The fake swimmer

"You have to enjoy being in the water."

Yu Gan tugged on the thin shoulder straps of his swimsuit, squatted down and immersed himself in the water that had been silent all night. The moment she stretched her legs in, she saw the sequins on her left toes briefly explode in the stirred up water.

Another week without swimming, another all-too-familiar uneasiness. She stood firm in the water and gently swayed her arms and calves to help her skin adapt to the coolness of the water more quickly. But she knew that by this time, the arrector pili muscles had begun to contract and tremble, and the stimulation gradually enveloped her upper arms and thighs, just like when she heard her favorite music. Taking a deep breath, she faced the horizontal edge of the shallow water area, stepped back three or four meters, bent her knees, and heard the words of the swimming instructor from unknown number in her ears.

But for Yu Gan, looking for enjoyment in the swimming pool is like looking for a miracle. This was true in the first three years of learning to swim, and it is also true in the first thirty minutes after every time he enters the water. Countless days of struggling in the water have honed her patience with herself, and also taught her to gradually learn to distract herself and observe her body and the fear in it.

She thought she was afraid of losing her breath. The moment her head was buried in the water, the choice of breathing and survival was taken away. She could not think or control the stiff muscles in her body, and could only struggle in a futile panic. The fear of losing control eventually turns into losing control. Yu Gan felt that this fear of annihilation was the water torture transformed by her brain. She hated not being able to control her thoughts, and hated the fact that her weak limbs were twisted into clumsy and ugly postures in the water driven by these thoughts, and her reason and dignity were swallowed up by the water.

Yu Gan thought so for a long time. But fortunately, my mother is always by my side as a teaching assistant. In front of the people I love, reason and dignity are not that important. Over time, practicing fear day after day became more and more tolerable. Probably because he refused to admit defeat, Yu Gan tried desperately to tell himself: breathing is not necessary for the body all the time, and there are always gaps between exhalations and inhalations. When she finally put aside the fear of not being able to breathe for the time being, through the water vapor on her swimming goggles, Yu Gan realized for the first time that the sun shining on the bottom of the pool looked so beautiful.

From then on, swimming for Yu Gan was more like a challenge that the psychiatrist encouraged the patient to do, asking her to find the gentle waves that once brushed her back in the swimming pool. She began to like this process and began to enjoy the tired but stable feeling after slowly convincing herself to let go of her fear and obsession. She knew that this was the shape of confidence that she had touched with her own hands.

Perhaps the angle of his head entering the water was wrong after taking a breath, and the liquid suddenly rushed into his nasal cavity. Yu Gan hurriedly stood up from the water, his heart beating rapidly. She stood in the water, as if she had been thrown to the shore, and her emotions were densely mixed. In addition to fright and frustration, there was also a little bit of grievance. She pressed her chest a little harder, hoping to squeeze some sense of security out of her chest. Is it because of the back and forth? Or did she bring her fear from the shore into the water?

Thinking of this, she discovered that all fears have the same shape, just like love.

Note: The name "Yu Gan" was stolen from Han Song's "Emergency Contact Person", "Hong Kong Literature" December 2023, Issue 468