The Perfect Boy

Drowned

Whenever anxiety overwhelmed me, before I was having a panic attack, if the weather was okay, I usually went for swimming. Swimming had a way of relaxing my mind. I loved swimming as it was a solitary kind of sport and I was a solitary kind of a person. Sometimes, I could stay in the water for hours on end. In there, I felt free. I gained my energy and regained my strength, being in the water by myself.  No one was watching me. No one I needed to pretend myself to. No one I had to show my fake smile to. In the water, I let my senses frolic. Sometimes, I wondered whether tears had actually come out (even as I swore to myself that I would never cry again) and had become mixed with the pool water. The feeling of melancholy in the water was overwhelming, but it was at the same time soothing, to be able to shout as loud as you could without having no one to hear, or being able cuss or state your fears to the nothingness around you with no ears to listen

I must say, the water had big part of what I had become today. Osaka noticed that immediately when he accompanied me in the swimming pool. He helped me find the ghosts in the water and get rid of them. To me, it was like getting rid of thorns and thistles from your own bed.

I started swimming since I was 9 together with Ben, my best-friend-turned-bully and my other best friend, Matthew, when we took swimming lesson. It was actually because of Ben that I swam. To me, he was so fascinating and alluring, I was totally drawn to him, alssys had been.  

Whatever he told me to do, I would literally did it. It was Matt who many times became a balancing factor. He was an antithesis of who Ben was. One summer day we sneaked into the town's public swimming pool when it was already closed. After half an hour of swimming, I stopped and looked for Matt who I hadn't noticed of his where about in the swimming pool. It was so dark as there was only one street light a distance away. We never found him. The police did when they pulled his lifeless body.

I hated to admit it, but the pool had a strong effect on me. Whenever I was in it; I felt so energized and invigorated. I felt aggressive and stimulated. Even when I felt calmed, I felt like there was a ball of fire in my belly.

On the first day when I asked Osaka to accompany me swimming, he was in the water motionless for 15 minutes watching me swimming. I felt fine but he felt there was so much energy in me that I was going to explode. I swam every stroke that needed to be done, he looked at the reason behind the strokes. That was when he stopped me in the middle of the swimming pool. It was just a very gentle pull and he dragged me to the side. There, he did what he usually did whenever he wanted to calm me down. He hugged me with what felt like electricity releasing its sting on me down to lethargy. I didn't know what he was saying at first. It was too much to take in, after all I was the one who did the swimming and I was the one who was feeling the emotion.  There in the water, he embraced me for what seemed like forever.

Then it dawned on me when once again Osaka shed those tears of his. I had become like this because of Matt. Memories came to me, nightmares that haunted me whereever I went.  Sometimes, when I was swimming, I was as if seeing a vision of Matt. I saw him drowning, being sucked helpless into the water pump below where he was found.  So, I raced in an ineffective effort to save him. There he drowned.  There he died.