Why "float"?

I reached a bad place late last summer. The heat and my unreasonable workplace were oppressing me. Every day after work, I returned to my apartment complex and swam and swam in that rectangular pool, frantic to escape heat and gravity and to burn off caged energy. I was having panic attacks as regularly as meals.

Heedless people jostled me in the pool. There was no lap swim time, so I had to dodge clueless ladies who puttered across the short end of the pool through the lanes. Children jumped off the edge into me, bony calcaneus into my side. I felt the same way at work, at all of life, frantically swimming laps, going nowhere, dodging around rude people who would never get out of my way.

All I wanted was a windy, bluegreen river where I could float, alone save for silvery fish meandering along the sandy bottom. I wanted to drift, no one in my way, freed from pointless exertion, free to move at my whim rather than someone else's. Cool water, unchlorinated and sweet, lapping at my ribs. That's all. To float.

I've since washed off panic somewhere between therapy and tai ch'i. I gave a few people a polite but firm shove back, left their cage-pool mentality, and restored that deep river in my psyche. I'm safe and supported by my river, floating again.