How I became a non-swimmer

I wanted to write this blog as so many people have been so lovely and supportive about a topic I thought would be really embarrassing and has haunted me my entire life.

I figured if I wrote this blog and one other person read it and found some help, then it was a job well done…so here goes.

I have been for pretty much for all of my 39 years a non swimmer. No, hold that thought that makes me sound like someone who just doesn’t swim, cause they do not want to. Like choosing to be a non smoker, non drinker……it is not like that at all.

I am petrified of water or more correctly swimming pools. The smell of chlorine, the coldness, the feeling of it in your hair, on your skin, up your nose. Sharing a bath with people i don’t know and quite frankly don’t want to be near naked with. The echo noise, the tiles, the smell, the smell, THE SMELL!

It can’t have always been like this. I know I acquired this fear somewhere along the way. Apparently I was chucked in the deep end as a 2 year old by my well meaning granny as this was the best way to teach children to swim. I don’t remember this but it didn’t work….I cant swim.

What I do remember is that in first year of high school, a particularly vicious PE teacher lined us all up in order of height along the side of the swimming pool and told us to jump in and swim across. Me, being 5’7″ from the age of 11 and one of the taller members of the class (boys and girls) was faced with a slog across the deep end. I knew it wouldn’t end well but I remember thinking surely if I just get in and thrash across ill be fine…so in I jumped.

It didn’t end well I ended up trapped on the bottom of the pool and the lovely teacher sent in the best looking boy in the class to rescue me while I coughed, spluttered and snottered my way to the side of the pool as she commented “this is why we learn to swim.”

From that moment I have come up with every excuse under the sun to get out of swimming. I was blessed with excema which got me out of any further school lessons. When my group of friends all started going to the Paisley Lagoon on a Friday night, I found new friends so I didn’t have to go (fairly extreme but it worked!). I managed to have weekend jobs by the time my husband was taking the kids so I always got out of it. It has been 30 years of being devious and clever but not fun.
I always felt like I was missing out. I desperately wanted to go to the lagoon with friends but there was no way I could put myself through that. I wanted to go on family swims when the kids were babies but what if they picked up my fear, I could never forgive myself for that. So it was easy. I just didn’t go. I was a non-swimmer, always would be and that was that.

So, what changed then? Well for the last few years we have had family holidays abroad. Nice hot places with nice pools. You have probably seen the photos on Facebook. Lots of lovely pictures of my kids and my husband in the pool. Lots of pictures taken by me, the official holiday photographer who has no photos taken of her in the pool cause she hardly got in it. Then on a girls holiday in Marbella it was blistering hot and my two friends got into the lovely, cool pool and swam away. I just felt a complete rush of jealousy. I wanted to get in swim across, swim under, float on my back, on my front….be cool. What was stopping me?

I had watched the Paralympics. blind people, athletes with one arm, one leg, no arms… they could swim. There was absolutely no medical reason why I couldn’t swim.

I had finally had enough of being a non-swimmer….something had to be done!

speedo goggles are the best!