The Pool
His arm cut through the water and pulled underneath him. A breath, then his head rolled in unison with his neck and shoulder back into the water. He had forgotten how much he loved swimming. It had been years since heâd been swimming the last time. Since then, he had had a mental block of sorts when it came to finding a place to swim. Too far, too complicated, had to join a club, these excuses and others had been his way out from having to try any harder. As he glided through the water, he couldnât believe he had waited so long to experience the feeling again.
Everything from the smell of the pool facilities to the sights and sounds delighted him. A pool was, quite literally, a small oasis away from the troubles of daily life. This was his time to disengage and think of nothing other than putting one arm in front of the other and slicing his feet up and down. The enjoyment he drew from swimming, as he was reminded now, felt almost illegal, as if swimming were some sort of drug. As if the cops were about to run in shouting for him to get out.
He could feel his heartbeat speed up as he swam the twenty-five meter distance over and over again. Out of shape, he had to stop after almost every half-lap, but that didnât matter. He was finally back, thanks to a few google searches for pools in the city and a ten-minute walk to the nearest one. Google searches that he had waited four years to make.
He had noticed that often in his life it was the seemingly smallest obstacles that grew ever larger, becoming ever more unrelenting the longer he did not face them. That was his poor coping strategy. Just run away. Hide. Possess a sort of perverse hope that the obstacles will somehow clear themselves.
He knew this was not how the world worked, nor was it how his brain worked. Yet he rarely ever strayed from this flawed pattern of behavior. His brain made sure to remind him, daily, that his hiding was not working, that a phone call needed to be made, a difficult conversation had. And daily he refused, he attempted to bury himself in anything and everything to forget, to drown out the persistent nagging in his mind. He wondered if he was the only one who spent a large part of their existence just trying to shut his mind up. He doubted it. In fact, he knew he wasnât the only one, yet somehow this fact did not comfort him as much as it used to.
Perhaps some of his odd patterns had been formed in childhood. Mental health had always been an absolute nonstarter when he was growing up. It was clear in retrospect that his mother had suffered, and still suffered, under the burden of a darkened mind. This was due in large part to childhood trauma that she had never, at least not that he knew of, sought help for.
The closest his family had come to discussing mental health was when his Dad had made references to somebody âneeding to be in the looney-binâ and other one-liners tinged with disdain. Or his mom, despite the storm in her mind, referring to anybody in the neighborhood who had made the mistake of being open about their mental health, as âmentally ill.â Even now he wouldnât dare discuss the topic of mental health with them. Maybe they would surprise him and maybe he was missing out, but he had no indications that his parents had changed in this regard.
This was not an indictment of his parents. They did the best they could with the knowledge and upbringing they had. As derogatorily as mental health had been discussed when he was a child, he was absolutely sure it was either not talked about at all, or in an even worse manner when his parents were children. As far as he understood, they had then gotten married almost directly after becoming adults, his Mom nineteen, his Dad twenty-one, with almost no time in-between for self-discovery and exploration of and exposure to viewpoints at odds with their own.
Thus he found himself hiding from his mind in a swimming pool pulling himself back and forth. He was halfway through his laps, after which heâd have to leave the comforting blanket of water drowning out his thoughts. For now though, he wasnât worried about what came next. He wasnât worried about anything at all. His mind was temporarily silenced.