Thirty-One #2
Imogen snickers, shooting Heath another sideways glance as she signals for me to continue the exercise. She waits until I’m done this round and icing my shoulder before we move on to the next before oh-so-casually musing, ‘He’s here a lot for a not-boyfriend.’
That, I can’t dispute. There isn’t a single session in the two weeks since I started therapy that I’ve attended and he hasn’t.
If I’m here, so is he. And he leaves me lists, schedules, tick-the-box Post-it routines that make every day seem a little less insurmountable, eases the ever-present anxiety lodged behind my ribcage.
He barely leaves my apartment unless it’s for work or class, he acts as my personal chauffeur, he lives out of a fucking duffel bag.
He provides round-the-clock care that I don’t really need, but I’m not brave enough to put a stop to it.
I like it too much. He’s the only thing keeping me sane, and, God, do I get the irony in that.
All that bitching in the hospital only for Heath to be the singular bright spot in my life.
Well, not the singular. Just the brightest.
‘Is chit-chat part of my rehab?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes. It is.’ Removing the ice-pack from my shoulder, Imogen takes me gently by the elbow and guides my stiff joint through as big a rotation as it’s capable of. Which isn’t a whole lot. But before my frustration can really fester, she continues, ‘He a swimmer too?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Hm. Can tell. It’s the shoulders, y’know?’
‘Shouldn’t you be paying attention to my shoulder, not his?’
‘But his are so pretty,’ she jokes, long fingers gliding up my arm to carefully palpate my shoulder. ‘Must be hard for you.’
I don’t answer. I don’t have an answer. Not a good one, anyway.
Certainly not a simple one. Because, yeah, it’s hard.
Every time Heath walks out of my apartment and I know he’s going to practice, it physically hurts.
But every time he tries not to, every time he comes up with some excuse as to why he should skip a meet, the fact that he’s skipped his last two meets, well, that fills me with genuine rage because how fucking dare he, right?
How dare he waste what he can do. Resentment might rot my chest every morning when he slips out of bed, but I know it isn’t fair to feel it, to hold my injury against him, to expect him to stop swimming just because I have to, to deprive him of something while he’s giving me everything.
‘You know what’s funny about you, Daniela?’
‘So many things, I’m sure.’
‘I see thirty clients a week. Almost all of them are injured college athletes. Most of them are D1. Most of them will never compete again at the same level. I have heard every variation of the stolen dream speech. But not from you.’
‘Your point?’
‘What was the plan? Olympics? World Aquatics?’
‘I don’t know.’ Discomfort that goes far beyond the physical kind makes me fidget. ‘I still have a year of college left.’
‘You hadn’t thought about it?’
‘I was focused on my student career.’
‘Ah.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing.’
But. There’s a but. Everyone has a fucking but – I’m starting to have a but. I’m pretty sure I’ve had a but all along, and it’s been hiding. Repressed. Hidden under a thick, impenetrable layer of learned compliance and a fear of inadequacy and a desperate need for validation.
As if warded off by the thoughtful glare that creases my expression, Imogen doesn’t press the matter any further.
She just leaves the suggestion lingering in the air, just like everyone has been doing, and I don’t know what’s so special about her little remark, but something just .
. . clicks. Like it’s the final puzzle piece slotting into place, or like a crack in my metaphorical pair of glasses has been mended and I can finally see clearly.
My session finishes, and, on autopilot, I find Heath.
He flashes me the same proud smile he always does, but, apparently, my expression is twisted enough to cow him too.
He frowns and he glances at my shoulder, then over at Imogen, and he asks very carefully, very hesitantly, if everything is alright.
I only answer once I’m outside the clinic, collapsed on the curb, staring blankly at the parking lot asphalt. ‘I didn’t think about it.’
Heath crouches in front of me. Palms on my knees, emanating comforting warmth. ‘Hey?’
‘Swimming after college. You asked me once if I was gonna swim professionally, and I said, Why else would I be doing it? I didn’t . . . That was the wrong answer, huh?’
Heath just sighs. He swipes a thumb beneath my eye, and the pad comes away wet.
‘It’s not supposed to be an obligation.’ I summarize what everyone has been telling me, screaming at me.
I get it now, finally. Like a shroud lifted, clarifying my senses.
‘I’m supposed to just love it. I tried to, I really did, I really wanted to.
And I’m not okay with this,’ I curl a hand around my shoulder, and he settles one of his own on top of it, ‘but I think I might be relieved.’
‘Oh, honey.’ A gentle tug guides me into his arms. A palm glides along my spine, rubbing soothing circles at the base. ‘That’s okay. You’re okay.’
Stifling a sob, I nestle my forehead against the notch of his throat.
When a tear slips free, it’s for me; the tiny, younger version who bounced into her first swim class, overflowing with excitement, so eager to experience what her dad always waxed poetic about.
Another one, I shed for the barely older Daniela who started approaching the pool with trepidation – who knew that if she didn’t swim the best, there wasn’t any point.
Both eyes start to stream, and that’s for a grieving sixteen-year-old carrying the weight of her dead father’s expectations.
The torrent that follows, those are all for me too.
For the time I’m not sure will ever stop feeling so wasted, and for what I could’ve done with it.
For everything I put myself through because I never gave myself a choice.
For the part of me that still, and always will, mourns the water because, even putting my injury aside, I don’t think it’ll ever feel the same.
I just . . . cry. For a long time. Spill the full range of my emotions on the sidewalk, guilt and regret and devastation and my confusion and hope.
And the next time Heath murmurs that I’m okay, I almost kind of believe him.