The swim

The swim

 

I have always loved the water. Show me a puddle and I want to stand in it, a pool and I want to jump in it, and a sea I want to become part of it. I’m not a bad swimmer either, it takes a lot for me to say that as I’ve always thought of myself as bad at most things, particularly sport, but I can thrash along quite happily these days for a while. 

 

I have always been afraid of deep water. The blackness. The unknown. The reverse vertigo of seeing land 10 metres below you but finding yourself miraculously suspended above it simply waiting for the drop. Wondering what is watching you from beneath or if my skill and buoyancy will suddenly desert me and I’ll find myself leaving behind the light and warmth of the surface and sinking down into the darkness, never to return to the surface. 

 

So I would stay close to shore. I would avoid rivers and lakes, where death would lurk waiting for an opportunity to grab an overly confident girl, then woman who really should know better than to listen to the call of the deep. 

 

Because it does call. 

 

The water. The depths. The unknown. 

 

It has always called me. Sang to me. Whispered my name in the waves and the ripples. Daring me to move. 

 

To be risk averse is seen as a good thing. The sensible thing. The right thing. But is it the human thing? Don’t we all feel more alive when we embrace the wildness, when we surrender to the unknown, when we are able to shout to the world, 

 

“Come on and have your way with me! You can’t scare me.”

 

She said, hands trembling, voice shaking, knees a-knocking.

 

The truth is I’m scared a lot of the time, and I used to think that was bad. But now I think that being scared is a super power. It gives me the chance to be brave. 

 

So I started going out of my depth. I answered the call and I swam out. I pushed away the thoughts of monsters and darkness and drowning and I swam. And I did it again. And again. And again. 

 

I’m not reckless. I swim within myself. It just turns out that within myself is immeasurably more than I thought. The depths sang to me because there are depths in me. I need the depths to live. To be free. 

 

It’s the feeling you get when you climb a mountain, or run with the rain in your face. It’s the feeling you get when you go for a job that scares you or when you open your mouth and speak the truth. It’s the feeling you get when you hold someone against your chest as their tears soak through your clothes or when you tell someone that you love them. 

 

We need that feeling more. Cutting through the surface of the black, cold water like scissors through silk. Intensely vulnerable. Undeniably human. Utterly alive. 

 

Mary Oliver says it better than me,

 

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down into the grass

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

 

I’m going to swim. 

 

Trust. And the power of a great teacher.

Trust is often one of those things we don’t have to think about. I trust that my seatbelt will work in case of emergency. I trust that the roof above me will not fall. I trust that the sun will rise in the morning. Things get shadier when I trust the weather forecast, or the strength of a tree canopy to protect a birthday cake from a dousing, or the will of the people in a high stakes election process.

Trust is one of those strange things, that manages to be two polar opposites at the exact same time. Trust is easy, I can trust unquestioningly, as easily as I breathe in and out. But, if trust is broken, or we are broken, trust is difficult. Trust in the people around us, trust in the words of friends and strangers, and sometimes, hardest of all, trust in ourselves.

I’ve begun each day this week with writing, the same as I do every week. I’ve made some progress, form is being refined out of a decimated draft. I’m needing to trust myself, my gut, what I have learnt from writing regularly and with discipline these past few years. In this brutal editing process trust in myself is all, and it is hard.

The voice of doubt can scream so loudly. How can you ever drown it out? The doubting, judgemental, disbelieving voice that must be drowned by each of us; or how will we ever achieve anything? How will we dare to live rightly, to step out towards the dream and trust that if we fall and fail and flounder spectacularly, it will be worth it anyway?

I spent a long time believing I was dumb. Bottom table in infant school (despite my voracious reading habits), bottom half of year six. I was always terrified. I never spoke, was deeply shy and if I didn’t understand something, I never had the courage to say. Not dumb, just shy, unconfident, massively unsure and trying to survive without drawing attention to myself or getting shouted at. I always hated confrontation of any kind, even now, a dismissive tone or a raised voice is the easiest way to make me cry; should you ever wish too.

Low to middling in secondary school and sorted into third set for English – the ‘please God let some of these kids get a C’ set. Thankfully, this is when I got Mr Merifield. There are so many good teachers in my story, but there is only one Mr Merifield. Like all the best teachers he taught me so much more than what he was paid to teach me. He taught me lessons that have stayed with me, and that I have drawn on, my whole life. And, wow, he was funny!

I began to speak, to ask questions, to contribute my thoughts and the more I did that, the more I believed in myself. I remember, with joy, how it felt to walk into a room and have someone glad to see you, and eager to listen to what you had to say. It is no small thing, to listen to a child, to make them feel of worth. I bet there are hundreds of north-eastern kids whose lives are better because of his input. What a legacy.

On my final day at school, he signed my autograph book.

Trust in your abilities

Before I walked into his classroom I barely felt like I had any abilities, when I left; I was a different person. I had abilities, things only I could think and do and say; and I could trust them (I also got two A’s and could finally tell the difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’.). Would I be writing without his influence? I can’t say. Would I be different to who I am today? Undoubtedly.

Trust in your ability. Those are four of the words that help me drown out the doubting voice. A voice of kindness and encouragement, that gave me the car and the keys and the map to my own adventure. Sometimes I hardly need to think about them, at other times they are my mantra, repeated over and over until they overpower, again, that doubting voice.

What are your words? Words that vanquish the demons and let the light in? What are the lies you need to drown out before you can step forward and succeed, or fail, beautifully? You can share my words if you like?

Trust in your ability; now come and fail spectacularly with me.