Sink or Swim

Yesterday I went swimming. A simple enough statement, but a loaded one, as I have not been to the pool in nearly three months. A swimmer since the age of 11, I have rarely (if ever) spent this much time away from the water.  Though it's early in my recovery, I had been meditating on Saturday night and my body called out to my head - let's get wet! So I paid attention and felt wonderful the next day in that warm pool, the sunlight streaming through the window and creating vividly bright bubbles behind my neighbor's feet.

Swimming is part of my identity, a constant throughout turbulent years of teens and twenties, through pregnancy and childrearing, through all other sports addictions. To be away from the pool for three months sent a sort of signal to my mind and body that the circumstances were truly irregular. Hopefully my first return visit sent positive signals that recovery has begun.

As I think about swimming, I realize that my therapist put the thought back into my mind several weeks ago. She said, "picture yourself in the water. Sometimes you can float with no effort, but sometimes you splash and whale away, putting forth so much energy and not able to stay on top of things."  She noted that I was doing the latter, and should aim for "floating" instead.  The analogy seemed especially apt though she did not know about my swimming background.

I mostly floated yesterday, stopping at each wall to breathe and not risking my head to flip turns. But I got wet, and obeyed my husband's call to me as I went out the door, "just don't drown," so I count it as a success.