No more swimming pool for a transwarrior

There was a time when I really enjoyed diving headfirst into the cold water in the summer. Unlike others, it wasn't a taste I acquired during childhood; rather, this practice became relevant in my early adult life, when I started running competently.

It wasn't uncommon for me to time my run during August to coincide with the time my mother would go for her two-kilometer swim in the swimming pool where we lived. I suppose that in a way, this was one of the small gestures that built a close relationship.

But what I truly loved was diving in the sea, descending to where the water felt colder and death was just a breath away, which was always a very occasional pleasure because I lived 400 kilometers from the nearest beach. Interestingly, I'm one of those people who have no problem with sand.

Even before transitioning, I started losing confidence in going to swimming pools. During periods when things weren't going well, this tended to manifest as feeling really bad about the possibility of my body being seen, so the few times I went to the pool, I'd dive in wearing one of those swimsuit t-shirt.

Of course, all of this changed when I transitioned. In a life where the very management of my identity is so dependent on how others treat me and on an unexpected reflection not showing me what I don't want to see, my reliance on makeup, wigs, and dresses becomes quite incompatible with underwater activities.

So, since 2022, I haven't experienced the pleasant sensation of diving headfirst, the wonderful coolness of the water, the weightlessness, or the powerful feeling of diving fifty meters and surfacing comfortably.

I don't consider it a tragedy at all. It's a luxury typical of enough wealthy societies, one I've given up for the sake of asserting my gender identity, which is also only possible in sufficiently enough societies. I simply perceive it as a whole as something I no longer have access to because I'm a terrible person, and it remains in my memory as something that actually happened to another "me" that I hope will never return.