On Buoyancy

Last month my family and I were vacationing at a lake in New Hampshire. The house were we staying at had a floating platform about 25 yards offshore and at some point every day, we’d swim out to it. On one of these days, Clementine wanted to swim out further, so I went with her. We were just treading water, out in this lake, and I started to think, “this is really fucking hard, let’s get back to that platform!” Not wanting to look like a total wuss in front of my 17yr old daughter, I started casually heading back for it. “Where are you going?” she asked, “We’re not done...” She was really enjoying watching me struggle.

As a kid I spent as much time in the water as possible. We lived in Los Angeles and would frequently go to the beach. I would often sit frozen on the beach, trying to be small and unseen, waiting for eyes to be cast in directions away from the shortest path I could take into the water. Inertia was not on my side, so when a moment appeared, I would often miss it since my body at rest, decidedly wanted to stay, at rest. Eventually an opportunity would arise, and I would be able to summon the adequate mental and physical strength to move as quickly as possible, from my safe perch, into the water.

I wanted to rapidly get small again, so I would move out into water that hid all of my body save my head, or I would crouch. There I would remain for most of the day.
The same went for pools, quickly in while eyes were averted, and there I would stay. Long past my fellows. Long past pruned fingers and toes. There was such safety in that water.

Being in the water did something magical for me, it eased gravity. Whatever the force of gravity had on my body out of the water would evaporate within. There was a noticeable reduction of the overall pressure I experienced in the rest of life.

I knew that part of what allowed me to stay in longer was my insulation, this was obvious to me. My friends went blue and shivery long before I did. Normally I would try to obscure or disguise my fatness, and if staying in the water long past my fellows was a direct link to fatness, the alternative, getting out of the water with my t shirt clinging to my body, was merely a worse option. So I’d stay in, wait for them to get bored on the beach and come back.

The other thing that dawned on me at some point, I could tread water much longer than any of them. If we went out into deep water, or even if just hanging out in the deep end of a pool, I outlasted every last one of them. I would watch as they fought to keep their heads above water, something that was just a tick above effortless for me. Sometimes they wouldn’t even be able to hang out in the deep end without clutching the side, I really felt bad for them. The center of the deep end was a peaceful abyss for me, that held no danger whatsoever.

Though I knew these things were indications of my fatness, neither aspect kept me out of the water. I felt physically better with gravity being somewhat counter balanced, I enjoyed having my form obfuscated, and while I had markedly less energy when I would exit the water, my energy within was insurmountable. If I ever got really tired, I could just float.

The one area I struggled with at all, was breath holding contests. It wasn’t that I couldn’t hold my breath very long, I could, but I struggled to stay under water. It took real effort to keep me under. I could easily swim to the bottom of a pool, but once there, without much effort, I would rapidly rise to the surface. In the shallow end, for breath holding contests, while my friends inhaled deeply and sank back under the water, I had to do a kind of reverse upthrust treading of water to stay submerged. The only other option was to just float face down, but so much of my obese back was exposed in doing that, that it wasn’t viable when others were about. After a few brutal losses, I gave up on that competition, I just wasn’t competitive.

The very first time I effortlessly sank, I didn’t really know what was happening. I’d jumped into the deep end of a friend’s pool and when I emerged, I had to fight to stay up. It wasn’t that it was so hard to do, just more that I didn’t really know how. I’d never in my life had to work at all to keep my head above water, and now if I held still, I would quite rapidly sink. As a child, I’d once wanted to know what it was like to not have to fight to stay under water, so I got my hands on a scuba divers weight belt and went into a pool with it. I sank myself to the bottom of the deep end of a pool and just sat there, surrounded by water. When I needed a breath, I would thrust myself up, launch momentarily out of the water, breathe deep and go back down. I really enjoyed sitting on the bottom of the pool. Once at a lake, I found a large rock and walked it as deep as I could, swam up to breathe, swam back down and continued. I got that rock well out beyond where the lifeguards felt comfortable with me being and was reprimanded and asked to stay much closer to shore.

I can vividly remember sinking that first time, on my own, sitting on the bottom of that pool and crying. It was amazing to be effortlessly down there

surrounded by peace without help. The problem was, when I was done being down there, I was now the guy rapidly rushing for the side of the pool, to hold onto as my safe haven.
I had to learn how to tread water, it was just something I’d never had to do. Yesterday my wife and I went to the beach, we swam out past where we could stand, and we just tread water.

All I could think about was how much easier it is to tread water in the ocean. I could feel a marked difference between the ocean and a pool or a lake. I know analytically that this is because saltwater gives more buoyancy than freshwater, but my wife didn’t notice it at all. When I suggested that it was so much easier than the lake, she looked at me like I was crazy.
She’d learned how to swim in the body she has, while I’d never really learned how to swim at all.