Emaciated

I’ve been lucky to have learnt to swim at an early age, and swimming has since become a second nature to me. What I especially liked, back in Sibiu, was diving. In Sibiu you can actually swim in an Olympic sized swimming pool with 8 lanes, and there is also a deeper pool with a diving tower with 3m, 5m, 7m and 10m levels. For us little dolphins, the diving pool was only open on certain days, as it was considered dangerous to jump (because of various accidents etc). One day, when it was “ok” to go diving, we lined up and started. First we used the springboard, 1 m above the water. The instructor then led us to the platforms. Some of us did dive from 3m... but the more we climbed up the stairs, the more courage left us, as we seemed to be so high above the menacing blue water. At some point, the inevitable happened and one of us dived the wrong way. She hit herself quite hard on a side (in diving, especially when doing it from higher above, it is essential to enter the water perfectly vertical, or else the impact can harm you). I was next in line... and I suddenly felt like turning around presto and giving up diving. There was a moment when I looked at the water and my body refused to return there, for fear it would get hurt, just like my friend's had been.

Over the past few weeks I was sick, and the return to normality seems more difficult than I have expected, as there are some aspects in my general ability to fight off disease that are not particularly encouraging. I dread jumping into the water again, just like years ago, because of concerns regarding my health.

What I did back then, after looking at the water below, was to close my eyes and jump anyway, from 10m. The water, on entering, felt warm and embracing, and all that excited expectation of pain disappeared. It was not as if the doubt had disappeared, but the weight of it seemed to have been left behind. And as I resurfaced, I felt like lingering there, for it felt like my second nature indeed. No harm would come.