I Can't Remember The Last Day I

I'm Fortunate To Have An Amazing, Strong Mother Who Is So Supportive Of Everything Me And My Sisters Did Growing Up - But She Was Someone Who Never Forced Us To Go Swim Or To Go Do This Or That. She Helped Us Think About Certain Consequences When We Needed To, But We Made Our Own Decisions. I Think If I Were Forced To Swim, I Wouldn't Have Stayed In The Pool As Long As I Did.

I Don't Like To Be Second In Anything. I Was Trying, I Just Wasn't Going Anywhere.

We Need To Make Seeing A Therapist More Accessible; We've Got To Crack Down On This And Allow People The Opportunity To Seek Help. It's Going To Be A Game-changer. I Would Love People To Become More Vulnerable And Reach Out And Ask For Help. I Would Never Want Somebody To Go Through The Feelings I Had, Almost Exactly Three Years Ago, Of Not Wanting To Be Alive. That's A Scary Thing, And To Think Of Where I Am Today Compared To That - That's Way Bigger Than Winning A Gold Medal.

This Is My 20th Year In The Sport. I've Known Swimming And That's It. I Don't Want To Swim Past Age 30; If I Continue After This Olympics, And Come Back In 2016, I'll Be 31. I'm Looking Forward To Being Able To See The Other Side Of The Fence.

If You Look At Me, Basically My Whole Entire Life I've Been Around Water. So When You Look At A Stat Like, "if You Leave The Faucet Running For Two Minutes While You Brush Your Teeth You Waste Four Gallons Of Water," To Me That's Mind-blowing. There Are So Many People That Don't Even Have Access To Clean Water, And People Leave Their Faucets Running. For Me It Was Something That Fit With Things That I Believe In.