In Which I Am A Swimmer

As a kid, I didn’t have terrible hand-eye coordination. While I hated the outfield because it was hot and boring, I could swing and hit a few. I didn’t mind the basketball court, as long as I didn’t have to run back and forth on the court and could prop myself beneath the hoop for the assists. I took gymnastics for several years, even- I’ve always been fairly flexible and I actually enjoyed the floor exercises- though I drew deep lines when it came to the bars and left for other pursuits.

When I was 19 I took up running for exactly 6 months. I was sad and sick and thin and thought that if I couldn’t bring back people from the dead, I could at least be skinny for once in my life. I ran as punishment for surviving. I ran to drop sweat and calories and despair along with it. It only took half a year to realize that whatever I thought I was running from, was tied to my heels. Like Peter Pan’s shadow. So I donated my sneakers and I never ran again.

My identity messaging was pretty clear from the get-go. I was a singer, an actor, a leader, a musician, a writer, a reader. But I was not an athlete. There wasn’t room for me there. You can’t be greedy, you know. I accepted my place, and with the help of some purity culture instruction proceeded to embrace the idea that I was inept in my own skin and completely disassociated with my body. It felt very sacrificial. Holy, even. I took up the mantle with whole-hearted dedication.

And yet, for the last two summers, I’ve found myself surreptitiously driving to the town pool at night, alone, to swim.

I’ve needed the sensation of the ripples. The immersive hold. The underwater vacuum of silence. The pull of the current against arms I’ve long given up to be toned, or even strong. I’ve realized that I’ve always needed it, in fact.

All of the times in high school when I ran the bathwater to steaming, stay for hours until it turned cold, then drained and filled it again.

The early morning swims in waters that have known me at every stage before the world was awake.

The wading out into streams with jeans rolled up past my ankles, even in November when we are wearing jackets.

The one night in my early thirties when my life fell apart and I couldn’t even allow so much as a bathing suit to separate me from cold, redemptive lake waters at midnight- I thought I would suffocate in my own skin until I had swum long enough for me to remember what it was like to breathe again.

But I never, truly, felt free to love the water. Not in the way I longed to.

Because I was not allowed to be an athlete. To feel muscles and strength and skin. To trust my own body, and believe that it was good.

Thus, I could not be a swimmer.

Isn’t it so amazing the things we can convince ourselves that we’re not- even when we are staring them in the face?

I have swam nearly every day since June. I’m relatively fast if I need to be, but I prefer the slow and steady pace. I use a lap lane and smile at the older gentleman who beats me to the wall every single time. I let myself feel the sun and the wind that makes me shiver when I get out. Sometimes, I simply need to float around and tread water. Sometimes I don’t stop moving for an hour.

Nearly forty years of adopting an identity given to me are enough. Forty years of removing my brain from my body is (if I believe in them anymore) a sin.

I am a lot of things.

I’m also a swimmer.

What about you?