[for @dreamskept]
‘A hobby,’ his therapist had said, ‘Something to keep you busy. Perhaps it would help you make friends and open up more’. He had hobbies - reading, and sleeping, but once he had mentioned it, the therapist had shaken his head. ‘I mean something that would get you to socialize,’ Christophe did not want to socialize, ‘it could make you feel better,’ he had given up hope for feeling better anyways, ‘you like the water, don’t you? I heard the school you go to has a swimming club,’ he had not had anything in response to that.
More than once he had glanced at the place where the pool was located, wishing to leave behind whatever he was doing and jump in - though he was not a fast swimmer, the mere sensation of being submerged in water brought him calm. Underwater, the harsh sounds of the world were dampened, and he could hear everything inside him - heartbeat, breathing, pulsing blood. There were no unpleasant sensations underwater: nothing was touching him, and he was touching nothing but the very thing he was in. How pleasant would it have been to swim every day... And this thought was the farthest he ever had gotten before the last few weeks. ‘They would never accept me,’ he had told himself the moment a thought of applying had come to him, ‘I could never be good enough swimmer’.
On one clear, cold Monday afternoon, he had found himself walking to where the pool was located, for surely, watching people do something he liked would count as a hobby... Or at least so he hoped, for there was no way he would ever gain enough courage to approach the captain. How would he even explain himself? All the boys on the team seemed to have muscles and be in good form... But despite eating enough to never feel hungry(Which really was not much), most of his bones were visible each and every time Christophe unclothed himself. And so he had spent the next few hours observing, watching, and dreaming a little about being among them, for a part of him still wished to be able to be in the water...
One day turned into two, which then turned into a week, and by two weeks, it was almost a habit of his to spend the next few hours after classes watching the swim club practice. Sometimes he liked to try and draw them - the drawings were never any good, crude human-shaped figures flailing their arms around, like all his other ones, but Christophe really did not care, for they would all inevitably end up in the trash bin.
His eyes were focused on the swimmers again despite the hand working on the paper, when, by a slip of his fingers perhaps, the pencil fell - and before he could catch it, it was too far, having rolled just a few meters from the pool. His breath caught in his throat, and for a moment he considered getting up and running as fast as he could - He must have disturbed them, he must have betrayed himself - but his feet seemed to have made from stone, and so he dropped his eyes into the notebook on his lap, filled with scribbles, crude drawings of people and what was supposed to be his mathematics homework.
To be found out now - how would he even explain himself?
