No one speaks of the thoughts that can come to find you when silence falls inside and traps you under its crushing weight. I wonder why that might be. I have heard others talk of a light in the darkness, but not of the bleak flipside of that coin. As a child I used to hold on, trusting, to anything that provided comfort. A favourite bear, a toy, a book or a tree that watched me through my bedroom window. When I was very small I used to talk to God. And then I stopped. Everyone needs some irrefutable truth to cling to. When your childhood is bereft of answers, you are like a magpie, hoarding whatever looks bright and shiny on the outside. I am good at nourishing others with those bright pickings but, calm as I am, I have always struggled to nourish myself.
When parents are unreliable and unpredictable, when one looks away as the other harms you, trust, as well as a small body, becomes a casualty. Its integral framework is irrevocably cracked when events conspire to undermine it in childhood. Your tolerance level stretches, imperceptibly, beyond acceptable limits. It takes you into altogether unknown, different territory. You watch, hungry, longing to feel safe, with that guttering hope constantly held in suspension or frozen in motion, hanging on to the belief that today or tomorrow the world will look different. Trust and intimacy feel dangerous. They keep you holding fast to an elusive potential in which your heart is snared. They are addictive.
The world view you develop is distorted. You deny that darkness exists, because your whole being clings to light. Life is a primal tug-of-war of belonging and deracination. You scavenge for bright toys and try to turn your back on the carrion. Trusting in a different truth from the one you know or have created can negate the validity or value of your own life and silence your voice. Fear gives no leeway for uncertainty, so you mask your own questions and hold fast to an impossible rainbow. The life you grow up believing in is unrealistic because it is constructed of hope and shimmering dreams.
Here, on the rocks, there is nowhere to hide, no shelter or buffer. Behind me, the island’s dark shadow is watching, brooding. I turn my back to it. I am a lone wild bird, estranged at the margins. I call once more for my own kind, but I have been calling for my own kind for so long, my voice is cracked. When at first they did not come, I learned to turn to the gentle and broken things in nature. As I lost my own fear of the raw wilds and elements, trust and love came to me from a different source. I have stood many times on the edge of these rocks, my hands crying out to the sea. Today, it answers and starts softly calling me.
I gasp as I step into the icy water. It stings and slaps against my shins. I cry out as it splashes over my chest and shoulders, but I keep walking. I do not drop my eyes. I know that the harsher the cold outside, the gentler the sea will feel. Diving into the freezing water brings me a peace unlike anything I have ever known. Cold gives no space for thought. It threads your heart and head beautifully together and binds them to each present moment. I feel safe, protected and warm. I reach out to the sea’s silver scaffold and weave myself to its soft steel frame.
For those minutes I am in its cold current, and the sea flows through me, I am shell-spun, salt-burned, wind-wrapped and kindled like a broken piece of sea tinder that the light shines through. I am glad at last to feel the pain of the cold. It washes my skin and hurt away.
I am an island. I have a name. A fistful of wind is all my voice. I give to the sea that cold silence inside.
Acceptance is a wonderful surrender that comes rushing in like the tide. As it turns, slipping away, it takes you with it. I go willingly. Its forgiveness is a gift of kindness. These wilds are fierce and uncompromising. The sea is soft and beautiful. The moon is shining, pale and huge. As I look at the horizon, I feel the deeper water calling. So I start swimming, heading into the sublime blue darkness beyond.
Out in the channel the wind has dropped. The silver waves are rippling with a burning silver fire. I start to drift, as the snow, long promised, starts to fall. It is mesmerising watching the thick flakes swirling. A soft kiss brushes my cheek. ‘Thank you,’ I whisper to the sky.
I feel only peace as lungs start gasping and flesh starts shaking. You go beyond it, so that hard barrier dissolves, becoming of pure instinct. I let my body slip under, let the sea hold me close. The water moves so quietly, I can sense it sighing and breathing. Its breath is so close and intimate, it is soft on my lips. I sigh, too, as it gently unwraps my skin.
There comes a moment when life flickers as a fierce, trembling, singing breath. It breathes of the crueller, darker waters. It whispers that if I continue, I will never breathe or love again. Or know the wind on my cheeks. Or feel sun and darkness shine in my eyes. It permeates my consciousness. It murmurs my name.
This breath calls with a different voice, like a strong-flowing river or grasses swaying under the sky. Like clear amber eyes seeking mine or dark hooves drumming the winter earth. It ignites some pilot light inside me, shearing away the darkness. A wilder voice calling my name with love.
It compels me to struggle. I have been too long in the water. Every fibre in my body is numb with cold, yet burning with a brutal pain. My head tells me to sleep and not to fight. But I do fight. I fight because my heart beats with a powerful urge to survive. There is a point when you are forced to make a commitment. It is not a moment of choice but a moment of truth. I keep swimming because suddenly, I know I do not want to die. Because I still have love to give. Because I understand that my breath is my source, and therefore my most precious gift.
It is never too late. Life can change irrevocably in a single beautiful gasp. There is no warning, but you know it instantly. In the half-light, the sea is breathing. It lifts and falls in a great rushing whisper and swell of sound, jolting me awake and filling my body with a tumultuous inspiration. Each breath is suddenly a jewel to be cherished. I turn back and swim for the shore. For all the love in my heart. For Maude. For Isla. And for a promise: for all I have still to know and for all I have yet to love.
The waves carry me as I tell myself, with each stroke, ‘One breath. One life.’ My arms are losing sensation. They twitch with stiff, ragged movements that make swimming futile and awkward. Yet the sea is forgiving. If you breathe, it buoys you up. White-hot needles of pain stab my limbs. Prolonged exposure to cold cuts off circulation to your extremities. I am grateful for the pain. It whips my skin into savage, visceral life.
I keep breathing, fingers pulling empty through the water. My throat is raw and my lungs are gasping. I keep my eyes, blinking salt water, fixed on the dark shadow of the island that suddenly, even after everything, is the only place I want to be. Above me the blue moon is shining pale and huge. Dark silhouettes of birds are flooding in great numbers through a moonlit fissure in the sky. My heart joins that wild dedication to survival, wrenching each hard-won breath from my aching lungs.
As I finally drag myself out of the water, I cannot stop my body from shaking. My jaw is clattering as my teeth shudder. I am close to delirious, yet inside I am forged differently. My skin is raw, flayed with wonder and the cold, glittering fire of love.
Salt can thaw the hardest ice. Tears can free the frozen voice inside. My eyes are shining, hot tears stinging. At first I rub them away. And then I stop. I let them fall because they are warm and I am blue with cold. I let them fall because they are mine. As I feel those breaking waves inside rising and falling, I promise to follow my breath wherever it goes. I turn to the sea and whisper softly, ‘I am an island. And you have carried me home.’
ACT III
* * *
1
Water
The rain is falling. Great sluices of water are carrying clouds of spindrift over the waves. As it spatters my hair, I lift my face to it. It is harder than you imagine to catch fresh raindrops in your mouth. Rain is fresh, sweet and invigorating when washed with salt. My mouth burns, numb and swollen with those icy drops. I look out at the rippling gusts over tide and the grey, furling waves. Each day I throw a few lost hours into the water. Each day it renews my strength, fires an inne
r resilience inside and gives me a sense of gratitude for my warm breath and beating heart. It is a year and a day since I hauled out, exhausted, after the long, gruelling swim back from the channel from which I had not intended to return. It has been a tough, beautiful year.
I am excited because I am swimming out to the gull-wracked rocks where the seals are slipping in and out of the deeper water. Every day their smooth heads and wide, liquid eyes dipping into the waves draw me to drive myself a little further. I know that pushing the longer distance out to the skerries to join them will be a test of my endurance. It is further than I have ever attempted to swim before in winter. For months, I have dreamed of swimming out beyond the wet sands and fishing creels into the deeper water where the tides cross over and surge, foaming over a barnacled ridge of broken rocks. It is where the wilder, sharp-eyed birds, the cormorant and guillemot, rest after sailing in on the strong Atlantic currents. Their cries mingle with the peeping of a lone sandpiper or peewit, left behind and forced to overwinter on these empty shores.
‘You can do this,’ I chivvy myself, as the stinging wind whips my hair against my face. And then I take a few fast deep breaths, slapping my arms about myself to get the blood moving in my body. Standing at the water’s edge is no time for nerves. I calmly focus on my breath, conscious that I will have prepared sufficiently to meet the challenge.
It is only a half-mile there and back, but swimming in the bitter cold without a wetsuit requires a different kind of stamina. Distance is measured not just by external markers of time and mileage, but also by a more subtle internal measure that requires a deeper understanding of the body’s physical and emotional equilibrium.
Swimming in the sea is tough all year round in the Hebrides, but the cold is particularly punishing today. As I dip my jam thermometer into the water, it barely touches seven degrees. I know I will need to work hard to get there and back without losing concentration, or my inner warmth and strength, or I will risk exposure to hypothermia. For this reason, as well as for comfort, I have brought a flask of scalding-hot tea to warm myself immediately before the swim. It will heat my core, providing a few minutes’ additional protection. I gulp it down in swift mouthfuls. It is the closest sensation I can imagine to swallowing fire. Afterwards, I am glowing, braced and ready. I lift my face to the pouring rain, and I think, nothing will stop me today.
I have been training daily for this, building up a core strength and endurance to stay longer in the water, pushing myself a few minutes further each day.
Most days I swim naked, but in the winter I wear Neoprene socks and a pair of 3mm gloves to shield my extremities during longer swims. This simple protection also helps me to climb in and out off the sharp rocks that take me straight into the deeper water, rather than wading in through the shallows, exposed to the wind, from the shore. I love the sensation of the sea and the raw elements against my skin, but it is not without risk.
Without a wetsuit, it has taken time to build up to twenty minutes. The half-mile will take me twenty-five if I can keep up a steady pace. Adrenaline warms my body, but the winter bite is ferocious at two degrees outside. Today has required meticulous planning. Given the plummeting temperatures, I have decided to break my swim and warm up on the skerries with a fire. I have a diver’s waterproof drybag containing a fire steel and dry kindling, a small tarp, a full-body, zip-up, fleece-lined oilskin, a thermal hat and a second Thermos of piping-hot coffee. The extra weight will slow me down in the water, but I have trained for this.
The conditions are good and the tide is coming in, so whilst the swim out will be taxing, the return will be easier when I am starting to tire. The thought of an influx of hot coffee and a crackling fire lifts me with a childlike excitement, making me eager to start out. The wind and rain are at least softened by the waves, and it is a relief knowing that at last the thaw is here. It means I can stay in for a few precious minutes longer today, which I know I will need, along with every last reserve in my body. It is invigorating listening to the snowmelt gushing off the cliffs, thundering back to its source.
I never used to like cold water, yet here I have grown to love its shocking, icy embrace. Every day, whatever the weather, I rise early and head for the shore. I tell myself I am not strange to do this, yet sometimes I wonder. I tell myself it is not a compulsion but simply an irresistible call. I have not missed a day, regardless of storms and punishing Hebridean conditions. I have swum in snow, in freezing rain with thick ice particles obscuring visibility, in crisp sunshine and in dense, glowing, amber mists, and once with the wind chill dipping to minus sixteen degrees and the solid, crackling edges of the sea freezing. After a while, I start to think that perhaps it is not merely seductive but addictive.
I know I am not alone in questioning this. Anyone who keeps company with the sea through the winter is in a strange place, gritting their teeth to find a release. After a while I stop kidding myself. The truth is, in those temperatures you cannot distinguish pain from pleasure. Cold-water swimming brings you to the brink of both. In the end, it is difficult to identify your motivation or to know exactly what it is you are seeking.
I used to tell myself, ‘Soon I will stop.’ Eventually, I realised I didn’t want to. It gets me up and out when mornings are grey and the leaden horizon is flat. It helps me to set firm boundaries. Above all, the sea teaches me to trust. It teaches me to commit, not just to my breath but to something infinitely greater. I know that if I can stand bare-skinned in the freezing cold, hurl myself into the waves and keep swimming, then I am winning.
As I return to shore, feet gripping shingle, I feel braver than I did before. Courage is the first attribute you need to confront your difficulties. After my cold-water swim, anything else that happens in my life feels, if not easy, then at least possible. And it is as good a start to a day as any, I think. It tests your limits, stretches tolerances and slackens and strengthens a core fibre that quivers through your whole being, like some inner thread being tensioned. Blood courses through my body like a protective shield against the cold; breath animates every cell.
There is a moment as I step forward, feet sinking into the wet sand, when I leave something behind. I watch as the sea fills my footprints and then washes those bare impressions clean away so that, inside, I feel light as air. It is immensely liberating and forgiving walking into the water. My shoulders shrug off my outer layer, all my worries and cares, the minutiae of my life. Winter swimming tests your resolve and mettle. It asks that you give your last ounce of strength, and then it asks for more. You discover you have more to give than you ever imagined.
The sea moulds you skilfully, shaping you with fresh contours that are able to resist life’s knocks. You feel your soft edges, the grace and lightness of your being, more subtly without boots and gloves on, and so even in the colder months, there are days when I like to swim free. When I am standing naked at the water’s edge, a braver consciousness animates, firing a steel-blue, unquenchable flame in my heart. It tips you over the wave of your own fear or resistance and recalibrates your inner compass. Whatever it is that drives me, I recognise that it is a force for good. It is only looking over my shoulder at the months that have passed that I realise I am back on track.
At my back, a buzzard is hunched on a hawthorn spire, watching with unblinking golden eyes. ‘You and me both,’ I smile, noticing how we both have our shoulders drawn up to our necks. The buzzard’s presence tells me that soon the rain will stop and the clouds will fracture. My heart lifts, knowing how brilliant the sun will be. The gulls taking to the air, shrugging off the wind, provide further reassurance of a break in the clouds. If the rain were setting in they would be sheltering in the nook of the bay or huddled in the fields.
My feet shrink from the achingly cold stones but I steady my breath and focus. Overcoming each sensation is an opening and a surrender rather than a battle. I have learned to trust in whatever these fierce tides throw at me. These days I am alone but I am not lonely. I am gentler to myself.
Solitude, like the sea, draws you to it, but my relationship with it has changed over the years. In London, solitude was synonymous with time out or relaxation, a pause or vital decompression. Back then, it was a rare pleasure to be savoured. Now that solitude is my everyday condition, it is a constant presence. I have to guard against it metamorphosing into loneliness, which can seep into a heart unnoticed.
A ripple of wind is stirring the skin of the water. Cormorants are flying low, their dark-arrowed bodies gliding a couple of inches above the sea’s upturned face. As I briskly rub warmth into my stuttering hands, Maude presses her wet body against me before tearing off, excitedly snapping at the waves. It is a routine we have established. Each day we come to a different stretch of water. We give each other the freedom to do what we need to do. Each day we make and break our own rules. Everyone has their own inhibitions, fears or areas of life that are hard to confront. To move forward it is important to step up and face them. Every challenge met is permission to start over.
My toes are pale shells on the barnacled rocks. All about, tiny crustacea cluster like glistening wet flowers. I watch the waves rolling in on the tide. At my back, an otter, wet and sleek, pours its shape off the rocks. Though my body clings to its own warmth – and I do not blame it – I do not think about what comes after. It takes an effort to do this, but so does anything worthwhile. If I hesitate, if I think about the cold, I will not go in. As I step into the rocky shallows, I gasp, but I know not to stop. I follow my legs, wading in. When I dive into the waves, my breath comes in short, fast gasps and my face burns with each arm’s rhythmic stroke. My heart beats faster as my salt-stung eyes open wide in the cold.
I have never been scared of water. I learned to swim at three years old. Years later, in London, I used to swim in an open-air public pool in the dark after work. I always went just before the pool closed, to throw off the day. There was nothing fancy about these facilities. They were basic, functional, but they were clean, and they offered a choice of two full-size pools. I would pay for my ticket, slot it into the turnstile and push against the silver metal bar, turn left past the drinks vending machine and the chewing-gum dispenser and head down the stairs into the changing rooms. I didn’t bother with a cubicle, I would just peel straight out of my clothes, wrap the locker key on its rubber band about my ankle and wade bare-toed through the foot bath with its stomach-clenching smell of chlorine, trying not to slip on the cold tiles.
I Am an Island Page 20