I'll toss in my 2 cents, only because I make my living working around industrial pumps and have worked on my own pool pump several times.
You have an object between the impeller and the housing.
If your pump bearings were going out, the first thing that would happen is the pump seal would start leaking, the seal doesn't have much tolerance for a shaft running out of round.
Since the wet end of these pumps is plastic, if the object is hard enough, it will eventually wear off enough of the impeller to pass through. That will cause the pump to lose some of it's efficiency, how much will depend on the size of the object that's tearing up the impeller.
I realize different people have different mechanical abilities, but with my pump, and most pool pumps I've seen, it only take 4 bolts to separate the motor and split the pump housings. If the electricity to the pump was connected with flexible conduit, removing the object from the pump is a 10 minute job.