H 2 NO 2

i don't know if my father was ever fully aware that the entire time he was doing his best to make a swimmer out of me, his beloved son was working twice as hard to make water my most persistent phobia. by the time i was in my later single digits, i had developed a bit of confidence and if there weren't too many people in the water (and if mike was NOT one of them) i could often step into a swimming pool and stand several feet from the edge without feeling absolutely certain of my impending death. but mike was a sneaky little bastard and he always found a way to bring horror and pain into my world. just as i was starting to get comfortable waving my arms around and bobbing a little (to get the ends of my hair wet-- it increased the normalcy factor) and trying to restore regular breathing, there he would be. i would spot him either not at all or way too late. slithering along the bottom of the pool like the snake that he often was, my darling brother would grab my ankles forcefully and yank me down under the water. since gasping is the natural response to this kind of surprise, i always came up drooling and coughing and making throw-up sounds. tears and snot, hopefully indistinguishable from pool water, would pour out of all of my facial orifices as i cried and flopped and tried to sprint through the cruel waters to get out of the death trap. sometimes i would see him just before he struck. cheeks bulged out with air and eyes bugging out all over the place. damn it! often he would grab on and just hold on for a moment, knowing that the anxiety of knowing what was likely coming was worse than the shock alone of being dragged under. my father's hard work was once again undone. 4 hours of trying to leap from the side of the pool. 4 hours of trust-building around water. gone in one swift trip-line maneuver. as i sputtered and coughed and begged the atmosphere for just one more breath, mike would swim away and laugh and laugh and laugh. i knew from the 9 years we had already shared a home that verbal responses only made things worse, but i had terrible self-control when i was mad at him. "it's not funny! i couldn't breathe!" as soon as i would say it i would know i had made a terrible mistake. "i can't breathe!!" uttered in a desperate panic was my brother's favorite thing to make me say. and he freakin' loved it! "I can't BREE! i can't BREE!" he would shout as he mocked me with the ever watchful eye that ensured my parents weren't seeing any of this. it was important that they didn't so that when i finally dug my fingernails into his forearms in self-defense, he could claim the attack was unsolicited. he even used to bury be under blankets and sit on me until i would finally scream "i can't breathe!" then he would relent and run around mocking me until my parents came around. his favorite game was to make me cry out the words 'i can't breathe'. what kind of sick twisted mentality is that?

i am 30 now and he is 34. i still can't swim, nor can i stand in a body of water with a lot of other people in it. and if today i found myself in a situation in which my brother was in a swimming pool and i was invited to enter, i absolutely would not do it. not because of some kind of weird PTSD thing (although i won't rule it out) but because the boy hasn't changed that much. i am absolutely certain that he would swim up to my ankles TODAY and pull my head under the water just to watch me sputter and drool. and he would be doing it "for old time's sake". and he would laugh. and he would say "i can't BREEEEEE!!"