My memories from as long ago as I can remember to as recent as I can remember are filled with memories of figure skating. The early mornings, long days of practice, tears, triumphs, and the long car rides home stuck in traffic with my mom. September 2021, during another long day of practice, I stepped on the ice, greeted by the feeling of cold wind in my hair and the familiar noise of my edges ripping on the ice. Regionals were in two weeks. In two weeks, I would have to step on the ice alone with only one chance and a 3-minute performance to show everything I had been tirelessly training for the whole summer. If I succeeded, I qualified for sectionals; if I failed, it was game over. No do-overs. The nerves began to eat away at my self-confidence, and my performance in practice progressively kept falling apart. After every fall, every mistake, I looked over at my mom in the lobby through the glass and watched the muscles in her face harden. With every muscle in Another day of practice. I step into the rink, dreading practice, dreading competing, my head filled with my mom’s words swirling around. About half an hour passes, my coach calls me over—it's time to run the program I’m competing in. As I take my spot, my legs are shaking, my heart is racing, and my breathing is shallow. Knowing my mom is watching—I begin. Around the halfway mark, I honestly think I blacked out. After falling about three times within the first minute, my breathing becomes erratic, and tears are welling up in my eyes. Why can’t I just do it right? Three-quarters into my program, my coach notices that I’m gasping for air and stops my music. She pulls me over, calms me down, and asks me what's wrong. Like a hole had been opened in my brain, I overflow, and everything spills out. I tell her how I’m afraid to compete and go to practice because I'm afraid of failing, I'm afraid of disappointing my mom and my coaches, and I keep working so hard, but it just keeps getting worse and worse; I don't know what to do anymore, and I don’t want to compete anymore. My coach explained that I needed to learn to skate for myself— that I couldn't control the people around me and their expectations—and that I could only control my own actions. She taught me a lesson that always sticks with me: I can’t always meet the expectations of the people around me, and that’s okay. We decided to still continue training for my competition but in a different way. The next couple of weeks are spent working as hard as I can physically and mentally. I slowly learned how to differentiate my mom's expectations from my own, and little by little, practice started to get better. It’s the day of the competition, and terror gripped me. I step on the ice and try to remember the last couple of weeks of practice, and then, in what feels like a millisecond, I’m done competing. I just gave the best performance of my life. It was like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. I stepped on the ice for my Sectional performance, the wind blowing through my hair, followed by my newfound sense of freedom. I’ll never forget the feeling of skating for myself, unburdened by the expectations of those around me, and I will carry that with me for every moment of my life.