My name is Jess and I like to swim

Let's go sploshing

I try not to spend much time imagining what it would be like to be small and graceful and move with ease through the world. But it's often what comes to mind when I’m swimming in a body of water. 

Kicking off the side - of the luxuriously child-free Olympic pool in Stratford, or the busy, weather-exposed lido in London Fields - and gliding those few first meters feels like a big, juicy exhale. And then my body is moving methodically and rhythmically. I barely need to think about it. Just rinse and repeat until I reach the other side, kick off from the edge again and gliiiiiiide. 

It always surprises me when people don’t want to submerge themselves in any available body of water. I’ve never thought twice about sacrificing my hair for that first refreshing dunk beneath the surface, for that feeling of weightlessness. 

(Sorry to be A LOT but haven’t we all wondered what it would feel like to fly? I’m sure this is the closest us humans can get.)

While swimming, although I am thinking about my body, I’m also not thinking about my body. Not what it looks like, anyway. I am thinking about the muscles in my thighs, about not pointing my toes, about pulling my shoulder blades back and together as I strive to hit the magic rhythm. The one that makes everything feel smooth and effortless, a flow state that I’m often searching for in my life on land, too. 

I was never a sporty person growing up. Quite the opposite in fact, dragged kicking and screaming around sports halls during P.E. and to dance lessons on the weekends. Because of this, I had always counted myself out for high ponytails, flushed cheeks and endorphins. (I actually never believed endorphins existed. Had decided they were a health marketing ploy, like BMI and skinny tea).  

But, on a whim after a breakup in 2019, I decided I couldn’t live one more day without knowing how to front crawl. So I booked in to take swimming lessons at the pool near Clapton Pond. It’s an old pool, built in 1897 and it shows. But it was close by to where I lived and its relative unpopularity meant I often took the lessons alone. 

Spoiler alert - I never did master front crawl (swimming caps off to all of you who have). In fact, thanks to Covid, I never did graduate, and to this day I still don’t know if I would have been awarded a swimming patch to sew onto my towel at the end. But I did master something else. 

Not wanting to lose my precarious new skill, I took myself down to London Fields Lido as soon as it reopened. In rain, sun and snow, I diligently swam my lengths. Goggles on, head submerged and in the Medium lane now thanks very much. 

One day I cycled back, cheeks pink and shining, and ran into my housemate as I was hauling my bike up the small flight of stairs into our house. I grinned at her, keys jangling in my hand and she said “ah - endorphins - I remember those”. 

And it stopped me in my tracks. I had done it! I had cracked the code, entered the correct password, and unlocked the secret door to ENDORPHINS. The very ones people had spoken about time and time again, while I had been rolling my eyes at their complicity in this universal lie. 

Since then, I’ve discovered endorphins in other pursuits. Weightlifting (my 2023 fixation), bikini waxing (a lazy girl hack), and spin classes (otherworldly amounts of endorphins that sadly cost £22). But I will always come home to swimming. To that feeling of freedom and weightlessness. No matter the problem, swimming will always be there. Just dunk your head, kick off from the side, and glide. 

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(As I was writing this I remembered my friend, Lu, who used to swim at the Lido with me once said that she liked imagining people in swimming pools without any water in and what a funny visual that would be - humans are weird aren’t we).