Back to Swimming or What I Did Not Do on Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanks to sloth and the Thanksgiving holiday schedule at the pool, I did not swim for a week.   It felt great to get back in the water today.  I swam steadily for over an hour.   It felt good then and feels good now to have both gotten the workout and know that I am doing good self-care. 

The pool can be a strange place.  Today while swimming laps, one lady kept encroaching on where I was swimming.  Finally she asked me to swim elsewhere because she has a “serious medical condition and needs to do her Tai Chi.”  I explained that while there was plenty of room on the other side of her, I needed to swim in the deeper end of the pool so as to not scrape my knees on the bottom (the pool is only 4’6” deep at the deep end).  It turned out she actually preferred shallower water.  Later on, she complained about my swimming in the pool creating turbulence.  She crowded into where I was swimming as to bump into me in a not-full pool and had a problem with turbulence?  I was baffled as to what to say.   I did point out that everybody in the pool has serious medical issues.  I thought about explaining wave dissipation physics to her in that the energy drops off with the square of the distance so that being 4 feet away has 1/16 of the energy compared with being a 1 foot away.  That seemed too snarky.    Attempts to reason with her were met with an obtuse denial.  She finally gave up trying to control me and went to the shallow end of the pool to do the next section of her workout.

There is a nice lady that works the front desk.  I talked with her after swimming about what to say to people that bump into me and then complain about my swimming in a pool.  She suggested I talk with the manager and let me know he was busy right at that moment.  I view the public pool as being gently competitive.  Most people work around each other and I rarely make contact with others while changing where or how I swim several times each session.  This lady was the first person in my 6 months at the pool to crowd into me in a not-full pool and then complain that I was making too much turbulence.  One time a therapist let me know she was working with a 100-year old woman that needed the calmest water possible. The pool had more people in it then and I had no problem with that.

This is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things.  It is important that I learn how to process similar interactions with others that deliberately crowd my space and try to control my actions.  Discussing my feelings is a vital part of my recovery.  I doubt I can stop people from complaining.   Today’s complainer was 70 years old.   It is not my job to fix strangers that create problems and then complain about them.  It is my job to have healthy boundaries while being the kindest most nurturing loving Kevin I can be.

Writing my thoughts in my Gratitude blog has really helped me process my thoughts, feelings and emotions.  I don’t have a ready response for negative people in all situations.  I can do like I did today to work things out with others in a gentle kind assertive fashion while standing up for myself.  I am still somewhat baffled by that interaction, but feel a lot better for writing about it.

I am grateful for a warm pool with a lift for me to swim in, learning how to process my feelings, and a kind staff with several suggestions for how to best interact with others that are not always on their best behavior due to serious medical issues.