In third grade, our class had a week of swim lessons at the community pool 🏊♀️.
Prior to this, I played at the beach a lot, but never learned to swim. I had chronic ear infections as a child and so I just never really dunked my head in the water 🤷🏽♀️ or had any specific reason to learn how to swim.
If you ask my mom, she says they threw us in the water to learn and I was the only kid who nearly drowned. I couldn’t figure it out. I think she is joking. I don’t remember this, and I’ve never asked mom about it. Maybe now I will 😉.
Aside from all that, it was a weeklong swim lesson field trip and despite being anxious about not knowing how to swim, I was also anxious about being a chubby kid in our class having to wear a bathing suit. Not to mention a Goodwill suit or maybe it was Savers or Salvation Army one because that was what we could afford.
After a few days of the usual swim basics all while being in the shallow end and being allowed to hold onto the wall, we now had to go to the deepest end, 13 feet deep. And one by one, we were to jump into the pool while a swim instructor waited in the water to assist us.
I lost it. I didn’t want to do it. I asked to be excused. I was forced into a line and when it was my turn, I was crying 😭 profusely, begging the lady in the water to let me skip it. She was such a bitch. A very mean lady who was yelling to just do it and we went back and forth until she grabbed my hand and pulled me in. THIS I remember vividly. I remember inhaling a shit ton of water after her forced plunge.
I remember thrashing around as I rose up from the deep.
I recall getting out of the water feeling completely defeated.
Even though I did “it,” …
I did not feel accomplished or victorious.
I did not feel like I overcame a fear.
This moment solidified my very real and an almost permanent fear of the water.
Until I discovered #triathlon. I was completely paranoid about open ocean swimming. But at that time, my WANT to complete a triathlon outweighed my fear of the water.
Are you working through a fear that’s been holding you back? Let’s help one another! ❤️
