Learning to Swim as an Adult Feels Like Coming Home

But also as I got older, the years of being careless with my body began to take their toll. Old injuries I hadn’t seen a physician for (so I could avoid the unpleasant experience of being trans on the doctor’s office) caught as much as me, and so did the family tendency toward joint problems, the arthritis, the low back pain, the busted knees. On the day I turned 48, I made a decision once and for all to attempt to deal with my body slightly higher and joined a gym where—on my first day, for my birthday—I attempted too hard to maintain my heart rate within the “orange zone” and immediately tore my meniscus on the treadmill.

Turns out, saying “hearken to your body” to a middle-aged trans man who has been at war together with his body for nearly 40 years doesn’t work; I had been steadfastly ignoring my body for many years since it was the one way I could get through life, and all those chickens had began coming home to roost. I used to be out of form and in constant pain, limping as I walked our patient dog, sitting on the sidelines while my kids played, counting the minutes in agony once I needed to stand on line on the post office or the bank, and sometimes spending the day in bed loopy and fogged out on painkillers when the barometric pressure modified an excessive amount of.

My doctor suggested swimming.

My immediate, bodily response was “definitely no.” But within the weeks that followed, struggling through a humid and chilly fall on the prairies, stiff and sore and cold and losing day after day of labor and parenting responsibilities to pain (and, eventually, depression) I began to wonder why not? My scars had faded lots, and the previous summer I’d had them tattooed over with tiny tropical flowers; I looked more like I’d been injured a protracted, very long time ago than like I’d had chest masculinization surgery. I had a swimsuit again, a baggy, navy blue, very situation that had held up during many birthday parties and leisure swims. Something in me shifted, away from my old pain, pointing at my recent life. I used to be married, I had kids, I had a profession—things I desired to live for, reasons to not only lumber along in constant discomfort and hope it wouldn’t get an excessive amount of worse. On a Monday, while my husband was at work and my children were in class and I very much hoped everyone else was doing the identical, I pulled out a towel and my retro trunks and went to the pool.

The first day, I swam the world’s slowest 250 meters of breaststroke, soaked in the recent tub until my knee stopped throbbing, and went home in my wet trunks, skipping the showers and the looks I feared. The next day, I did it again, someway even slower, and rested in the recent water for even longer. Over the next month, I made myself keep going back, thrashing forwards and backwards within the slow lane with the senior residents, increasing my distance by 50 meters every week. I finished the world’s slowest 300 meters, and, by the top of the month, the world’s slowest 400 meters, with 4 extremely splashy lengths of front crawl in the combination. But I used to be doing it. I sent my friends grimacing post-workout pool selfies for accountability, and their support kept me happening days that I used to be absolutely Not Interested in going back within the water.