Field Note 22F: Breathe When You Can

I think swimming may have been the main reason I survived the COVID apocalypse.

Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Physiologically. I was anxious. Unmoored. The world was unraveling in ways too fast and too cruel to process. And all I could do—was swim.

Not to compete.

Not to get fit.

Not to win.

Just to not drown.

Because when you’re swimming laps, you can’t spiral.

You can’t catastrophize, doomscroll, or fall into a thought hole.

You just… breathe.

When you can.

Not when you want.

Not when it’s convenient.

Only when your face breaks the surface and the timing is right.

Swimming became the only place my body and mind agreed on a rhythm. The only place I didn’t have to explain anything. The only place I remembered how to survive without hypervigilance—because the movement itself demanded my full attention.

I wasn’t calm. I wasn’t zen. I was just keeping myself alive, one carefully timed inhale at a time.

Maybe that’s the secret no one talks about:

Sometimes we don’t need mindfulness. We just need to make it to the wall and turn.

Breathe. Kick. Repeat.