On water torture.
When I was five years old, some time in 1990, I had a few swimming lessons much like almost every other child in Australia. I don’t recall doing many. The only reason I know it was more than one is because I remember being utterly terrified of the pool after my first lesson; my step-father had snarled at me all sorts of horror stories about how little girls who cry will be grabbed by invisible water beasts and dragged to the bottom of the pool to drown, or if they’re lucky, eaten. This man (I use that term very loosely) and my mother (again, loosely) would even go so far as to use my childish fear against me, and tell me that spiders could both swim and run across water, and would get me if I didn’t swim well enough. My elder brother, A, decided to take part in the water terrorizing by forcing me to watch all the Jaws films. Watching them now, I find them laughable at best, but to a very inexperienced and naïve sensitive young girl, it was one of the scariest things I could imagine.
I remember being beaten after a lesson because my mother and her boyfriend didn’t like that my instructor noticed all my bruises. My mother would leave all discipline up to her partner; I still haven’t figured out why, but that’s a topic for another post. Paul was (still is) a very large man, a carpenter by trade in a time where most construction was still being done by hand as opposed to power tools. My brothers’ and my small frames were no match for his strength and irrational hatred. I was never allowed to go to lessons again after my swim teacher questioned me. I didn’t tell her what was happening; I wish I had. My mother knew enough about the immorality of what she was doing to try to hide it from everyone, but didn’t care enough to stop it. Any time someone noticed, we’d pack up and move along. At the time, and to be honest, for many years afterwards I believed that I wasn’t allowed to continue learning this skill because I was an awful child and I didn’t deserve to.
After my youngest brother was murdered shortly before my sixth birthday, his older brother (my younger half-brother) and I were sent to live with their father. And oh, how he resented me. In hindsight, I can understand why – I strongly resembled the woman who caused his baby boy’s death. He would torment me in as many ways as he could think of. Make no mistake, Michael wasn’t a bad man, he was just hurting in ways that few people could comprehend, and he didn’t realize that the way he reacted was just as damaging. Anyway, he had a house on Boundary Road in Dromana, meaning the beach was easily accessible to us so we would spend almost every spare moment ocean-side. I had never been to the beach before this; my mother wasn’t fond of water, and so my only experience of being immersed in it prior was the few swimming lessons and the occasional bath. Sensing my trepidation, Michael would mock me and pull pranks on me. His personal favourite was to throw me off the end of the Dromana pier and then start screaming that there was a shark, or a toxic jellyfish, or the like. Every so often, just to mix it up, he would pretend to drown me. If I got upset about it, he would punish me severely for “not knowing how to take a joke”. The more he did this, the more reluctant I was to go anywhere near the water, which would only make him harass me more. After our visits to the beach, he would use a high-pressure hose to clean us off. This in itself was painful enough, but then there was my hair… I had ringlets all the way down to my backside, so obviously in chlorine or salt water it would get a little rough and tangled. Neither my mother nor my brothers’ father cared to take their time when brushing it after swimming. The pain was intolerable. It didn’t take long for me to become irrationally scared of all forms of water. I still can’t stand putting my face in water, be it from the shower or otherwise.
I was almost grateful when Michael sent myself and my youngest brother away to boarding school to escape the media that would camp at our school gates. It was in the middle of the forest near Wangaratta, no chance I’d have to go in the ocean there. There was a pool, but we were very rarely allowed to use it, which suited me just fine. I didn’t have to go near water again (except, obviously, for hygiene purposes) until I was 12. There was one trip with the staff and other children from the government home I lived in to Oasis in Dandenong, during which I got away with feigning sick to avoid swimming, and that was it until now. I’ve managed to avoid it with one excuse or another. The only legitimate reason I’ve had is fear. Fear of what lives in the ocean, fear of giving up control, fear of drowning, fear of possibly being quite good at swimming... and if I'm truly honest with myself, fear of feeling how I did back then, and of letting go of the twisted life raft that is my past. It's easier to hold on to the pain and terror than it is to stand up and walk into a new world.
I’m fucking done with letting fear rule me.
I’m fucking done with letting fear rule me.
I will defeat this from the beginning. I’m going to learn to swim.
