Today at the lake…I swam for 15 minutes, I floated on my back, and I tested out new swim booties. I hope I also inspired two little kids to start thinking that most obstacles are not that big. There is usually a way around them.
The water was nice and flat. 45 degrees F. Maybe 45 F air. I was the only one in the lake as far as I could see. At a bit after 4pm, there was enough daylight left since sunset is usually around 4:30pm. M took me to the lake and was my spotter. I like it when she takes me because she makes sure I don’t lose my gear after my swim, she takes the photos and videos, and she drives. All I have to do is swim. And free myself from my wetsuit after, which is really hard. The rubber is so tight around my ankles, and I have huge feet. Anyway, I’m so grateful for M, my in-home care aide, because she helps me do the things I need to do to feel better.
When she started working for me a year ago, I assumed she would clean my house and get my groceries. I didn’t know that she would keep me alive. Serious depression and PTSD, plus S.A.D., plus the isolation of COVID for an extrovert add up to disaster. I am 100% sure I would not be alive today if not for her twice-a-week visits. At first we went for walks because I was too embarrassed for her to see the inside of my crazy home. It took four months for me to let her in, I think. Or four weeks. I can’t remember, but she reminded me of that a few days ago. Then we started trying to make some sense of my disaster of a house. We tried getting me to open my mail. She succeeded in getting me to bathe once a week. She takes out the garbage and recycling. She runs errands for me. Little things that are too overwhelming and too exhausting for me.
Her companionship has been invaluable. We have counted buns for almost a year! I am walking way better and mostly use the walker because I have to sit when I get the weird rapid heart rate things. And the walker does a lot to reduce cognitive load. The support is there, so I don’t have to worry about tripping or falling. Energy better spent on conversation and scanning lawns for buns. Back in July, with pools still closed, I started going to the lake by my house. And that was that. M’s main job now is getting me to a lake on the weekends or on one weekend day just before sunset. On a week night, when she comes at night, we walk.
Today, while I wrestled my way into my wetsuit, a man and his two very young kids passed by. They stopped to talk. I don’t remember who said “hi” first, but I told them I was getting ready to go into the water and asked the kids if they wanted to watch. They did. I told them how the suit is kind of magic and blocks the cold. I showed them my webbed swimming gloves (they liked those, kindy Spidey.) So, it’s not that big a deal to swim in cold water because I wear what I need to in order to be warm. I think they were intrigued by the gear and maybe also thought I looked a bit insane. I finally got everything on, including my new 5mm booties (I left my wool socks on underneath), and waddled down to the beach with the kids trailing me. They giggled a little while I entered the water. I walked straight into the deeper water, saying “I can’t even feel the cold.”
The sky was slowly shifting to dark blue, with pink-purple streaks that were reflected in the water. I wish I could take a photo that would allow others to see things the way I did. I think with enough $ there are cameras that could help me with that. Their dad had asked me what I was going to do. Was I going to swim across the lake? (Um, hell no, but thanks for thinking I could.) I told him I wasn’t sure but probably would just swim back and forth between two poles because I didn’t have much time and it would be a good way to stay close to the shallow water if I got too tired. I was trying to break things down into little bites for the kids so they could learn that there are many little steps to doing something that might seem big and out of reach. I remember when I was a little kid and we would drive to another state to visit the grandparents. I was always passed out in the wayback, thinking, “how the F do they know where to drive?” I probably asked them, but it remained a huge mystery to me. Nobody every told me what the F was going on. So I like to explain things to kids, and they can ask me anything they want. I will try my best to tell it in a way that makes sense to them.
I get to relax in the water, but I also have to stay tuned in, which is quite challenging for me. On or off is easier. My brain is such a mess. nothing sticks. i can’t find toeholds. After my neuropsych tests a year ago, my doctor told me how I was in the 2nd percentile for processing…and other bad news. Then he put down the test results, and said, “how the hell did you make it through grad school?” I asked, “which part, my brain not working or breaking my leg into bits and living in care centers for more than four months and using a wheelchair for a year and never sleeping because I kept dreaming the sound of my leg breaking in two and having to move twice?” One can be verbal and an extrovert and sound like she knows what she’s talking about and actually not be able to take in information. Or have any short-term memory. Or grasp for executive functioning skills during not too complex tasks. Or walk into a room ten or more times a day and not remember why…
Almost everything is a like a wave crashing into my face and body (whoa, I just realzied that that was the image I had in my weird life-slowed-down-dream-like-moment of my accident–I was separate from the action, and a huge wave came over me, and I could hear a voice saying, “I’m broken, I’m broken.” ), leaving me stunned, confused, overwhelmed…..What? What? How to take it in? Don’t ask me to pick one. Just give me one. You decide.
It’s probably too much for this neverending post, but it’s whole extra level of disability on top of my brain not working in other ways from the mental health stuff. Plus the insanely fatiguing other chronic stuff. Not much left for a gal to do but jump into a lake, and it better be cold enough to shock me awake so I don’t drown. that first contact when the water burns my face is brutal, but necessary. it tells my arms and legs to move.
today I had to pull up three or four times before I could stay in the water and glide along with my odd, uneven breast stroke and dorky snorkel. Every time I pulled up I was also feeling the burn on the back of my neck/base of skull. I hate that. And, like every time, my body acclimates quickly, and it goes away if I stay in the water. I tried to swim between two poles parallel to the beach. I was ok going north, but when I swam in the other direction I ended up east, which seems really funny to me when the water pushes west.
I kept forgetting to “sight” (I think I’ve been spelling it “site” because in my messed up brain I have an impossible time just coming up with words, much less spelling them when there are options and different meanings.) then my snorkel wasn’t working. When I start fussing it’s time to get out. I tried throwing some crawl strokes in but wasn’t able to do much of that. It made me breathe so much harder. I feel like a loser that I can do breast stroke but not crawl. Then again, I have met so many women in the lake who also have health issues and injuries. I’m not the only one who has a bad shoulder and adapts with a quirky type of breast stroke. We all find our own ways of moving through the water or moving in place in the water. Just get in the water. That’s the thing. Get in, then see what happens.
I was surprised that the man and his two kids watched me for quite awhile. So nice of them. I was finally sighting and could barely see them moving along the walking path next to the beach. It was so much darker, so they were just dark blobs with arms moving away from me. He waved to me. I waved back. I love that. I need the job of talking to people in the park and giving kids rides on my floaty unicorn. I can work for one hour. I will need to be paid $300-400/hour. And I can work every other day. No, $500/hour.
I wanted to keep swimming because I never know how many days it will take until I can have M bring me to the lake or I can find another woman swim buddy. At the same time, I knew it was better to stop, so I did. I figured I had been in about 15 minutes, which ended up correct. I had tested the 5mm booties. Not sure they are as effective as I expected, but I think they are warmer than my other water socks. they were $20! a lot for me. but I can’t have my feet freezing.
There is so much to learn. Every time I’m in the water I learn something new about the water, about my body, about my swim buddies. I get to see the lights come on in all the houses along the shore. Excpet I don’t…..I just look up at some point and reazlie they’re on. I did take the time to pull my buoy under my neck (and then I grab behind each side of my head to hold the buoy in place) and float for a minute. Floating is the best. I couldn’t do it for very long today, but I was glad I remembered to do it. I always want to be in touch with the last time I floated.
As I was trying to remove the wet gear and get into dry gear, I struck up a conversation with a woman walker. She is interested in swimming with me, but not for a couple months because she’s having surgery. She texted me her contact info, so I will put a date on the calendar to check in with her.
The thing about swimming in the cold is that you only feel the cold OUTSIDE the water. I try to change as quickly as possible, which means I don’t give two poops who might see my melons or my bum cheeks. Tonight I was sitting on a blanket, bare nekked from waist down, while a lovely family of old people all using canes shuffled past us. I half covered up with a towel on my lap, but also kept trying to put on my pants, vibing them the universal thought for “say hi and keep your eyes averted.”
Ok. I have to go to bed. Just FYI, I have no short-term memory and my lake outing posts are complete brain dumps. I have no idea what I have told you or how many times I might have told you the same things about myself. It’s all an experiment. Can I find a way to write? Can I get comfortable talking about mental health stuff? Cause I’m going batty with the isolation and my doctors aren’t helping me. Swimming seems to help. And I feel like I want people to know what it’s like. We need to de-stigmatize mental health. Ok. Sorry if you read this all yesterday or something. More of hte same soon….Peace and love
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