The Day I Drowned

I was drowned as a child. My heart stopped beating. I died and had to be resuscitated.

I can still remember the boy’s faces as they held me under, knowing full well what they were doing. The malice etched into their features. I was 4 years of age. They were 8 or 9. I may have come into contact with them down the years and not known it. There’s something frightening about that. There might be grown men living in my town, in their mid-50’s now and they killed a boy. Me. They were laughing. Bragging about what they had done. Scary.

I finally wrote about it this year, in poem form. 9th May at 23.57pm.

Anyhow, this is what I wrote:-

The panic rises
Within me a fear
Memories repressed
The life long ago
A different time
Sinking down breathless
Their laughing faces
My life ebbed away
And then it all stopped
There was just nothing
I coughed and spluttered
Breathed in the sweet air
That indicated
My bittersweet return

Did I feel better for writing it? No, not really. Has my life been enhanced by it? Nope, not at all. Needless to say, I had to write it. To get it out there. To get it out of me.

I think a lot of the negatives in my life can be traced back to that point in time. Mum said I walked in as a carefree boy and left an old man, scared of my own shadow. That I didn’t take risks after that but played everything super-safe. It made my childhood oddly clinical and joyless. I can remember having to go swimming at school and I would wear wear arm-bands, 2 rubber rings and have a float ‘just in case’ I got pulled under or lost my footing.

I hate those 2 boys, now men, for what they did to me that day. I was glad when I went bald because while I had hair, Mum washed it in the sink with me facing away so no water went into my eyes or over my face. Even now if I’m in a shower, I have to move the shower-head down below my face and then wash my face separately, with a flannel. If the water is cold, I panic. It’s terrible.

So yeah, that’s my story of the day I drowned.