Friday, July 8, 2011

Salinity

Most people who know me understand I don't love water. It's not that I don't like being in the water, it's that I don't like getting wet. It takes me straight back to childhood, playing in the public pool and then riding home in a car with a hot vinyl seat, no ac, and a chafing wet swimsuit, literally chapping my ass.

Since then, I've grown to dislike the feeling of water evaporating from my skin in addition to my hatred for wet clothing. My showers have become shorter and my trips to the lake or pool, nearly nonexistent. In fact, I can't tell you the last time I got wet for any other reason than: I'm dirty, it's ridiculously hot, or someone pushed me.

I've never had a drowning incident, except for after my first chest surgery, when my pressure drains filled up in the night and I woke up unable to breathe, my lungs surrounded in fluid. Still, suffocation and drowning are two different things, and that happened when I was 23, long after my aversion to water began.

Just now, I mixed up some salt water for the neti pot and felt the water between my fingers. It brought me back to the very few times I have been in the ocean. You can feel salinity in water, it's not slimy, or viscous, or even soapy feeling. It's just different. I wonder if the perceptible difference in texture is because the saltwater is effecting osmosis on my fingers, gently drawing water from their cells and what I feel is actually that exchange when I touch the water.

I think I feel that at other times too, when something draws energy from me. Could be a reason I hate water. Yo no se.

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