Anna used to be a runner but now she only swam. She swam three times a week. She used to run three times a week, too, which landed her around a point zero, nervous energy wise. She was hoping swimming might do the same except she only knew breaststroke, which wasn’t so great for pounding out anxiety. Front crawl might have worked but she couldn’t figure out when to breathe. She’d also tried butterfly, but it seemed so fundamentally inefficient: expending the most amount of energy to do something in the slowest amount of time. Instead she waded expansively through the water; moving like she was awaiting the embrace of a dog that was happy to see her, or inviting the waiting staff to join her for a drink.
The pool was an old-fashioned one, with separate baths for men and women, plus a mixed bath. She swam in the mixed bath because she wasn’t fucking hysterical. Individual changing rooms lined the sides of the pool. They had heavy wooden doors, which covered you from neck to shin, topped with candy striped curtains. You had to be careful not to squat. She liked the changing rooms, with their cold Victorian tiles and forgivingly eroded mirrors. Sometimes she would find it hard to step outside them, her limbs heavy with disinclination. She would sit on the little bench, her clothes packed inside her handbag, her socks wet, already, and she wouldn’t be able to move.
In those moments she took the opportunity to look up on her phone other things that might ease her anxiety. She would Google things that might be making her more anxious: caffeine, Instagram. She would Google things that might make her less anxious: double cleansing or more ostensibly feminist porn. Sometimes she would hold her phone to her ear to listen to a meditation podcast: a podcast that always began by requesting she smooth out her forehead, which was like a hard-to-iron-fabric, once she’d flattened out one part, another bit had bunched up again. She wondered if it was the smoothness of swimming she craved.
In the swimming pool, she did what she called interval training, borrowed from when she ran. Interval training was where you would sprint for a bit and then walk for a bit. It was supposed to increase stamina. In her swimming version, after each slow lap she rewarded herself with a long rest, watching her legs bloat inelegantly beneath the water. Despite what she considered the recent total decrepitation of her body and face, during these rests, men would try to talk to her. They would say things like: “nice day for it”; or: “that’s a pretty swimsuit”. She was grateful for their attention, and only slightly afraid.
In the pool she would swim for as long as she could bear, and then she would be back in the changing rooms, often the same stall; her body damp beneath her clothes, staring at the door. She started taking a book with her, so she had something to read. Once she made a pillow out of her sweatshirt and a blanket out of her towel, lay across the wooden bench and catnapped for an hour. “It’s okay to rest,” the podcast urged. “Whatever you feel is completely fine for you.”
When Anna was a runner she used to worry a lot about getting murdered. I hope I don’t get murdered, she used to think, before going for a run. When she got back from a run she thought: well I’m glad I wasn’t murdered. Sometimes her thoughts could be a performance. In the swimming pool she only worried about suddenly and violently menstruating, or one of her breasts popping out. But in these scenarios, she was not the victim. And in her little stall she had space for those thoughts: the real ones, the ones that were just for her. Listening to her podcast, she scanned the porcelain tiles: the smile of a toenail come loose from a toe, a dark hair tangled like an ampersand. The changing room was full of assurances.
One of the men in the swimming pool was talking to her more regularly now. He was a lifeguard and he would say things like “you need to lift your head higher and keep your shoulders level so that you can breathe”; or: “are you okay?” Sometimes he would tell her when a swimming session was over, his uniform plimsolls level with her face. She would push herself away from the side of the pool, floating backwards. “What if I don’t want to?” she would reply, and pout. Could she be cute anymore? Was that something she could get away with? Could she move to South East Asia and teach English as a foreign language? Did it matter?
The meditation podcast told her all things were possible: whatever you feel is completely fine for you. When she ran she used to listen to things she could also dance to: Prince, Fleetwood Mac, Len. The venn diagram of running and dancing produced a fat, pinched oval of commonality. She wondered what swimming overlapped with: it’s tedious back and forth.
One evening after the lifeguard had informed her of the end of the swimming session and asked if she would vacate the pool, she did so, hurrying to her favoured stall, removing her swimsuit and putting on her everyday clothes. The same lethargy came over her, compacted by the lifeguard and the podcast: one questioning whether she was okay, the other affirming that she was. And when the lifeguard, or one of the other lifeguards, called to make sure everyone had gone, to their homes or their dinner plans or whatever else people did after an evening spent swimming, she remained silent, her legs crossed up on top of the wooden bench, the door left ajar.
The swimming pool was dark at night, with occasional ponds of light near the windows. Anna left her stall only to use the bathroom, her feet bare against the cold tiles. She was not able to sleep until the very early hours of the morning, but it was a good sleep: the sort of sleep you are only capable of once you have progressively relaxed every muscle in your body, while mindfully deepening your breathing.
She was awoken by a sound, something like a noisy kitchen in a high class restaurant. She leaned over to open the door just a touch. Beside the swimming pool were long tables covered with white linen tablecloths. On top of the tables were large bouquets of flowers and bottles of champagne cooling in metal buckets filled with ice. In the corner was a three-tiered cake. The pool itself had been drained, the water replaced with rows of seating and a central aisle. She pushed the door-to and tried smoothing out her forehead, which at this point might as well have been nylon or silk.
Inside the changing room stall she heard all the many stages of a wedding: the ceremony, the photographs, the speeches, the dancing. Every now and again she allowed herself a glimpse of the action, everything happening in the now drained pool. She was relieved to see something take its place: something that couldn’t be contained, something naive if not ultimately hopeful. Towards the end they played a song she recognised from her running playlist, possibly Prince, and she thought about getting up to move.