was very demanding, and I did everything to make him proud of me. During my childhood, he would tell me I was fat, that I was bad at school, bad at swimming, that I could never make any French national team, (I am a competitive swimmer).
Because of what he thought about me, it became the truth to me. Despite this, I did qualify for the French team, I got good grades and it made me realize he was the problem.
When I started to reach puberty, after breaking up with my ex-boyfriend my body changed, some guys would make rude comments about my body. In some cases they would say, “omg she gained weight”. So I trained to lose weight. I trained so much that it made me lose way too much weight. Along side this, I also had health problems with my asthma, and people started saying if I didn’t swim fast it was because I had grown up, and girls can get slow after reaching puberty.

So I can’t be fast at my sport because now I’m a woman?

They would tell me that it was over for me, that I could never swim fast again.
I proved everyone wrong after I almost broke the French national record, that was the first time that no one could say anything negative about me.

After coming to the U.S to train at ASU I can now say I am fully joyful.

Now I understand that the most important thing is not what people think about you, but simply keeping the right people around you.
So don’t listen to what people say about you, just show them who you really are.

Lucie V.., Arizona State University

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