Cycle Day 24

9/30 - my love affair with water is a longer story than I anticipated

I’m going to the Therme today (‘thermal bath’ seems to be the only translation that comes to mind right now… but it feels off… a little dated maybe, not like a modern thing at all…).

I think there couldn’t be a better day for that than cycle day 24. I feel super tired today. So floating in a hot spring or a highly concentrated brine bath, and taking a sauna day feels magical. The town I live in has salt springs, so we have these amazing salt pools (one even has a higher concentration than the Dead Sea.) And since I’m still coming off from a particularly nasty cold/flu thing a few weeks ago, sauna is definitely a great idea.

I’m noticing that I’m struggling to find the words to describe my plans for the day in English. I realize that’s because those are not activities I have ever done in English. As in, I don’t know of a single “Therme” in the U.S., never heard or read any English or Americans speak about any, and all I ever did when I lived in the States was swim competitively. But the vocabulary I’m thinking of to describe my day in German doesn’t seem to exist in English. Saunieren. Baden. Therme. Relaxing, that one exists.

My Substack bio says this:

“I am neither here nor there. I belong in the water. I ask questions. I dream symbols. I weave magic.”

Let me tell you about my love affair with water…

As the story goes, I learned how to swim quite early, by being thrown into a pool (at like 1 year old?!) and when I simply started floating and kicking my feet in a paddling motion (which all babies do, technically), my parents say they knew immediately I would be a great swimmer. So then, after ballet dance class was decidedly not my thing, I was put in my first swim team. I fucking loved it.

My mom had been a competitive swimmer in high school, my dad knew how to swim as well (mostly because she had taught him when he decided he wanted to do triathlons and not look like a fool in the water). German kids (still today, btw) notoriously only learn how to swim breast stroke when they go to state-mandatory swim school as kindergarten kids. The school also tried to teach me how to do that, but my knees were already so used to freestyle swimming (since I had learned to swim much earlier, and from my parents), that they wouldn’t bend that way.

I never understood why such an unnatural movement would ever be chosen for children to learn how not to drown… No hate to breastroke specialists, but the whole stroke looks like an endless cycle of almost drowning… It’s not only the most technically complicated stroke to learn, it’s also the least healthy for your joints. I wouldn’t even be surprised if it goes back to German-Preußische military schools of the 19th century or some shit. (I quickly researched it, and yes: It was one Ernst von Pfuel, a Prussian general who founded the world’s first military swimming school in 1810. Apparently, that then became the model for German children’s swim schools, too. smh)

I was a competitive swimmer my entire childhood and teenage years. I never really questioned it, even though there were days I would have loved to just go hang out with my friends at the local Badeweiher or Baggersee (another two words I don’t know in English — do these things just not exist in English?!). A quick dictionary check tells me “swimming pond” or “quarry lake.” I guess I’ll go with just “lake.”

My formative years were spent mostly at indoor pools because summer swim season is quite short due to our short German summers (at least growing up, summers were short — that’s changing now, too). My team were my best friends, I felt more alive and more belonging there than in any other environment, especially more than at school. School was social torture for me. None of the other kids in my class were swimmers (most did football or horseback riding or dance), I was always made fun of for my dry hair (you try maintaining healthy hair if you’re in chlorinated water 5 times a week), and apparently, I was too much of an introvert which the bullies thought was weird. So my swim team became my sanctuary. And with it the pool. Apart from just training, we did cool shit there: we put on these 24-hour-swim events twice a year, to raise money for the team and just have a great time. A sleepover at the pool? Hell yeah. When we were older, we got to organize pool-foam-parties at the outdoor pool, especially after big competitions. We went to week-long training camps in other cities (and one time even in another country — that was exciting). We drove countless hours to swim meets and spent even more time at pools, almost every weekend…

Any confidence you now notice in me comes from those years spent training, having fun with my team mates, and making these intense experiences. When you’re doing a competitive sport like that, that is also an individual sport, you learn A LOT about yourself. I certainly did, and at a young age, too. I know what my body is capable of, I know what I can push my body to do and what I cannot do, I know that it’s not about “being the best” so much, but rather about “being better than last week.” I honestly think that I have a great metabolism thanks to doing an endurance sport growing up. And I know that I have zero interest in ever competing with anyone for anything ever again.

When I stopped swimming because I went to uni and there simply wasn’t enough time anymore, or I just wanted a break, I felt a little burned out from competition. The constant stress from being excited for an event was gone, and I feel like my nervous system had a hard time adjusting. I went running instead, chasing that runner’s high, went to the gym a lot, even worked at one, developed disordered eating… My twenties were spent chasing something, that feeling of belonging maybe, that high-energy and high-intensity environment definitely. I had a really hard time with things like meditation even. I never managed to calm myself down enough to sit still for very long.

To be continued tomorrow…

Xx, Nat