I just can't learn how to swim because I am so afraid and terrified.
In total, I’ve been learning to swim for a little over two months as a 22-year-old. A kid started at the same time as me, learned quickly, and now swims in the deep end. I still can’t swim properly in water deeper than my height (5'7"). I can swim in shallow water, but I still struggle to rotate my body and turn my head to breathe. Whenever I try, I lose all my momentum.
I never learned how to swim as a kid, and I’ve been terrified of the deep end ever since I first got into a pool. I nearly drowned once in the 7-foot section — it took five people to save me (two lifeguards and three friends). After that, I decided never to go deeper than 6 feet so I could at least push myself back up from the bottom if needed.
I think the main things I need to learn now are how to tread water and how to rotate my body properly to breathe while swimming.
But even though writing this is easy, actually doing it still feels incredibly hard. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never truly learn how to swim and will just have to accept that I should stay away from deep water and other large bodies of water.