Unwinding
Before the pandemic, I swam two or three times per week. I had to. Without it, my shoulders felt as if they touched my ears, and my back was so tight that I was uncomfortable just sitting at my desk. I’d go to the pool, crank and creak through the first 20 lengths, and feel my whole body relax.
Then the pool closed. I remember going to swim one last time in early March 2020. I was the only person there besides my swim friend, Mary Jane, and we agreed we didn’t know what we would do if the pool closed. Of course, it did. And when the gym reopened, I didn’t go back. Conveniently enough, I had bought at Peloton in November 2019, and I was hooked.
Now, I’m slowly getting back to swimming. And that tightness I used to feel, the tightness that signaled to me that it was time to step away from the computer and swim, well that tightness has become my new normal. I notice it, but I’m just beginning again to unwind it. It will never be fully unwound, but this weekend I swam, and I felt that old familiar feeling of loosening. The stiffness of my shoulders as they turned through the first lengths of freestyle, the slow relaxing of the scapula, the lengthening of my body as I glided through the water. You can’t hunch and swim, you have to stretch out to your full length.
And then the cracking began. Over and over, my elbows cracking as if my arms might break apart. Sometimes when the muscles have been really tight, I have imagined that nothing could help them but breaking them, and after swimming, I stretch and crack and maybe even break a little bit from the inside. I unwind from this life of doing, unwind all that life puts on my body and feel a little bit broken but also a little bit more whole when I’m finished.
(Photo by Artem Verbo)