I was eight years old when my swimming instructor threw me into the deep end.
No warning. No reassurance. Just a pair of hands lifting me, and then water — cold, four meters deep, slamming into my face.
My arms flailed. My legs kicked. I swallowed water. My lungs burned.
I thought I was going to drown.
That memory came back to me in therapy decades later, when my therapist asked me a different question.
He asked me about boundaries.
I told him I couldn’t remember ever having any. No rules about screen time. No restrictions on candy. No bedtime, really. As long as I did well in school, I could do whatever I wanted.
I quit piano after three lessons. Karate. Taekwondo. Swimming. Music school. I gave up on everything the moment it got boring or hard. And nobody stopped me. Nobody made me sit with the discomfort of doing something slow.
I asked him: did that make me spoiled? Undisciplined?
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he took me back to the pool.
In the memory, I saw the eight-year-old me — terrified, gasping for breath. And then I saw my therapist there, in the water, holding me steady.
You’re safe. Breathe.
I told him I was angry. Scared. That my instructor threw me in without warning.
He nodded. He understood. And then he took me home.
In the living room, my mother was there. The TV humming. She told him: He gets all the love he needs. He plays with his cousins. He does well in school. What more does he need?
My therapist looked at her, calmly but firmly.
He needs boundaries. He needs to learn that life isn’t always fun. Sometimes it’s boring. Sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do.
I jumped in — my eight-year-old self, defensive.
But I don’t want to do boring things! Piano is slow. The drills are dull. I’d rather play Nintendo or go outside!
My therapist smiled. Gently. Firmly.
Life isn’t a fantasy land. Not everything is supposed to be fun. Sometimes you need to push through the dull moments. That’s how you grow. That’s how you achieve things.
I crossed my arms. It’s stupid.
And I saw my mother hesitate. I could see she agreed with him. But she didn’t know how to handle me. She knew I’d resist. She knew I could be stubborn.
So she chose love without limits. And love without limits, I learned much later, isn’t love. It’s avoidance dressed as kindness.
The pool is a strange metaphor.
Sometimes life throws you in the deep end without warning. That happened to me at eight. That happened to me at eleven, leaving Iran. That happened over and over.
But if you’ve never learned how to swim through the boring, slow parts of life — the daily discipline, the small repeated efforts — then every deep end feels like drowning.
The adult me knelt next to the eight-year-old. I told him:
The therapist is right. We have to learn how to push through the boring stuff. That’s how we get to the good things. Without it, life will always feel incomplete.
He looked at me. Wide-eyed. Understanding.
I pulled him into a long hug.
And we stepped back onto the train.