I haven't posted here in months. I've been busy though, or as busy as someone who recently received a diagnosis of fibromyalgia should be. I've begun a challenge for 2023 to write at least one poem for every day of the year. Today is day 77 and I've written 88 poems so far. Some of them I'm proud of. Some I'll be pleased to perform if I get the chance. A selection will be printed in a book being published later this year. Some of them I admit aren't great. Some of them are rubbish but they're all part of a process. One of the ideas behind the challenge is that no matter what happens in it I'll be a better poet at the end of the year than I was at the beginning. There are related challenges that unfortunately I haven't been able to enter into because the fibro brings exhaustion and fog with it.
This afternoon I sat and wrote a poem about fibromyalgia and how it felt at that moment. It wasn't a happy poem so I wrote another poem and intended a happy ending that didn't happen. That poem in turn reminded me of a story that I wrote in July 2016. I hunted for it on my old blogs and it wasn't there. So it was a relief to find it in a folder on my laptop. Here it is, without an edit or even a proper read. I seem to remember being quite pleased with it seven years ago.
...
A Forgotten Towel
She had forgotten her towel.
Everything had been going swimmingly.
Joan had got up that morning feeling surprisingly refreshed. She hadn't slept well at all, finding herself unable to stop thinking about a quite unpleasant encounter with her neighbour the previous day. Mr. Fry was a strange man and often said things that other people wouldn't say. Yesterday they had met in the street and she had decided to stop and talk rather than walking past with a polite “Hello” as she often did. The sun shone. She felt as though she was shining inside. So she had felt able to deal with a short, neighbourly conversation with Mr. Fry.
It had been fine. She was sorry to hear that Hilda Smith, the old woman in number sixteen, was back in hospital. She was glad to hear that the council had finally cut back the weeds in a nearby alley that she had given up trying to use some weeks ago because they had made it almost impassible. Mr. Fry was being surprisingly amenable. And Joan was surprised to be feeling glad to have stopped for a chat.
Glad.
Until she wasn't glad at all.
Glad. Until Mr. Fry behaved in a more characteristic Mr. Fry way. Oh yes, Joan was glad. Until he said “Well personally I think the sun brings out the light in your eyes. On the other hand I think you're looking fat recently. Better be careful or you'll never get a man. No children for you unless you look after yourself better. Have you thought about joining a gym?”
Joan hadn't quite known what to say to that. Even for Mr. Fry that was a particularly rude set of comments. Perhaps she wouldn't have believed he had said them except that she had just heard them said. She considered whether to tell him just how rude he had been and whether to tell him in a way that would make it abundantly clear what she thought about him. At that moment those thoughts were unsurprisingly lacking in charity and filled to the brim with obscenities.
But what good would it do? Mr. Fry would almost certainly never change. He was a strange man. Joan suspected that he had some kind of mental disability that made him the way he was. But he might just have been strange. And sometimes nasty too. So Joan just tried to make a joke out of it, said a quick goodbye, and walked on.
She knew she shouldn't let comments like that worry her, especially not comments that came from a source as unreliable as Mr. Fry. She knew that none of it mattered, none of it had anything to do with the facts of who Joan was or how she chose to live. She knew that letting it go, moving on, and having a good day would be what anyone would tell her to do. She told herself to do it too.
Nevertheless, Mr. Fry's comments had hurt. Joan found herself unable to forget them. She was surprised to have allowed herself to be wounded by a weapon of illusion and she kept returning to it through the day. Then through the night too. Somehow she couldn't be kind to herself and let it go. In the small hours that too became a source of another stress as she told herself she was stupid for keeping on thinking about it.
Joan knew she wasn't fat.
And would it really matter if she were? What difference would that make? And what would it have have to do with anyone else anyway, let alone Mr. Fry? Her doctor might need to know if she were morbidly obese. Her tailor would have to know. If she had a tailor. But anyone else could just take a leap of a cliff if they thought her body size was any of their business. Joan knew the truth and she was surprised to have lost sleep over such a demonstrably erroneous comment.
She wasn't fat. She wasn't skinny either. Nobody would have mistaken her from one of those models who look anorexic or were part of the heroin-chic fashion look some years ago. She wasn't a stick who could do with eating a super-sized burger meal every day for a month just to get up to a healthy weight. She had a bit of a belly. She had curves. And she honestly believed that, as bodies went, hers was pretty good.
It didn't matter to her though. She had one body. This one. And it was hers. She had long ago decided just to get on with her life without worrying about whether she was too thin or fat. Or the wrong height, or had the wrong hair or had the wrong skin tone. Life was too short to worry about any of that kind of nonsense.
In any case, she didn't actually want a man. She wondered what Mr. Fry would think about that. And while she didn't go to a gym, she did go swimming regularly. And she had already been planning on going the following day. She liked it there. The feeling of the water on her body, of the little waves that lapped against her chest, comforted her. And the knowledge that she had in the last year learned to propel herself through that water was something that she took pride in.
A year ago she had been afraid of the water. Very afraid. She had needed one to one help from a therapist before she had even been able to get into the pool. The size of it was daunting enough even without the fact that Joan couldn't help worrying about drowning. She knew it was unlikely. She knew that even if she did get into trouble the lifeguards were well trained. But she couldn't stop worrying. She didn't quite know why she had been so afraid, but now that fear was replaced by a confidence she hadn't even dared to hope for.
When Joan got up that morning, the encounter with Mr. Fry was still at the back of her mind. She wished it wasn't, but even that bad night's sleep had refreshed her, and she knew his words would fade and she wouldn't allow herself to be affected by them much longer. In future she decided that she might politely say hello as they passed in the street but she wouldn't be so willing to stop and chat with the man.
Maybe it had affected her more than she thought. Or maybe it would have happened anyway, just one of those things that happen, we deal with, and then later can laugh about. Whatever the case, she didn't know quite what to do.
Here she was, dripping wet, naked in a changing cubicle.
And she had forgotten her towel.
Joan had walked to the pool that morning, happy in the thought that she was returning to the pool again. Since she had started to visit regularly her confidence in the water had grown immensely and each time she tried to push herself further. To swim that extra length. To spend more time trying the butterfly stroke which, for some reason she couldn't fathom, seemed much more difficult than any of the others.
Today's swim had been excellent. She felt physically strong and full of energy and it was as if her body contained more life than it ever had before. She didn't just swim one extra length. She managed several. She broke her personal best by swimming thirteen lengths of breaststroke. She swam seven lengths of front crawl and felt far less tired than she had ever felt before. And then, from that position of strength, Joan turned to the dreaded butterfly determined to try hard and focus on what her arms and legs were doing, to follow through as best as she could. It hadn't been perfect by any means but today she had seemed to move through the water faster than she ever had before and it felt easier to do it. Something must have been going right.
She had sat by the pool to rest after that. She dangled her legs into the water and could almost feel the softness of the meniscus on the top of the water as it gently rose and fell on her calves. For a moment she allowed herself to close her eyes and found herself imagining what it would be like to be a pond skater and to walk free on top of that thin layer. She slowly lifted her toes in and out of the water and let herself feel each little drop of water as it fell from them and each moment of pleasure as her toes sank again. She smiled at how far she had come. Just one year ago these pleasure moments had been moments of painful fear.
Everything felt as if it were suspended in a drop of perfection, into which the light spreads into colours and breaks brilliant across a face held in calm.
And at that moment, Joan felt mentally strong enough to go beyond anything she had ever managed before. She resolved to try something new. Something she had never faced before. Today would be the day. Today she would jump off a diving board. Just the low one, a few feet above the water. Just the low one. Hey, just the low one? She corrected herself. For Joan this wasn't just anything. This was a big step and she felt proud of herself, immensely proud, for making that decision to try.
She walked up to the board and stared at it. Joan knew that the drop was small. But standing in front of the board it looked insurmountable. Her mind fantasised about the possibilities and Joan couldn't shut up the torrent of images and fear and self-doubt. As they multiplied and got more catastrophic it felt as if the water under the board was a maelstrom which would swallow her up and never let her go.
Joan was afraid. She had wanted to try diving off the board for a while but never before had she made it to this point. Just the thought had been too much. And here she was, fighting the fear with all her strength. Today was the day. Joan promised herself that if she did this she would buy herself a nice reward in town afterwards. She would deserve it.
She took a deep breath.
Then another.
And then an even deeper one.
Then she slowly climbed up the two steps leading onto the board. She stared at the end of the board. It's fair to say that were she not worried what people would think of her if she turned round she might have stopped at that point. And even that would have been great progress. But Joan didn't want to be ashamed, even if she knew there wasn't anything to be ashamed of.
She walked to the end of the board, hoping that nobody was watching her too carefully, hoping that nobody could see her shaking.
Joan looked down at the water.
It was just water. But her mind transformed it into acid, into a crocodile infested swamp.
It was only a few feet below her. But it looked like a hundred, a thousand, as if she couldn't possibly survive the drop, that her body would be smashed to pieces.
She knew she was safe. But the fear, the fear, the danger. Joan couldn't control her breathing. Her heart steamed ahead as if it were a race to get to the end of her life. Her limbs felt unsteady and the building seemed to sway up and down with every moment of the water. Just for a moment she wished she had never decided to jump from the board. Why had she agreed with herself to do such a difficult thing today? Why? Was she just a stupid woman with ideas beyond her capabilities? Was this too much for someone like her and she just an idiot for suggesting it?
She didn't know how much time passed. It felt as if surely the pool must have closed for the day, reopened, closed again and repeated the cycle many times. She knew it was probably just a few seconds. But the illusions we create are such as would drown our dreams.
Something fell into its place within and Joan found new volition. She could do this. She would do it.
And she jumped from the board, in as graceful a dive as she could manage.
She was only underwater for a moment and then was able to breathe again and she breathed hard and an immense grin spread over her face and she laughed out loud.
She lay on her back in the water and paddled back to the side of the pool, laughing and feeling as if she could swim the English Channel next week rather than lengths of a swimming pool.
Joan had conquered her fear, or at least taken a pretty major step in that direction. And the exuberance was perhaps greater than she had felt in her life.
She climbed out of the pool. She looked at the clock on the wall and noticed that it was time to stop. Joan had been at the swimming pool for longer than she ever had before. And it had been great. She could hardly wait for the following week to arrive and then she could do it all again and jump off that board again, perhaps with a little more grace and a little less of a splash. Her dive wouldn't have won any awards but she couldn't care in the slightest about that.
She walked back to the changing room, took a shower, retrieved her bag from her locker and then shut herself in the changing room. She took off her swimming costume and let it drop, making a pleasurable splatting sound as it landed on the floor. Joan opened her bag. And that's when she realised.
She had forgotten her towel.
The shock was as if her world had fallen away. Just moments ago everything had seemed so perfect and Joan had felt better about herself than she had done in a very long time. Now there was this to deal with and she had no adrenalin left to carry her through it.
Everything from the last day added up to a point at which she couldn't deal with anything new. The way she had allowed Mr. Fry's comments to affect her so much. Her lack of sleep the previous night. Physical exhaustion from pushing herself so hard to swim so far and so well. The great fear of that diving board and the sheer bloody minded determination it had taken to overcome it. Even the hormonal rush in the euphoria after her success. It all added up and Joan couldn't manage to look past the little crisis.
For a while she just stood there in the cubicle, still naked, with her hair still dripping water down her body.
Then she sat on the wooden bench, put her head down to her knees and started to cry. Feelings of pride became weapons of shame as Joan internally shouted at herself. How could she have been so stupid as to forget her towel? And how could she be so stupid to be crying about it now?
Slowly her head achieved some kind of focus again and a plan formed. First she would get dressed again into her swimming costume. That wouldn't be pleasant. Putting on a wet and cold swimming costume wasn't ever going to be her number one choice of activity for a relaxing night in. Then she would put her bag back in the locker. Then she would shower again. She knew that would leave her more wet than she presently was but after so much time standing and sitting naked she felt decidedly chilly and she knew that the warm water would help make her feel at least a little more relaxed. Warmth and relaxation wouldn't solve her problem but at least they would be preferable to cold tension.
As Joan showered she was able to pick her world up again and look at it. She wasn't stupid. Not at all. Anyone could forget a towel. Anyone. It was unfortunate but it didn't mean she was stupid. Or bad. Or a disaster. Or a loser. Or any of the other names she had been calling herself. In fact she was pretty damn good. She was. She had done incredibly well in the pool and not just today but every day she had been there. She was an overcomer. And if she could overcome her terror of the water then she could overcome a missing towel.
Maybe the swimming pool staff would have spare towels. That would be sensible. Surely other people forgot towels and the pool would keep some handy in case of just such an eventuality. Yes, that would work.
Joan turned off the shower, feeling a lot better and padded her way to the little booth near the changing room entrance. A staff member was sitting there looking very bored. There wasn't a lot to do in the little booth near the entrance. Unless a school party were there and you had to tell them to be a bit quieter. Apart from that she had never seen the person in the booth do much of anything.
“Hi, excuse me. Sorry to bother you. I seem to have forgotten my towel and was wondering if you had one that I could borrow. Or even buy – I can pay for it when I'm dressed.”
The woman in the booth looked Joan up and down and smiled sympathetically.
“Sorry dear. I'd love to help you. We do keep a few spare towels here usually but we had a children's party here this morning. They had all come to swim and then enjoy refreshments and cakes in the café. It was ever so funny in a way because nearly all of them had forgotten to bring towels and they ended up having to share our towels, one towel between three. The man and woman in charge of the group had such a time getting them all organised. Oh yes, I had to laugh and when I told John about it during my lunch break he nearly burst a blood vessel he laughed so hard.”
The woman chuckled about it for a while and then stopped all at once as if she had suddenly remembered that Joan was standing in front of her.
“Anyway. Yes. Anyway. Unfortunately it means that we haven't got any spare towels to lend you. It's a shame you couldn't have forgotten your towel tomorrow. We'd have got the other ones dry and clean by then. Sorry about that.”
The woman went back to looking bored. Useless. Maybe Joan would have to leave the pool in wet clothes. If she was clever she could get at least partially dry using some of them and would have enough dry clothes left to cover her damp body enough that she wouldn't get too many funny looks and comments on the way home. It wasn't ideal but it would have to do.
Joan turned round to walk back to her locker and saw a woman looking at her.
“Hey,” the woman said, “Sorry to intrude but I couldn't help but overhear your conversation just then. Maybe I can help you. I've just come in for a swim but I only live down the road and I've got a season ticket for this place. You could borrow my towel and I could swim later. That would be okay.”
Joan could not have been more grateful. Just for today, this woman could be her saviour. Nevertheless she said, “Oh, I couldn't impose upon you like that. You don't have to do that for me, you should have your swim now.”
The woman laughed and said, “Nonsense, it's fine. It's no problem for me and would solve yours. I'll tell you what. If it makes you feel better you can buy me a coffee once we get out of here. My name's Rosie by the way.”
“Well, if you insist. I'm Joan. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's very kind of you.”
Joan paused for a moment to gather together some confidence and then said, “Yes, a drink somewhere sounds wonderful. Let's go. Not to the café here though, it's not the best and to be honest I'd like to be somewhere else right now. I know a quiet place nearby. Brown's Tea Rooms. I guess you know it too what with living so close. Thank you again.”
“It's no trouble at all. Honestly. And Brown's sounds good to me. Hey, they do a totally tasty cheesecake too. You get the drinks and I'll treat you to a slice. I'll wait for you on those comfy chairs near the entrance. See you soon. It'll be good.”
Rosie handed Joan her towel and Joan went off to get changed. In the space of just a few minutes, smiles had turned to tears and here she was smiling again. Joan had seen Rosie at the pool before and had always been a little daunted by her because Rosie was a strong swimmer and always had the most gorgeous swimming costumes. Joan remembered that at least once Rosie had worn a flowery bikini and she wasn't ashamed to admit to herself that she had noticed Rosie more than usual that day.
“Oh don't get your hopes up Joan. Just don't. You're just going for a quick drink. Mmm. And maybe cake too. And she said it'll be good. She said it, not me. Oh stop it Joan, just stop it right now!”
But Joan couldn't quite stop her thoughts wandering to the possibility of a drink becoming something more one day. It was too much to hope for. But maybe on the day of diving from that board, anything could happen. A drink might turn into a friendship. Who knows? It could perhaps even become more. At the very least she would have met a good woman with a towel. So whatever happened, she was in a winning situation. Her mistake had made her life better. At least for this moment. At least for today. And today was all that mattered.
Joan kept smiling as she finished getting dressed.
As she looked in the mirror to brush her hair she couldn't help noticing just how big that smile was.
And then, trying not to make her feelings and hopes too obvious, she went off to meet Rosie.
