One summer, I think the one between elementary and middle school, a friend tried to teach me how to do a flip turn in a public pool. This seemed like it should be easy. I was really, really good at somersaults and handstands underwater. Those were my moves.
Except that for some reason that I can’t remember, I couldn’t open my eyes underwater that time. Maybe I was afraid of losing my brand new contact lenses or I’d forgotten my goggles or the chlorine burned my eyes. I tried to do what my friend told me to do – swim toward the wall of the pool, do a half somersault and push off back into the middle. But with my eyes closed, I couldn’t see where I was going, and instead of doing a half somersault, I did a full one…and then swam straight into the concrete pool wall.
As if the giant purple bruise on my forehead weren’t punishment enough, the next day, I ended up in the emergency room with signs of a concussion. Cool moves, indeed.
I’ve been thinking about flip turns a lot, and also the see-saw, things that both require a solid surface to push off of. Maybe it’s because I’m noticing that the parts of life or myself that cause me the most discomfort are the parts that eventually become the thing to push off of to move forward. Thinking of them this way at least makes me resent them a little less.
There’s a level of acceptance that has to come first. With my body, it’s accepting exactly how it shows up in the world without trying to change it. With work, it’s accepting that my pace is slow, and sometimes leaning into procrastination and not being productive. With my mental health, it’s accepting that I have anxiety and chronic stress and a need to people-please – and most of those come from my need to be good. It’s accepting that the wall is the wall, that I have limits, that I can’t control everything, even sometimes that includes myself.
Hitting the wall sucks. It just does. And, it’s also pushed me toward healing, toward slowing down, toward becoming more myself, and toward acceptance.