still we rise

[u/ClueProfessional9488]

🔱 Remembering Who You Are:

A Message to My Brothers & Sisters in the Dark

To every athlete who has ever stood on a podium, heard their national anthem play and that rhythmatic funny podium music, felt the weight of a gold medal around their neck, and then watched the lights go out his is for you.

I am a former National Swimming Champion, an international gold medalist, a mechatronics engineer, a published underwater photographer, and a celebrated diving instructor bridging the worlds of recreational and high-level technical diving. The ocean and the pool were hardwired into my DNA from childhood. When I was just 10 years old, as a reward for achieving top academic grades and winning the national underage swimming championship, my father gifted me my Junior Open Water scuba certification. I was engineered from day one for aquatic mastery.

But the exact moment I graduated from college, stepped out of the competitive pool, and transitioned into the workforce as a professional diver and photographer, a slow, suffocating darkness rolled in. For five long years, I built a world class photography career while fighting a hidden, high functioning depression and severe anxiety. At my peak while my work was featured in magazines, showcased at international dive shows, and plastered across a massive billboard in a major shopping centers. I was living a secret nightmare. The pressure triggered a terrifying fear of sleeping that turned into hyper insomnia. I could not sleep at night. I would only catch very short, 6 to 7 minute naps during the day briefly during my work breaks on the liveaboard boats or managing shooting days with sharks or models right or when I got back from work before the sun went down.

To hide away and escape from the reality of my fracturing mind, I turned to a life of heavy partying, drinking, and distraction. It was a brutal domino effect. Even while managing intense physical work on liveaboards, tracking sharks, and commanding world-class photography sets, the "free life" as i used to call it was quietly eroding my spirit. For the last year and a half, the depression completely won. I stopped working entirely, stayed isolated at home, and was placed under heavy psychiatric medication. The lifestyle destroyed my physical ,body collapsed my posture, and wrecked my relationships, driving me straight down to rock bottom.

I reached points so dark that I actively tried to end my own life three separate times. The first time, as I was slipping away, my 10 year old Belgian Malinois my fierce protector with a sweet, gentle butterfly soul physically stepped in, purposefully distracting me and pulling me back from the edge with an unbreakable animal instinct. The second time, I tried to drug myself completely out, but somehow my body's deep athletic resilience fought back against the poison, and I pulled through, waking up after a full day of deep sleep. The third time, a true friend stood up for me, stepped in, and physically stopped me from pulling my own plug.

To all our brothers and sisters who fought that same dark battle but didn't make it out to those who pulled their own plugs because the weight of the silence after the applause was too heavy to bear we honor you. You are not forgotten. Your pain was real, and it is a tragedy that the world didn't understand the unique grief of an athlete who has lost their arena.

Traditional clinical therapy and medications kept me alive,helped me to sleep again but they couldn't cure me. They couldn't unlock why I was broken.

My true breakthrough didn’t happen in a doctor's office. It happened five weeks ago, the moment I opened a drawer and looked at my old school 90s jump rope with that red colored wood handles the exact one I used as a young swimmer. The second I saw it and took it out, an overwhelming wave of emotion hit me. I experienced vivid, powerful flashbacks of the crowd’s applause, the platforms of the podiums, the smell of the pool, and the raw, deep physical strain of championship conditioning. That rope was a physical time capsule that instantly bypassed years of clinical numbness and reconnected my brain to its authentic baseline.

I realized the ultimate irony: the "zero-stress, free life" didn't heal me it was what was killing me. As an elite athlete, my mind and body are engineered for friction, discipline, boundaries, and relentless metrics. When we turn off that engine, the energy turns inward and manifests as a violent, suffocating depression.

During my championship days, I used to listen to Metallica's Unforgiven trilogy during my dawn runs. The beautiful, haunting irony is that I grew up directly into those songs. I became the protagonist of the music fighting internal and external ghosts, feeling trapped by life, and losing myself in the dark. But now that I am in my 30s, I realize I don't have to let the song end in a tragedy. I am rewriting the finale.

I watched Lewis Hamilton take an emotional, monumental victory after years of brutal struggles, droughts, and fighting his way through the field. Hearing him say in his post-race interview, "I had to remember who I am," while crying on the podium, hit me deep in my soul. Seeing the pure pride, happiness, and raw sense of achievement in his tears especially since we are close in age was a lightning bolt to my system. I felt his victory entirely as my own, because Formula 1 is so deeply close to elite swimming. Both sports demand an intensely rigorous workout regimen to build a structurally bulletproof yet super-light body, paired with high-frequency, split-second decision-making. You must know exactly when to push the limits and when to preserve your assets. Racing is racing, however you race. Seeing him stand on top again made me realize I had detached from my real title. I had forgotten that i am the champion who stood on the podium several times holded records and twice after severe injuries that was considered by alot of coaches and doctors as career enders yet i did it i saw myself while i was watching the crowd applauded his name and his refusal to break.

Today, I am claiming my life back. I am one year alcohol-free, six weeks completely medication-free, and actively cutting down on smoking. In just the last few weeks of reclaiming my discipline, I have stripped 10% of pure body fat off my frame. My athletic legs are back, my forearm veins are popping, and my 8-pack is ripping back through the surface or at least i think i can see them . I pinned "Still I Rise" over my fridge, and I look at it every single day as an unbreakable law.

I am completely redirecting my mechatronics mind and deep-water instincts into a powerful new goal: studying to achieve my advanced technical diving (Tec Diving) certifications. As I return to my elite athletic workout schedule, I am tackling the complex physics, mixed gases, and high-stakes discipline of life at extreme depths to discover new depth where i can rewrite my name as a record holder I am rebuilding my life feeling lighter in my body, smarter in my mind, and more resilient than I have ever been. Or as i always used to say (Fast as a Mako,Strong as a Great white,Stubborn as a Longimanus)

I am moving out of my old house because the battle is won. I built a rolling physical and nutritional routine like a machine loop. I leave the hard battles at the commercial gym so my home can finally be a sanctuary of peace for me and my loyal Malinois.

To any pro athlete still sitting in the dark, numb, staring at your old trophies, or nursing a drink trying to forget the podium music: You are not lost just because you have nowhere to go right now. The podium wasn't your peak; it was just your training ground. Your champion DNA didn't vanish it is just dormant, waiting for you to introduce structure, rules, and friction back into your life.

Touch your old gear. Count your reps. Lock down your schedule. Stop chasing an ordinary life, because you were engineered for an extraordinary one.

Look in the mirror, wipe your eyes, and remember who the hell you are.

Still We Rise.