Chapter twenty-five - Jealous

Chapter twenty-five.

My residential college had an awards celebration every so often where they'd give people awards. Like the best effort in sports (which I won regularly) or the stable bedroom cup - that was the one who made the best stable beds for the horses and the one who also kept their room the tidiest; stuff like that.

Then there was cycling, I also found that this was a competitive sport too (well for me. I felt like I had to be the best or it wasn't good enough)

This was very hard because I wasn't great at cycling. I was always very slow and it'd be annoying because I wasn't as good as everyone else. I'd often try and end up falling off my bike constantly.

I also got jealous because LSA started by not even knowing how to ride a bike at all and then very quickly becoming better than me. It was just unfair!

We did our cycling proficiency for adults (spelt horribly wrong!) So that we could be safe on the road. This girl went from being unable to ride a bike to being one of the best in the level I was doing.... I found this VERY annoying!

Anyway, I did still get praise though because I knew how to weave in and out of the cones and stuff and the others didn't. The cycling instructor got the others to watch me weave in and out of the cones so that they knew how to do it. This made me feel good because I was the best at something. This didn't last long though. 😟

I tried to copy LSA by acting like I was nervous about riding a bike to see if I could get the same response from the instructor as she got but failed. Ironically though as weeks went on, I DID start to get very nervous and scared of doing what we had to do.

My memory isn't that great so I found that I forgot how to do the stuff that we had learnt the week before and that made me feel embarrassed. I didn't want them to find out that I was actually getting worse and struggling even more though; so this was hard.

I realise that this probably looks and sounds like I was attention-seeking, but it wasn't for attention at all! I'm a perfectionist and I wanted to be perfect at everything and if I wasn't, then that wasn't good enough for me.

One day though I had got fed up of being one of the worst at riding a bike so it hit me that if I wanted to be noticed then I'd just have to try harder. This time my need to get fitter and lose weight fueled my determination so much that I ended up holding a position in the front with the really good riders.

This got me noticed a bit and some people told me that I was doing well at staying in the front. I was exhausted but I got the buzz from the exercise, thinking that it'd help me lose weight. I think I should mention that everyone else, the good cyclists were also ones of the skinny people.

This just triggered me even more.