Water bugs
rehabbing a diseased body in the pool
In my head, 200 meters is 1/4th of a warmup, but this is not a useful perspective for my current state. Today, 200 meters is my goal. I believe in achievable goals and I know I can swim 200 meters.
I do not want to swim today, but that has little to do with swimming.
I like to swim. I want to swim. I’m even kind of good at swimming, and it feels nice to be good at things.
What I do not want is to confront my capabilities.
I’m not sure what my capabilities are or where my limit might be. My autoimmune disease keeps getting in the way of finding it.
I try to do a yoga class, and I have to ease out of downward dog because the disease is in my hands and wrists. Child’s pose isn’t much better because it’s in my hips, too. I try to hike, and I have to sit on a rock because it’s in my feet. I try to walk down a single flight of stairs and I have to hand off my son so that I can grasp the handrail, willing my knees to not give out, wincing on every step. It’s in my knees worst of all.
This messes with my head. I can’t do anything, that’s what it feels like sometimes. Or I can, but it will hurt the entire time, and I won’t be able to walk afterward.
My immune system thinks my joints should be destroyed, that’s the problem. Gravity, that’s the problem. The land is too hard, that’s the problem.
But the water is not too hard.
I do all the things that prevent me from making excuses.
I shave my legs. I put my swimsuit on when I get up in the morning. I pack my goggles, my cap. I log onto my parks and rec account to see if my pre-loaded swim card has expired. It has expired, but I pretend I didn’t notice. I put a block on my calendar. I pack a nice face wash and a nice moisturizer so that I have something to look forward to in the slightly manky locker room.
I think about how many times I’ve done this ritual, packing goggles and a towel and a change of clothes.
I think about how 25 years ago all the cool girls packed blazin’ blueberry in their swim bags. I had the roll-on glitter and never left the locker room without a swipe on my cheeks. I send a silent wish to Bath & Body Works to bring it back. (Please!!)
The person at the front desk tells me my swim card is expired, but that I’m within the grace period, so it’s ok. I ask her when the grace period ends. She doesn’t know.
In the locker room, there are two ladies in their 70s, fully naked. A pool locker room always has naked ladies in their 70s. One opens six lockers before she finds her stuff.
“Getting old means I never remember where I put my clothes,” she says. “Or maybe I’m so old I’ll go home in somebody else’s clothes.”
“I’m not that old,” her companion says.
“I’ve done that,” I tell the naked ladies. “Once I went home from yoga in someone else’s jacket.”
It’s true, the yoga studio called me an hour later, miffed. In my defense everyone in NYC wore a variation of the same black Uniqlo puffer and I just grabbed the wrong one. I brought it back the same day and swapped it for mine. The yoga studio pretended not to believe that it was an honest mistake, despite our jackets looking identical. I never went back.
I laugh about this with the naked ladies, and they tell me to have a good swim.
I do have a good swim.
The first 200 meters fly by. I surpass my goal without stopping. I pause to take a video, to document a small win, to let myself feel proud, to honor that.
I keep going.
Backstroke feels best on my shoulders — the disease is in my shoulders, too — so I focus on that. It’s always been my worst stroke and I feel myself wobbling to the right. I correct the wobble, shore up my form. It takes me 5 strokes to reach the wall from the flags. My flip turn is strong. I throw in a few laps of free and breaststroke, but not butterfly, I’m not a masochist.
In the end I swim 600 meters. My stamina holds.
I could do more, except I told myself I’d stop when my joints started to throb and my neck is hurting. (The disease is in my neck, too.)
I think about how I used to race 500 meters, how it was my best event, how I loved the feeling of cruise control after the first 100 or so. I remind myself that was 20 years ago. I chide myself, feeling like a washed up quarterback talking about state champs on a date, decades later. Get over it, I tell myself.
Instead I decide it’s a gift to swim easily and happily after the onset of a major, incurable, debilitating illness. How special it is to find joy in movement when everything else feels so hard on my body.
I think about how much my son loves the water. He’s a born water bug, just like me.
I took him to the pool for the first time recently. He spent more than an hour splashing and happy-shrieking, an eternity for a 6-month-old. He cried when I made him leave, and got excited when we returned the next weekend. I couldn’t stop grinning. His joy for the water reactivated mine.
My diseased and stiff and painful body feels different after 600 meters.
I have more space, more range of motion. I’m still having trouble walking, but I think that might lessen tomorrow.
An underlying body ick, like the kind you get with the flu, is starting to sink in. I’ve come to learn that the flu feeling is unavoidable and it is a sign of progress. It feels like I’m flushing the disease out of my joints and it needs to rush around my body for a while, making me feel sick in a different way, before I can feel better. It sucks, but it’s better than debilitating pain, especially if it means I’m making real progress.
I want to live in a body that feels capable, even if capability has a new definition.
I may never again fly on the trapeze rig in my backyard. I love trapeze, but it requires a strong grip, and the disease is in my hands and I can’t grip anymore. I can’t open a salsa jar, much hang from a steel bar 15 feet in the air. I feel sad about this.
I may never run another half marathon. This, I’m not so sad about. I didn’t like running much in the first place, but in my 20s it felt like everybody was either at the bar or at run club. I’m not much of a drinker, so I chose run club. I do not miss run club.
I can swim, though. I can’t swim fast, but I can swim happy.
I’m living in a body that doesn’t feel like mine, but at least I can swim.
I can be a future-70-year-old-naked-lady, laughing in the locker room about losing your clothes, coming to the pool to feel like myself again.