Something I struggle with a lot is confidence. It is the thing I have struggled the most with. At school, at cheer or even at home anywhere I struggle with it a lot I think it’s the biggest thing I struggle with. I feel like when I was younger, I didn’t really worry about that stuff but now that I’m getting older, I struggle with that stuff a lot more. When I see someone that’s better, I wanna be better, and I struggle with that a lot, and sometimes you can’t be in certain things, so that lowers my confidence.

I also have bad anxiety, and some things happened between my parents and my dad went to jail for it. So, anything that like triggers that is what I struggle with a lot too. I mean whether it’s fights or if its people yelling that automatically triggers that so it’s weird. Whenever I have anxiety I kind of feel like I can’t breathe and like everyone is closing in on me and I just shake like a lot a lot and I have to leave my class sometimes if it happens in school. Sometimes I’ll be watching a video in class, and it will just like go off. It does it randomly too. It’s not like, oh, I’m gonna have anxiety right now, that’s not how it works. It just happens out of nowhere. Whenever it happens, I have to go to the bathroom and calm myself down or I’ll start crying and then I’ll just start having a panic attack and if I forget to breath then I’ll go into even more of an anxiety attack.

Cheer has helped a lot. I feel like cheer is a place where I can go and as soon as I’m on the mat nobody judges me and it’s a safe place and a safe spot. Whenever you go out and do your routine its two minutes and thirty seconds and in those two minutes and thirty seconds all I’m worried about is cheer and that’s something that most people don’t have. When I’m on the mat. Whether its cheer practice or at a competition or just hanging out with the girls, I do cheer with any of those make me feel like I’m in a safe environment. Cheer has changed me so much because again, it’s somewhere I can be myself, and I feel like nobody’s gonna judge me. There’s no anxiety there it just you being yourself and when I go to cheer it’s not like we’re competing against each other, we’re all there for the same reason. We all love it so obviously there’s gonna be some people that are sometimes better and sometimes worse but nobody’s actually afraid or sees that they’re better than others, were all the same. Personally, though, cheer changed me because I learned even if I fail sometimes I can always do better. Whenever you cheer if you fall on a stunt that’s obviously gonna happen, but you can’t beat yourself up for it which I do a lot so that why I feel like cheer changed me and I feel like some people just don’t get that there like “oh it’s just cheer whatever” but it is a lot more than that its like a lifestyle. This is what I do: wake up, go to school, I cheer, come home, stretch, and workout. That’s it. That’s my whole life.