I felt this nauseating feeling rising up from my 8 year old gut to my tight throat as my mom pulled the van into the parking lot. This was day 3, and things hadn’t gotten any better. My parents had insisted that I’d be fine and that I’d get over it, but I wasn’t feeling any less terrified than I was two days ago. These people I had to face every day this week were trying to kill me, and I couldn’t come up with an escape plan. But today was day 3, Wednesday. Only 2 more days and this agonizing week of swim lessons would be over.

My fear of water wasn’t going anywhere, and it looked like I’d be living the rest of my life forever fearing drowning. This was embarrassing as an 8 year old, because all my friends were learning how to swim and were diving head first off the diving board. But I was the kid curled up in a ball in tears on the concrete - a good 6 feet from the edge of the pool. I was terrified just to jump into the pool without...