Letting go of the wall
So I've been taking two kinds of lessons lately--singing and swimming. I've also been exercising a fair bit lately and am getting in decent shape for the first time in my life.
All of this amounts to me using my body and dealing with my own psychological hang-ups.
My voice teacher seems to think I'm holding back. Her remedy for this is to have me do pleasantly humiliating, childish things like make race car sounds while lying on the floor. She keeps telling me she's connecting me with my inner child.
Those lessons have been great but the swimming didn't go so well. The first problem I encountered was "letting go of the wall." I like the wall a great deal. I can learn to swim as long as I know the wall is there for me to grab if need be, but the swimming instructor seemed to think I was being held back by the wall. We had a slightly adversarial relationship for most of the class.
For instance I need about 10 minutes to calm down when I get in a pool, which she didn't seem to understand. It's not that I'm afraid of water itself--I just need to chill. So I hang out by the wall, take some half-assed attempts at swimming that leave me flailing about, and so on. Eventually I'm cool. This all sort of climaxed as a consequence of Pepsi Max, which is another control problem in itself.
It turns out that I have some sort of mental allergy to Pepsi Max. Meaning it provokes more or less constant rage in me. It took me a week to understand after which the damage had well been done, including a hole in my kitchen wall, but the swimming may not have recovered.
The problem was that I drank a couple of Pepsi Max's before going to swimming class. I'd already been getting a little annoyed with the number of people in the pool limiting my space. We're in the special needs pool, mind you so space is at a premium. So with the Max going full throttle I was getting pissed at everyone. Every time I was going for something it seemed like somebody would come flying through my space and fuck the whole thing up. Then in the middle of swimming I started getting these horrible leg cramps.
Given my previous nuttiness in the special pool, I got the sense that my teacher didn't believe me, but I'd never had cramps like this before. So every time I'd try to swim I'd freak out because my leg would seize up. During a particularly rough one she came over and was prodding me to show her my new skills and I told her in my current condition such a display was not going to be possible. But she kept at it and I ended getting uber-pissed.
The net result was that I ended up back at square one with the wall for 15 minutes sulking and stretching my leg as far from everyone as possible until class ended. So much for a triumphant ending. I vowed not to return to the last class but ended up coming back so I didn't develop some sort of avoidance on account of the leg cramps. If only I could have deployed some well-timed race car sounds it would have all been cool. VROOOM!!!
All of this amounts to me using my body and dealing with my own psychological hang-ups.
My voice teacher seems to think I'm holding back. Her remedy for this is to have me do pleasantly humiliating, childish things like make race car sounds while lying on the floor. She keeps telling me she's connecting me with my inner child.
Those lessons have been great but the swimming didn't go so well. The first problem I encountered was "letting go of the wall." I like the wall a great deal. I can learn to swim as long as I know the wall is there for me to grab if need be, but the swimming instructor seemed to think I was being held back by the wall. We had a slightly adversarial relationship for most of the class.
For instance I need about 10 minutes to calm down when I get in a pool, which she didn't seem to understand. It's not that I'm afraid of water itself--I just need to chill. So I hang out by the wall, take some half-assed attempts at swimming that leave me flailing about, and so on. Eventually I'm cool. This all sort of climaxed as a consequence of Pepsi Max, which is another control problem in itself.
It turns out that I have some sort of mental allergy to Pepsi Max. Meaning it provokes more or less constant rage in me. It took me a week to understand after which the damage had well been done, including a hole in my kitchen wall, but the swimming may not have recovered.
The problem was that I drank a couple of Pepsi Max's before going to swimming class. I'd already been getting a little annoyed with the number of people in the pool limiting my space. We're in the special needs pool, mind you so space is at a premium. So with the Max going full throttle I was getting pissed at everyone. Every time I was going for something it seemed like somebody would come flying through my space and fuck the whole thing up. Then in the middle of swimming I started getting these horrible leg cramps.
Given my previous nuttiness in the special pool, I got the sense that my teacher didn't believe me, but I'd never had cramps like this before. So every time I'd try to swim I'd freak out because my leg would seize up. During a particularly rough one she came over and was prodding me to show her my new skills and I told her in my current condition such a display was not going to be possible. But she kept at it and I ended getting uber-pissed.
The net result was that I ended up back at square one with the wall for 15 minutes sulking and stretching my leg as far from everyone as possible until class ended. So much for a triumphant ending. I vowed not to return to the last class but ended up coming back so I didn't develop some sort of avoidance on account of the leg cramps. If only I could have deployed some well-timed race car sounds it would have all been cool. VROOOM!!!