Pool girls are monsters of wickedness; Insatiable in their lust for hygiene and acid.

For the entirety of my childhood, water was an absolute antagonist towards my being. I took swim lessons as a pre-teen while others were entering kindergarten. I choked and dragged myself into the water.

About three years ago at a local YMCA, I signed up for a swim class, wherein I could not swim from one end to the other. Frustrated to a point of maximum exertion, I quickly resolved to find a means to make this work.

After suffering for an hour or so, I began to realize I needed to exhale under water. Not the most esoteric of directions, but nonetheless impossible prior to this date. I came home that evening and my mother said my face was grey and I looked worthy of an emergency room visit. I resisted, and slept.

As an ancillary comment, I often find the most challenging of endeavors arise from new pursuits in the evening.

The aforementioned swim was the most difficult task I have ever faced in a pool of water.

Yesterday paralleled itself to that summer’s day three years ago.

I had the full intent and purpose to swim two miles. Within eight minutes of swimming, I realized how sick I was due to a cold that my body can’t exterminate because of my lack of running.

My arms, back, and core all failed to exercise their physiological duties, and my ensuing workout was a swim unbecoming of a triathlete.

It ought be noted that from the start, I was sharing a lane. I promised myself that at 30 minutes I would rest and re-evaluate if this was worth it. My goggles continued to leak, my eyes continued to burn, and I kept cracking the lane divider with my body. I was utterly over my head.

Swimming does something to the anatomical constitution that is not found in running or cycling. When the human body is on a horizontal plane, torqueing to receive oxygen, it becomes bitterly self-interested. For the moment you deviate, (i.e. turn vertically, or alter your breathing pattern) an awful and ignominious state of nausea begins. Witness my impediment.

Every time I stopped swimming, either due to the acidity within my goggles, or to regain a sense of balance as more swimmers entered my lane, I became sea-sick.

Through rest came greater discomfort.

Thirty minutes away became an eternity. At the forty-five minute mark there were a total of four swimmers plus a child in my lane. At this point my vision had assumed a shade of grey due to the bloodshot quality of my eyes, my muscles felt as if a fine fork were scraping through the soft tissue, and the excess of chlorinated water felt as if my skin tissue had become plasticized.

Shortly after reaching the 2700 meter mark, the pool girl began to dutifully wash the deck with a pressure washer, powered by a diesel generator. As I would enter the water and pull the weight of my being away from the wall, a dull noise would replace the horror of the machine. I could hear and feel the resulting water from the machine sprinkle upon my back, as if I were a groundhog trying to shelter his head from the mechanized armies of man.

At this point I was swimming blind. If I hit someone in my pursuit of goal, so be it. The assistant pool girl then began to check the pH balance of the water, and swiftly hurried into the control room of this aquatic black hole.

I remember back at the 1200 meter mark, floating and taking my goggles off for a second, and every instinct of my childhood wanting to erupt. I wanted to break down, just sit on the corner and cry. Wishing I could just scream out loud, rather than continuing to find no meaning in the struggle at hand.

At 3,000 meters, and clad in the armor of this battle, and having now only about 200 meters remaining, I recalled Shakespeare’s Henry V and it’s description of combat “Once more unto the breach, dear friends”

Those whom have shared similar experiences, can recount the thrill and excitement that comes with the simple struggle. Some injure themselves for days, weeks, months, or even years. And when that moment comes – When the past is acknowledged but forgotten – When fear exists but replaced through courage – When suffering only elicits a smile – And finally, when walls of inhibition are finally shattered with the tools of strength and integrity, the zenith of human will is manifest.

This much I now know.