I think of the times I almost died.

The first time was in 2008, I was fourteen…

I used to be a competitive swimmer, and that year, I was going to team champs in Brampton. I was at the warm-up swim (because of course you “warm-up” in a protocol standard temperature pool that is below room temperature, only to get out again and get stiff before you actually race) and the pool was super crowded, like, you saw more bodies than open space and even then that open space held ripples and waves and the smell of chlorine was so potent that to this day being near pools makes me choke and I can’t breathe.

Can’t breathe.

So I was swimming in this packed pool where you can’t go your own pace but apparently that pace isn’t fast enough for some or at least for the boy who had been swimming directly behind me. 

He ran over me and I went under. 

Went under. 

So many bodies tucked together, almost naked bodies with blacked-out areas were above me and I was in a tiled pool that was at least ten feet deep and there was no space to come up and my hair was in a latex cap and my eyes were covered in goggles too tight to my face and my swimsuit with its horrid team colours of navy blue and canary yellow that matched my childhood room was two sizes too small for me because that’s what you did so there would be no drag.

I can’t. I can’t breathe. I can’t. Breathe. Breathe.

My lungs were contracting and getting ready to explode because still there was still no space to come up and I knew I was gonna die and my brain matter was panicking and knew it would be my throat to die first and burn from the chlorine and then my brain would melt and my googles would leak and then I wouldn’t see. 

But then I swam. I swam to an opening at the far end of the pool and I gasped and gulped and choked on air.

Then I had to swim all the way to the other side of the pool to get out of the pool because that ledge was way too high and I got there and I got out and I kept gasping and letting out other choking, guttural sounds and my coach was standing right there—a middle-aged hairy man with a squashed left big toe who said it happened in a shark incident—and he just stared. Stared.

I never wanted to get back in that water again.

I finished my warm-up. 

The next time I almost died was in 2014 when I measured my relationship in months instead of a year and some months and he wanted to make cookies for me so he sent me out to Shoppers because the stove was on and it was summer and warm and I was wearing my favourite sandals. 

City Lights Bookstore used to have two signs. Two signs that were both the same: black cityscape on white background with the title: “City Lights Bookstore.” There is the one you see while walking down Richmond on the sidewalk and there was its twin that hung a story above on a rusty pole.

It was a windy day. 

I was walking with the milk bags pressed against my milk bags in a comforting, cooling sort of way, but still too cold for my liking and the air smelled like dirt as it always does in every summer everywhere and dirt and debris would get in my eyes because it was a windy day but also garbage day downtown.  

I was walking past City Lights, well going to, but then I heard a crinkle and saw some white pieces of plastic shards that looked like glass shards like that one time I found a shard of glass in a customer’s rented shoe and I almost pricked myself like Sleeping Beauty and then I took a step back. I don’t know why I took a step back but I did and I heard the sound of rusted metal and it twisted out a screech and I turned the top of my body but not my legs like an Egyptian hieroglyph and then that top sign fell and shattered to become a collection of shattered plastic, glass and rusted metal barely three feet in front of where I was gonna be walking like a piano falling out of an apartment building in one of those old-timey cartoons and the new-timey cartoons that try to be as good as the old timey cartoons but aren’t. 

Three people rushed over to me. One man who had to at least be in his fifties even jaywalked— jayran to see if I was alright but I just stood there dumb and everyone was asking if I was alright but I was still dumb and then all I wanted was to get upstairs to give Michael his milk.

I did the combination to his apartment with shaky hands and then unlocked the door with a shaky key and then climbed up the too steep steps with shaky legs and opened his apartment door and set the milk down on the laminate-meant-to-look-like-wood counter and told him what happened and he had told me he had heard a noise and thought it had been a car crash and he had looked outside but nothing was there and of course he checked if I was alright but then went back to whatever he had been doing, and then he said “it had been a sign from above” and I wasn’t sure why, but I had to run back downstairs because I had to help clean up and Mike’s landlady and her friend who may be her lover but maybe not was there and the mess was already being cleaned up and they told me I actually had two small cuts around the back of the nape of my neck. 

Life moved on.