In My Shoes

The blinding lights matched the fast-paced tempo of my thumping heart. It wasn’t the first or hundredth time, but I still could never imagine myself getting used to the overwhelming buzz of the paparazzi that thronged about the entrance of all the school events. It was only a school after all, which led me to sometimes question why there was always so much fuss during events.

“Look here, please!”

“Miss Miller, a word with you!”

“Over here, ma’am!” The throng of reporters invited to cover the event kept calling out to me from every side. I was starting to feel nauseous and light-headed but I knew I could not afford to give in to my wimpy desires. I knew I had to stand strong if I was going to beat the journalistic crowd.

I started swimming when I was three years old, and even though most people would think my mom wild and crazy to be getting her three-year-old daughter in a pool to teach her how to swim, it eventually played out very well for me. Not only had I turned out to be a very good swimmer, but I had also become so good that I was representing my state in interstate competitions. And I had been winning.

I was only fifteen and in my first year in senior high, but I was already traveling from state to state to compete with athletes that were also local champions in their states. My school had decided to move me into a special program that would allow me to still receive standard education while giving priority to swimming, and I was to be separated from my friends whom I had known since day one of junior high.

At first, I had objected vehemently. Making friends was the hardest task that I had ever done in my life and it had taken me two whole years to finally have three solid friends I could call mine. Just when I started settling in, they decided to separate me. I would not have it.

I starved, I cried, I begged. There was nothing I was not ready to do to get them to change their minds. I tried to find substitute plans that would still prioritize swimming while I took normal classes in school so I could be with my friends. I read and wrote articles on why it was important to let your kids have and enjoy their social lives, all to no avail.

I even tried talking to them about mental health and how their decision to pull me out of my roots could lead to depression and the likes. My mom would have none of such. She had fought too hard, swallowed too many insults, and spent way too many sleepless nights scheming, just so she could bring me to the point I had gotten to. She had every plan to take me further.

I walked to the podium waiting patiently for me inside the school hall. The large expanse that served as an assembly hall on regular days and a party hall during graduation and other events, completely transformed whenever they were having such events as the press conference I was about to get into. I took three deep breaths and inwardly patted myself on my shoulders. It was going to be another hard day at work.

I had been finding it hard to deal with the pressure from school and work recently. I had tried talking to my mom but she was too busy making arrangements for the event and the three other conferences I would have to attend in the next two weeks (all in different states by the way). I was finding Chemistry difficult. Balancing equations was the worst of them all, yet, I felt strangely drawn to the subject.

Truth be told, I loved swimming, but I would also love to go to school like every other kid and have to worry about a D in my test because I had a lot riding on being school smart. I wanted to go to parties and have a boyfriend, fall in love, and cry over heartbreaks with my girlfriends like every other girl. I wanted all these but my career in swimming would not let me. I wanted out.

I had been thinking of ways to tell my mom about how I wanted to quit swimming, but the sheer thought sent shivers down my spine. I was sure it would send her to a wheelchair. She had only recovered from a partial stroke two years back when my legs suddenly became stiff for a month. It had taken a lot of physical and psychological therapy to get me back on my feet. Literally.

I couldn’t afford to cause her another hypertension, but I couldn’t deal with the pressure and emptiness anymore either. I wanted out. I needed out. It was going to cost me everything but I felt too tired to continue, too tired to care. My mom had been there for me all those years but I needed to be here for me, now.

“My life doesn’t feel like it’s mine anymore, everyday feels like it’s moving without me. I feel like my life is being lived without my involvement. I need me, to feel me, to live me. Again. I want to live again. I want to breathe like my breath belongs to me, not any woman, authority, or organization. I want to walk, talk, swim, for me. I want to live for me…”

“Jane! Jane! Are you there?! Jane?!” The shock from the tenacity of her call forced my consciousness back to the setting before me. “Where am I? Why is there so much noise? Why am I being shouted at by my mom?” Her voice came louder this time. “Jane, the reporter just asked you when you plan to break your latest 100 backstroke record? Do you have anything to say to that?”

She loved to do this. She would intentionally single out a question that would aim at goading me to practice more, sweat more, die more. Usually, I would give them a very witty remark that indicated a desire to beat it in my next meet but this time, I could care less what they thought about me.

“I don’t know,” I answered blatantly and walked out of the press conference. The only thing I looked forward to whenever I got to visit my school for these events, was the fact that I got to see my best friends afterward to spend time with them. My unexpected response had set the entire press team in disarray and many of them tried to follow me for follow-up questions but I lacked the patience for all that.

My security officers answered them on my behalf and not long afterward, I was left alone to enjoy the peace and solitude of being with my fifteen-year-old best friend. All the press conferences held in the school were always aired live in the school’s second hall where all the students were ordered to sit down and watch their colleagues making ‘waves’ in society. It was meant to be a means of spurring them to work harder. I felt it was just a means to degrade them.

“J! J! Wait up! We just watched the live broadcast. What was that about just now? You wanna talk?” Ziba looked as serious as ever in her geek glasses, sweatshirt, and sling bag school bag. With tears threatening to pour out of the corners of my eyes, I ran to her for comfort. I was just about to rest my face into her well-padded bosom of comfort when an all too familiar voice stopped me with her hand yanking on my left ear.

“Hephzibah, what the hell do you think you are about to do?! How dare you try to bless her with that extra comfy roomy bosom of yours when she just did something really stupid on air. She needs a knock, not a breast! And you!…” She turned to face me square in the eyes. She had not let go of my little left ear all the while she had been talking, it was starting to turn red and burn. I yelped.

“Ella, c-could you p-please let g-go of my ear? It’s hurting me.” With Ella, you couldn’t get through to her with force. Just ascertain submission and you would get what you wanted. Unlike Ziba and I who were tall, she was a little over five feet two inches, yet she was the most domineering of the three of us.

She was a midget (mildly put, of course), but she liked to ascertain dominance wherever she found herself. Most people would avoid her because of this flaw, but if you could look past it, you would get to see that inwards, she’s one of the sweetest humans you could ever cross paths with.

“Guys, I wanna quit swimming.” I let the words hang heavy in the air and waited for someone to break the rock-solid silence that ensued after my declaration. “I’m not sure I heard correctly. Ziba please correct me if I’m wrong, but did this young lady just confide in us that she wants to end her life??” Ziba coughed before speaking, and when she did, it was in a small voice.

“Umm… I think she said she wants to quit swimming, not her life.” Ella was getting riled up. “I know that but don’t you know that her quitting swimming is equivalent to her quitting her life?? Swimming is her life, for crying out loud!” I could see the veins popping out of Ella’s temples. The poor thing. Why she was so bothered about my problem made me wonder. It was my life after all, why was she so bothered about it?

I coughed for five seconds before speaking and when I did I was careful enough to pick the correct words to avoid another shutdown from the girls.

“I’m tired guys, I feel choked. I want my life back and in that respect, I wanna quit swimming.” They looked at her skeptically, not sure if they had the words to respond to what they had just heard.

“Guys? Say something na… don’t you think it’s a good idea? I need to get your take on it. Do I quit and be happy or not?” I stared hard at them with my parody of a puppy dog eyes look and begged them to agree in my favor. I needed their acceptance more than anything in the world. If they agreed, that meant I was definitely on the right track, and if they disapproved well… I needed them to talk.

“Guy, it doesn’t make any sense. You can’t afford to lose swimming. If you do, what else would you have? You can’t abeg, you just can’t.” Well, I didn’t expect a much different reply from Ella. I already had a feeling she was going to say something like that. I turned to Ziba for help. My eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Ziba? How about you? Do you agree with Ella that I should keep swimming?”

Ziba sighed heavily and looked both ways as though she was trying to evade my question. I knew she would have run away if she had the opportunity to do so. “Well??” Still nothing from her. I got frustrated and ran out of the classroom we had been talking in. The two people I had gotten the motivation to quit from were giving up on me. I ran to the school’s pool.

The pool stared at me and I stared back. I had never felt so lonely in my whole life. I looked at my reflection in the water and scoffed. It was my only company.

“That’s right. No one loves me. No one cares about me. They love the swimmer but they don’t love plain Jane. The moment I present the idea of not swimming anymore they get thrown off, they don’t see me. They only see the lights around me.”

I looked at the water and the water glared back at me. It had been my only companion aside from myself all these years. It beckoned me to come closer, the way it did when I stepped in for the first time as a three-year-old. I answered and inched forward till I was diving into the water. I was still swimming when I suddenly got a cramp in my leg. I knew better than to struggle but I couldn’t help it. A few moments later, everything got dark.

You know, it’s true what they say that just before you die your entire life plays out before you. As I stopped struggling inside the water and the blue began to turn black, I saw flashes of my past play out in front of me. I saw three years old me wearing my mom’s swim fins when she was still a professional swimmer.

She had had to stop swimming because she was diagnosed with rheumatism and she had almost died once from a leg cramp while swimming one time. For her, that had been the end of the road, until I showed the tiniest interest in the water and she had made her dream mine. My silent monologue continued as everywhere got even darker.

“All these years, I just wanted mom to hug me because I was cold or scared from a nightmare, not because I had won another gold medal.

All these years, I just wanted normal friends that I could talk about random things with, not because I posed a starry future to them.

All these years, I just wanted to walk in my shoes, not having to deal with the pressure that mom’s bigger shoes carried.

All these years, I simply wanted to be happy. Nothing more, nothing less.”

All images are gotten from unsplash.com