Learning to Float

This piece was originally published in the Are.na Annual vol 7: pool, which now available in the Are.na Gift Shop.

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“Relax. Relax. Relax.”

This is what I hear my swimming instructor saying to me on my first day of lessons, as if it will help me relax. 

I am not relaxed.

In fact, I’m the opposite of relaxed. My shoulders are up near my ears, my jaw is clenched tight, and I'm gripping the pool's edge like it's the last solid thing on Earth. I came to the YMCA to learn how to swim, but I find myself struggling with the basic concept of existing in water without immediately sinking to the bottom.

“Just relax,” he says again, as if repeating this phrase will somehow unlock the mystery of how not to panic when water covers your face. The pool area is quiet except for our small group: four other adult students from different walks of life, all of us carrying our particular brand of aquatic anxiety. There's a couple with silver hair holding hands at the shallow end, speaking in accents that make me feel less alone in my own foreignness. A returning student mentions she's picking up where she left off from last session, and the other adults look as nervous as I feel. As water laps gently against the pool's edge, I can feel the collective vulnerability of grown adults learning something most people master as children.

This is the paradox I've waded into, metaphorically speaking: learning to swim as an adult means learning to do the thing that feels most impossible when you don’t yet know how to swim — letting go of control. It means trusting that the thing you're most afraid of is going to, somehow, hold you up.

I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, surrounded by water I wasn’t allowed to get close to. I lived in a coastal neighborhood where the Lagos Lagoon connects to the Atlantic Ocean, where you might imagine there’s an abundance of places to access the water. But these bodies of water carried myths and superstitions — stories of Mami Wata and spirits that live beneath the surface — that kept us children safely on dry land. On the rare holidays when we’d finally get to visit the beach, I’d feel that pull — a longing to do more than just wade in the shallows while the adults watched nervously from the shore. The ocean was for admiring from a distance, not entering. And swimming pools were inaccessible luxuries we only glimpsed behind the gates of hotels and wealthy neighbors.

It wasn’t until this year that I discovered my father had been a swimmer for the Lagos State swim team. When he casually mentioned this during a heart-to-heart conversation one evening, I nearly choked on my water. Here was this man who had raised me with a healthy fear of deep water, who had never once suggested that I learn to swim, telling me he used to swim races as a young adult. It’s a whole story for another time, but one that makes me wonder how different my relationship with water might have been if I’d known our family had gills.

Last summer, on a sunny day in Greece, somewhere in the Mediterranean on a boat packed with friends and strangers, I found myself the only one not jumping into the crystal-blue water. While everyone else jumped in with the casual confidence of people who had learned to swim before they could properly walk, I sat rigid on the deck feeling like the kid who forgot his permission slip. Unconvinced by my increasingly elaborate excuses, a friend gave me a life vest and promised to stay close by. Terrified but determined not to miss a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I jumped in.

The moment my body hit that ancient sea, something shifted. It was spiritual as much as it was physical. Sometimes you just have to jump, even when you can't see the bottom, even when your chest is tight with fear. My brief, chaotic flailing wasn't swimming, exactly, but it was close enough, and it reignited something I’d buried deep down for many years. It made me want to learn how to swim. 

Not that I hadn’t already made attempts to learn as an adult. Years earlier, I'd signed up for swimming lessons and caught a brutal cramp in the deep end during my first week. The lifeguard had to pull me out while I gasped like a fish on land. Embarrassed, a bit rattled, and convinced that maybe I just wasn't meant for water, I decided not to return the next day. 

When life eventually forced me to slow down and face the things I’d been avoiding, swimming lessons were suddenly back on the table. So I walked into my local YMCA on a Saturday morning and signed up for adult swimming lessons like I was enrolling in my own salvation. This time felt different. This time, I was approaching swimming not just as something to conquer, but as practice for something deeper: learning how to let go of the need to control every damn thing in my life.

“First, we unlearn everything you think you know about breathing,” my instructor told me on day one. At my big age, standing in four feet of water, I realized how much I'd forgotten about being a beginner, and the particular humiliation and beauty of starting from absolute zero.

My instructor demonstrated how to breathe in through your mouth above water, then out through your nose below, making small bubbles. “Signals of life,” he called them, which sounded both poetic and mildly threatening. I practiced this elementary rhythm, feeling absolutely ridiculous. This is the humility required to start from the beginning: a willingness to look foolish, to admit that you don't know what everyone else seems to know instinctively.

My instructor, a patient man who had probably seen every variety of adult aquatic panic, explains almost apologetically that my lean frame makes floating harder. “Your body type,” he tells me, “is naturally prone to drowning.” Before you learn to swim, you have to learn to float and ironically, the thing that would make you a better, faster swimmer — strength — also makes it more difficult to float simply due to muscle density. Floating isn't about strength or quickness or winning — it's about surrender.

This strikes me as an apt lesson for how I approach most things in life: by muscling my way through moments that require grace. As a first-generation Nigerian-American, I’ve spent my entire life keeping things afloat through sheer will and stubborn determination. While managing family expectations, carrying the weight of being the bridge between cultures, working countless hours on projects to ensure nothing falls through the cracks, and anticipating problems before they’re even problems,my default settings are grip tight, manage outcomes, stay in control. This approach might have gotten me far on land. In the water, this same instinct fails me completely.

Week after week, I practice this strange dance of unlearning — first with a kickboard that I clutch like a life raft, then with foam supports that keep my stubborn hips afloat. My body slowly grows more comfortable; my shoulders relax, my breathing becomes steadier, and my muscles remember to release rather than clench. Gradually, methodically, my instructor strips away each aid until I'm left with nothing but water and the knowledge that as long as I continue to soften my muscles, tilt my head toward the sky, and trust completely, it might actually hold me. 

What made all the difference was my friend Bello, a former college swimmer and certified lifeguard, who graciously opened himself up to teaching a peer, something that required its own kind of humility. While I learned technique at the Y midweek, I practiced with Bello on weekends, creating a rhythm that became essential to my progress. There's something powerful about learning from someone who knows you beyond your fears, who can push you just enough while still making you feel safe to fail. With Bello, I could be vulnerable about my struggles without the performance pressure, finding comfort in the pool week in, week out.

Eventually, the pool, which had felt like an adversary, became a cradle. When I wasn’t fighting it, the water rose to support me. 

In the pool, I practice what I’m still learning in life: that the most radical act might not be to exert force, but to release and let go. Sometimes strength looks like stillness. Sometimes growth looks like surrender, and surrender is its own kind of salvation. The kind of surrender that doesn't require you to save yourself, but to just stop fighting long enough to be saved.