Drowning Lessons

The smell of chlorine still triggers me.

I don’t know what that smell is for you, but for me it’s the smell of terror. The smell of humiliation. The smell of shame. The relentless, sickening pong of the elephant that has plagued me for decades. The elephant in sunglasses, sitting in a lounger on the periphery of every beach day, every pool party, every waterpark trip of my life.

The elephant that knows I can’t swim.

I’ve been trying and failing to see past that guy for almost 50 years.

The truth is I just never learned to swim properly, though I tried. When I was a tiny kid I went to swimming lessons with all of the other tiny kids at the local YMCA. I don’t remember whether it was the first lesson or not, but at some point early on the instructor stuck me, scrawny and shivering, up on the diving board, miles above the deep end of the pool. Then she fed a long stick out into the water and said, “Okay kid, jump and grab the pole.”

And I thought, “Are you nuts? I can't swim. That's why I'm here!”

And I might have said that too if I was a bit older and had more vocabulary, but all I had at the time was an almighty shriek and so I shrieked and then I cried and they left me standing up there for what felt like an hour with everyone watching and then Mom came and got me somehow and we went home and never went back and chlorine smell has been a trigger ever since.

Breathe.

I tried again when I was older. By that point my water phobia and sense of personal inadequacy were settling in nicely and my swimming class did its part to help. I was older than the other kids in the group. Self-conscious. Embarrassed. Once again I quit before we actually got around to swimming. That’s probably when I made a decision that would very negatively affect the rest of my life: I decided I could happily embrace the lie that I knew how to swim, but just didn’t want to. I would commit to fewer things more fiercely or more consistently over the next four decades than that lie.

I don’t want to swim out to the sandbar.

I don’t want to do stunt dives in the deep end.

I don’t want to do the hike that requires a short swim up to the cave.

And all the while there was the elephant, knowing the truth.

I’ve spent most of the last 15 years facing fear and fighting my sense of inadequacy. I’ve done most of that work in the jungle known as the music business. In 2012 I took what was at the time a very courageous step and pushed through intense stage fright to begin performing publicly as a drummer. Back then I was terrified to be found out as not good enough. Not being good enough – ultimately not being loveable – has been my heaviest demon probably since that trembling little kid had to be rescued from the diving board at the YMCA.

I’ve missed out on a lot of cool experiences because of fear. Once in high school I was offered the chance to appear as a criminal in a Crime Stoppers video for the local TV station (talk about perfect casting). I said no. Too afraid. Other times I was encouraged to audition for musicals or other theatre productions. Too afraid. I ran from gigs. I hid from opportunities.

I was just so afraid to be found out, and for everything I hated about myself to be true.

My experience in music has gone a long, long way toward helping me create a stronger self-concept. I learned over the course of almost 15 sometimes difficult years (and hundreds of shows) that I have value as a drummer, singer, and bandmate. I can now step onto a stage in front of thousands of people without any real stage fright. I now have an appreciation for my own way of playing and singing that has been cultivated by putting myself in the chair, taking my lumps, wrestling with insecurities and attachments, fighting off gallbladder attacks and anxiety, and ultimately proving to myself that I am, in fact, good enough.

All of that has been leading me, I suppose, to facing the next boss in the game: the elephant at the swimming pool.

I said I’ve spent most of the past 15 years improving my self-concept by facing fear via music. The past year and a half has put a sharper edge on all of that. Last summer my marriage ended, which forced me to consider the ways in which my lack of confidence and feelings of inadequacy have affected how I show up in the world. That can be a very hard thing to look at and it has been, but the compelling thing about having your life fall apart is that it provides an opportunity to build a new and better one.

One thing I decided: I don’t want to enter my new life as a guy who can’t swim.

I made that decision about six weeks ago when I was on a solo trip to Mexico. I sat like the elephant in my own lounger, looking out at the water, and I realized again just how much my fear of it and shame around it affects my self-confidence. There’s a bit of wisdom that we would all do well to remember: people don’t change until the pain of changing hurts less than the pain of staying the same.

As I stared out at the Caribbean, the pain of not being able to swim finally became stronger than my fear of trying to learn, so when I got home, I signed up for adult swimming lessons.

I would like to tell you that the decision triggered some latent amphibian impulse in me, but it didn’t. I would like to say I showed up the first day committed to the cause and suddenly it all just clicked and I slid across the surface of the water with fluid, elegant strokes that brought the assembled crowd of bored parents and teenage pool staff to their feet, but that would another lie.

The truth is I wanted to quit after the first lesson. In fact, I wanted to run out the door as soon as I entered the building because I was smacked in the face by the nauseating whiff of chlorine and suddenly I wasn’t a 52-year-old man who can perform in front of thousands of people anymore. I was once again a shivering little kid screaming on the diving board. Fight or flight kicked in hard. My stomach tightened and my hands went numb.

Sometimes you have to be reminded just how frightened you really are and cut yourself a break.

I did terribly at the first lesson. The very first exercise was a simple float and I couldn’t even do that. I put my face in the water to try floating on my stomach and I panicked and started to flail and then realized I could just stand up because my feet were still on the bottom of the pool. They never even made it into floating position. After that we tried glides by pushing off from the edge of the pool and as soon as my face was in the water I freaked out. There is such deeply rooted fear and shame around it for me.

So the first lesson was discouraging to say the least. At the second lesson I continued standing on the floor pretending to float and panicking during glides and then we tried kicking and I got a leg cramp.

At the third lesson we began combining all of that and adding some arm motion and several of my far less self-conscious classmates turned suddenly into dolphins, happily swimming to and fro, coming up laughing, actually enjoying being in the water.

How grotesque.

I couldn’t really do any of it. I tried to put all of the pieces together and instead of dolphining around like my classmates, I swallowed about 30 litres of water, choking and sputtering in the shallow end like a manual transmission that stalls out when you don’t work the clutch properly. It was a nightmare. I never wanted to quit anything more than I wanted to quit swimming lessons (“drowning lessons” as I call them) on the third day. I was once again humiliated, once again discouraged, once again prepared to indulge the lie that I simply don’t want to swim.

In situations like that you have to rely on the people who encourage you. I’ve had a few very strong supporters throughout this process, and I went public with the story on my podcast, so there was just enough built-in accountability to drag me back to the pool for the fourth lesson. I knew I couldn’t quit. I also knew I didn’t understand the breathing part of the game, and so instead of wallowing about that, I went in search of answers – and found them.

Turns out you’re supposed to exhale when your face is in the water, and then turn your head and inhale. I had been drawing a big, deep breath and holding it while I blendered away with my arms and legs, and then trying to both exhale and inhale in the split second when my head was turned. No wonder I was taking on water. I was doing it all wrong, despite my teacher’s instructions. I returned to class armed with this information, desperately hoping it would make some difference and save me from the elephant.

I remember opening the door that night and being assaulted again by the chlorine smell. I remember trying to screw up my courage to face the humiliation. I remember slipping into the cold water and telling myself how much I hate this and then drawing my deep breath and kicking off from the side of the pool and then … a miracle.

I exhaled as my face was underwater, and when I turned my head to breathe, I just … breathed. No choking. No gasping. No stalling out. And then I exhaled when I was underwater, and when I turned my head to breathe, I just … breathed. And then I did it again. And then I nearly drowned from exhaustion, but when I stood up again and looked around, I realized that I had actually been … swimming.

Me.

Almost fifty years later.

And all it took was a small act of courage. All it took was the pain of not changing being greater at last than the pain of changing. All it took was getting past the ego and shame that kept me caged in my fear of the water.

I’m delighted to tell you that as of last lesson, I have successfully completed the minimum course requirement of a front crawl and a back crawl of 15 metres. No threat to Michael Phelps, but for me one of the most incredible things I can imagine. Fifty years of shame, fear, and self-doubt overcome. Fifty years of the poolside elephant.

I can swim, damnit.

Am I good at it? No.

Do I like it? No.

Do I plan to spend a lot more time in pools in the future? No (but I do plan to spend some).

Why am I writing about this anyway? It’s because I’m realizing more and more that one of my purposes is to encourage people. Encourage them to look at their fears and see how fear holds them back. Encourage them to look at their beliefs about themselves and see how limiting they are. Encourage them to step into their fear and see what wonders await on the other side.  

Because if I can learn to swim after all these years, what can you do with a little courage? How much better can your life become with one simple decision to change? What elephants can you remove from your periphery and what will the view be like when they’re gone?

Go test the water, gentle reader. You’re far more buoyant than you think.