I learned to swim after being forced, coerced, lied to, etc. at age 13. I wrote a story about it I posted here once before, this discussion is a good time to post it again. It has had a negative effect on me in many ways and even though it stopped a long time ago, the legacy of it is still with me.
Here is my swimming story.
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The trouble began when I was young, I don’t know why, it just did. It was like things were fine one day, and it all collapsed the next. I’ll never figure it out, if there is a reason, but I know in my heart I was hurt by it, and the damages were long reaching.
I lived in a fairly normal home, with a big backyard, there were many times I played in that yard, happily, without a care, the way it should be. One day, that all changed, the yard went away when a swimming pool was put in. I missed the yard, no more place to play. For some strange reason, I was very uncomfortable around the water, but nobody seemed to care. There were occasional attempts to get me to swim, but they seldom went anywhere. Sometimes, they’d try to make me stay outside and get suntanned, or occasionally getting me to soak my feet in the water, but these were few and far between, and I was allowed to be me.
A year or so after the pool came along, we moved to a new home, with no pool. I really enjoyed my backyard, but this didn’t last long, a new pool was dug. There were again, a few attempts of to get me to swim, but I was left alone. When this was going on, there were no problems, I lived my life, other people lived theirs, and there were no problems.
It was the summer after 5th grade the real problems started. It began with my brother, fresh out of school on his way to the military, stopped in for a visit. One evening, while he was in the pool swimming, my mother told me he wanted to talk to me, so I went outside. He asked me if I was interested in swimming, and I said no. He then started rambling about how I had to learn, and even attempted offering me something, not specifying what, if I would do it. I still refused and went in. Later that night, I saw him an my mother talking in the kitchen, she immediately sent me to bed with him saying “You’re going in the wa-wa(his slang term for water) tomorrow” while grinning ear to ear. I couldn’t sleep, finally falling asleep around 4am or so.
The next morning, I got up, and everything seemed fine. Nothing was mentioned, so I thought maybe they had come to their senses. That afternoon, I was told by my brother it was “wa-wa time,” meaning I had to get into the pool. I refused, and he and I got into a big shouting match, I tried talking to my mother, she said things like “Andrew says you have to,” and even dug out a hand-me-down bathing suit for me to wear in the pool. She and my sister decided to go shopping while Andrew attempted to make me swim, with my mother telling me right before she left “if you’re not in that pool when I get back I’m going to spank you.” I couldn’t believe this, my own mother was blatantly turning against me and siding with my brother, who had in the past abused me. I wanted to believe she had been somehow talked into it and it wasn’t really her idea, but I don’t know for sure.
That afternoon was absolute hell for me. My first time in the pool was not a positive experience. It consisted primarily of my brother yelling at me and threatening me, dragging me into the deep end and attempting to sink me, and my already having a fear of the water to begin with didn’t make it any better. We argued with him screaming at me because I didn’t want to put my face in the water, telling me I needed to swim “to survive,” and saying things like “sissies and mama’s boys don’t swim.” This experience basically showed me I was justified for not wanting to be in the water. Afterwards, I thought this was over, but I was wrong, it was only beginning.
After my brother left, my summers became very unhappy. Whenever my sister decided to get in the pool, my mother’s new rule was I had to swim too, meaning, since I couldn’t swim or float, I would just wade in the shallow end. My sister learned to love this, because it gave her so much control over me. Whenever I was doing something I liked, my sister would decide it was time to swim so I would have to drop what I was doing. Sometimes it would be 2 or 3 times a day. Neither of them, nor my dad, cared how I felt about this. My mother would even say things like “in school when they find out you can’t swim, they’ll take you and throw you in the pool.” I knew this wasn’t true, because at the one school I attended which had a pool, my not knowing how to swim was not unknown nor did I try to hide it, and nobody cared. It was never an issue with anyone, nor would it ever have been, and even if it had, it was nobody else’s business but my own.
Other popular excuses for forced swimming were such things as “You have to get some sun on those legs,” or “you need to get exercise.” Others related to safety, which I also knew weren’t true because there were many instances in which my sister would get upset and storm into the house because I wouldn’t do anything she told me to do, I was required to stay outside, in the pool, alone, unsupervised. Part of my indoctrination to the world of swimming included being forced to read books about swimming repeatedly, all of which had a section on pool safety which stated people shouldn’t be left alone in the pool at all, and non-swimmers should be supervised when around the pool.
I was glad this summer was over, because once school started, swimming was over for a while. Of course, another summer would come, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. One evening, while nobody was around, my mother asked me if I wanted to have a swimming party for my 6th grade class, I said no, but the next day, learned from my teacher I was having one! This really hurt, because I was asked and my feelings were totally ignored. To me, this said that to my family, my feelings, opinions, desires, etc., meant absolutely nothing. Any other member of the family’s feelings would have been respected, but not mine. I didn’t swim that day, and it really irritated my parents. I won a small battle against my parents quest to turn me into a swimmer, but it was the only one. This was another summer of forced swimming at the hands of my sister, being fed the same excuses about swimming being important, suntans, etc. Another miserable summer.
The next summer was more of the same with a twist, another brother taught me to float. I hoped that once I learned to float, that would be the end of it, it wasn’t. There was more forced spending time in the pool, and organized swimming lessons. I was promised it would only be 8 lessons, and that once I had learned to swim, I would have a choice from that day forward. Both of these were lies of course, I ended up taking 16 lessons, and was still mandated to swim whenever my sister did. In fact, I had to swim when I “wasn’t doing anything,” and the only activity that was considered “doing anything” was swimming. My sister really loved the control it gave her over me, and of course, made my life miserable.
That was also the summer I had found a new interest I wanted to explore, electronics. I had begun a summer project of building a Heathkit, which I was really enjoying and learning a lot from. Every time I would go to work on it, it would be time to go swimming. I never understood why this was, what kind of parent would object to their child wanting to learn a new skill, one that could possibly provide a good income one day? I was told such things as “You need to balance yourself out,” “You need to get exercise,” and the weird one, “You need to get some sun on those legs.” At one point, I was even told “All that your brothers and sister ever had was brains, I don’t want you to have brains, I want you to have big muscles and a suntan.”
The most ludicrous of the lies was “I want you to swim so you’ll get big muscles and be able to knock them flat.” When I did have a fight with someone in school, my mother screamed at me for fighting in school, and when I told her she said this, she just looked at me like I was crazy. Another popular lie was “girls won’t like you if you don’t swim,” and “If you would swim, you would have more friends.” I wasn’t going to let people use me for a pool, that isn’t the way I am.
The next summer was even worse, I was punished for the whole summer, no music, radio, TV, etc., all I was allowed to do was wait for my sister to decide it’s time to go swimming, and I had to swim too. This really hurt me very much, spending a summer as my sister’s slave. She enjoyed having a slave, reminding me “You’re bad so you can only do what I say.” I spent my time being depressed, being my sister’s slave wasn’t the kind of life I wanted, I just wanted to be me. Whatever they attempted to achieve punishing me didn’t work, I knew it was all phony, just an excuse to get my swimming. They felt that denying me everything but swimming would make me love swimming, but it didn’t work, it only increased my hatred of it.
Basically, I had spent 4 summers being my sister’s slave, losing my activities, my life, etc. How does this benefit me? Denying me a chance to learn a skill like electronics, does that help me? What about my sister, does teaching her she has a slave help her?
It used to be we could live our own lives, but after swimming, that was taken away from me, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever gotten it back. Why forcing it on me was so important made no sense to me at all, in fact, the brother who was determined to force me to swim, and who started all of this, didn’t learn to swim until he was 17! My mother loves to remind me of this, but won’t answer the question “if he had a choice, why didn’t I?” Nobody ever interfered in what he, or anyone else in my family wanted to do, only me.
Today, I still don’t understand what the issue with swimming was. It wasn’t about exercise, because even though I engaged in other physical activities, I was told “Only swimming is exercise.” As for safety, making someone who doesn’t know how to swim stay in a pool alone with no supervision is not at all safe. Both of my parents are not sports fans, when I tried using this to get them to stop the mandated swimming, I was told “Swimming is not a sport.” Now, they still spread rumors of how I loved swimming and swam before I could walk, when the truth is I never went into a swimming pool until I was 11, didn’t learn to swim until I was 13, and hated it.
What I don’t understand the most is why it still bothers me. The last swimming incident was around 17 years ago or so, and I thought I had buried it all, but it’s recently returned to the surface. Would getting my parents to accept me as a non-swimmer make a difference, and if so how? If it wouldn’t make a difference, what do I do to deal with this, or will I ever deal with it? Will it just consume me until nothing is left? Everyday it haunts me, and I’m not sure how much more I can take, something has to give.
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This is my swimming nightmare.
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PrisonerSix
"I am not a number, I am a free man!"
17 Aug 2008, 3:54 pm
. although after that i got terrably sea sick and couldn't eat my pasta! but i recovered pretty quickly 
