When I was six years old, my mother tried to drown me. It was a scar I didn't know how to live with, a wound covered by a plastic wrap that I was terrified to poke into. She forced me to take swimming lessons then so I would never drown. She didn't care that every time I got close to water; I screamed and thrashed and feared for my life. Her concern was for me to learn to swim so I learnt. I learnt to swim hard, to swim fast as I found the faster I got to the finish line, the faster I could be out of the water.
Every day she watched me swim after my training, she would hug me close and we would cry together as I shivered. Fourteen years later, I wasn't any less scared of water bodies than I was at six.
I realized my mother didn’t behave like other mothers as I grew. I visited the pack h
