“I was almost there”
The water felt wonderful as I stepped in. It felt as nice as I thought it would as I pushed off and glided through the water just a few inches from the bottom of the pool. Ribbons of sunlight made their way to the bottom of the pool as I blew out bubbles and sank closer to the hard pool surface below. I felt so relaxed as I floated along.
Just when I thought I had reached the far wall of the pool, I reached out and touched…nothing. The wall wasn’t there. So I reached out and brought my arms to my side, pushing myself forward into the blurry blue beyond. As I gently cut through the water, bursts of green and violet appeared as though someone were rinsing out a paintbrush. I drifted through clouds of color, no longer able to see the sunlight above or the bottom below.
Suddenly, it was as if a rainbow had exploded in the water. Colors were everywhere. I swam toward the teal, then the oranges, the indigo, and then the bright blue. I felt like I was trapped in a kaleidoscope, tumbling through every color and shape I ever knew. Up and down meant nothing. I reached towards the red, backed into the yellow, spun through the green, crawled along the blues.
I wanted to stay here forever. I felt something pulling at me, pulling backwards, pulling me away from this buffet of color. I tried to push the hands away. My lungs suddenly filled with air. I saw the sky, clouds, faces above me. “Are you OK?”
Reluctantly, I said, “Yes, I feel fine.” I laid there and said, “Am I OK?”
“We think you were down there for an hour. If the pool guy hadn’t seen you down there, you’d be…gone.”
I smiled. “No. I was almost there.”
