The Fear of Water

I began to learn how to swim in late November of 2024, so just about 2 months ago. When I tell this to people who’ve known how to swim since they were kids, they’re often quite shocked.

“You’re 29 and you still don’t know how to swim?”

The thing is, I’ve had a deeply rooted fear of water since I was very young. When I was about 4 or 5 years old, I drowned in a massive bucket of water. I was quite naughty as a kid (as I’m told) so when left unattended, I could be expected to sprint in any inconceivable direction. This time around, I ran to another room where the ladies of my family would do laundry. There was a massive bucket of water, twice my height, which was used to wash clothes. The coin I was playing with fell into the bucket and I somehow managed to climb right into it. By the time one of my aunties found me, I had to be rushed to the emergency unit since my body had turned a light shade of blue. My parents were hit particularly hard since I was their first born and standing in the lobby of the emergency room waiting to hear back on whether I survived at the age of 4, can make one seriously doubt their skills as a parent.

For me, I didn’t remember any of this, however, it seems as though my subconscious mind remembered it all too well, tucking away this fear until my next encounter with water.

When I was 18, one of my school friend’s threw a pool party for her 18th birthday. I was beyond excited, having never attended a pool party before then. I was mostly hanging out with my girlfriends by the poolside. I don’t remember how I ended up in the middle of the pool, which wasn’t very deep but deep enough to swallow a 5 feet human being (ie. me). My feet couldn’t touch the ground and I had no idea how to make it back to the poolside. I was flapping my hands crazily in the middle of the pool but I think to the world outside, it looked less like an emergency, and more like I was enjoying the party THAT much that my hands were flapping like crazy to the beat. I just remember sheer panic at this stage, which for those of you like me who are not acquainted with the ways of the aquatic world, only makes matters worse. As I was inching closer to accepting a life well lived for 18 years, by the universe’s grace, one of my really tall friends swooped right in and pulled me out.

Sahiba, you saved my life that day. If I didn’t thank you enough then, I thank you now, for writing this piece, would not have been possible if you hadn’t pulled me out of that god damn pool.

Pretty sure by this time, water had gained a really bad reputation in my subconscious.

I tried learning how to swim a couple of times so water could have a real shot at impressing my subconscious but it never worked. The thing is, it was not so much about the physical skills but all about the mental fear which was so deeply rooted and the roots had only become stronger since the pool party incident.

So this summer, I decided, to take up Project Fear. Why participate in those crazy stunt shows on TV when you could make your life a stunt show?

Naturally, the first couple of lessons were just sheer panic. Poor water would be at a depth of 4ft and the body would begin to panic. After a couple of those panic episodes, I gave my body a few eye rolls and questioned,

“Girl! You’re at 4ft. The worst that could happen is that you stand up. Tell me what I’m missing here?”

If only it was that easy. I began to go home and practice visualising myself in water. I would visualise myself swimming calmly through the water. I also began swimming a few times a week to continue practicing what I was taught in my lessons, as well as, give my mind & body enough time to get used to the calmer state of mind I wanted to bring forth.

Steadily, I began to swim to the deeper end of the pool. The panic was quite dramatic at first here, but then, visualising myself every day swimming in the depths of water, with calm & ease, actually began to drip feed itself into my reality. I began to swim to the deep ends.

There was a voice inside my head always saying, “Work on fear very gently. Take your time, scrap it piece by piece.”

My usual self is VERY excited for new things and adventures so naturally when I began to swim a little bit, my urge was to push myself so this voice really kept my efforts balanced so I didn’t chew more than I could swallow. One of the days, my instructor gave me an exercise to let myself sink at 6ft depth, where my panic was most pronounced, until my feet could touch the water and jump to the surface. This would make me see that even if I sank, I could jump and make my way back to the surface.

I didn’t think this was going to be so difficult. The moment I’d let myself go and be hung in the water midway before I sank completely, my fear would kick in, in the form of panic, and I would have to rush to the surface again. I kept practicing this because my logical mind could see how I would survive, so it was merely the matter of reconditioning my response to the situation.

I began preparing myself mentally before I sank, telling myself, “The water holds you. You are safe in it’s arms.” and it helped me so much.

The work of reconditioning your fear is not at all easy. I go back to the same spot every day, knowing I survived yesterday, dealing with my fear of drowning yet again, today. So I figure I just have to keep combining my physical movement with the right mental state until it becomes etched as my new memory.

The old memory which is conditioned by fear and causes me to panic will very slowly and steadily begin to fade until the new memory which is conditioned by calmness is the dominant one.

I go to the pool nearly 3–5 times a week. This work has been one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever undertaken. I swim to the deeper ends of the pool, then try to sink to the bottom with a calm mind, greet my panic underwater which causes me (mostly) to rush to the surface for air, or a couple of times if I’m lucky, I catch it in my throat, and stay underwater.

To be honest, it is one of the most beautiful feelings I’ve felt as a human being, to feel my panic rise inside of me and catching it in my throat, long enough for it to witness a couple of moments of peace in a place it so fears.

When I dip underwater with a state of calmness (which usually comes forth after a deep breath or a mental self-talk), I see so many human bodies move in a flow with water, almost being carried by it, which gives me so much hope and motivation to keep coming back to the pool that was the place I feared the most.

I see this pair of father and son, who swim in the depths like fish. The son (who must be 4 or 5 years old) loves showing his dad the tricks his dad taught him. They both swim together, one goes underwater, the other swims on the surface. Both their bodies meet and melt into each other as they keep playing, doing flips underwater and sometimes swimming next to each other. I purposely stay underwater for long so I can see their bodies in a state of play, and learn a thing or two about swimming. The dad teaches me how to take long strokes gently while the son teaches me how to be in a state of play in water.

I tried letting them know today how much I loved watching them in the pool when the dad blurts out to me,

“Sorry sorry I don’t english!”

Fair enough, maybe some things aren’t meant to be said, but just felt.

I am still working on my freestyle and backstrokes, so I can’t say with confidence I can swim, but I can say that as of today, I’m FUCKING excited to go to the pool.

Well, I wanted to end this piece, like all my pieces, with a quote. Tom, a swimmer who feared the hell out of water 6 months ago, gave me this advice today.

“Don’t eat one week’s worth of food in one day!” which I should have seen coming when he told me to only focus on the drill of four strokes with one inhale and to refine it first before I moved on to anything else, and I began to combine it with a couple of other things I was learning.

This lesson has come in hot and strong in a lot of areas of my life. Since I couldn’t find this in the form of an official quote anywhere, I wanted to end this with another one that captures the essence of the art of taking it slow.

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished” Lao Tzu