Verge: Stories

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In the water the swimmer feels weightless. The blue of the pool fills her ears and holds her body and shuts out the world. Swimming is her favorite state of being. On land, the swimmer can barely breathe.

She was not yet two, the story goes, when she first gravitated toward water. One afternoon, during a family trip to the Mediterranean Sea, she wandered off the edge of a dock before anyone could notice, dropping like a rock into the ocean. Her sister, five years older, dove in after her, pulling her back to the surface. When she emerged, she was smiling, not drowning. She remembers none of this; it’s a vivid story her family tells.

But then her entire childhood is like one long story she doesn’t want to hear. The kind of story that makes your chest grow tight as you listen.

She’d rather swim than anything else. She’d rather swim every day than remember a single moment of her childhood. She doesn’t even remember the shapes of the buildings in her neighborhood. Home is a blown-up brick in her throat.

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