On my morning walks, I used to look at the older, pink-capped women swimming in the ocean and project myself decades into my future.
“One day I’ll be a mermaid,” I hoped, as I watched the Morning Mermaids swimming group in the golden light. “I’ll live near the sea, and throw myself into it. I’ll leave behind my self-conscious shame, I’ll be me, I’ll be at one with the watery world.” Coming from a non-swimmer, this was quite the fantasy.
It wasn’t the mermaids who eventually got me into the water though. It was a group of swimmers from Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula called the Salty Bitches (named after their dogs who waited on the shore) and their fellow travellers, the Numb Nuts.
Last December, the Salties invited people to join them for a Welcome to Summer Splash. Scared, out of my depth, in the water and out, I went along. I knew no one and did not even have a pair of bathers, but I rocked up in a 1mm neoprene top and a pair of board shorts, grimaced in a group photo, saluted the summer and waded in.
My goggles leaked, I lost one of my new earplugs within the first 10 strokes and I was fraught with fear. But I was there.
That first swim I didn’t get very far. My hands broke the water and the bubbles burst in the murk around me. Fear swam alongside me, there were dark shapes below, sun glinting on the water, a splash, a muffled call. Was it a warning? Was someone in trouble? Was there a shark?
It was only when walking out of the water that one of the Salties told me about “the stingray shuffle”. Apparently I should have been dragging my feet through the sand to make sure I didn’t step on a stingray. Gulp. It seems there were even more threats hidden below the surface.
I kept swimming as the season turned, throwing one arm in front of the other, my hand cupping the water and pulling it around my waist and hip. I breathed every second, every fourth, then every second stroke again. Sometimes I took a breath in the other direction and was startled by the sun, the glow beaming off the water, sparkling golden shards exploding. Other times I would cop a mouthful of choppy salt water, a slap in the face that took my breath away.
And as I swam more often, even by myself, I felt myself learning to trust, to be at ease with the threats. I saw the stingrays and swam on anyway. I felt the embrace of the water, buoying and remaking me.
“You’ve never been out that deep before. You never swim out beyond your depth,” my partner remarked.
I had always wanted the sand beneath my feet, even when I had the safety of a surfboard to hold on to. Now I can swim 600 metres to the pole, stopping to float on my back to look up into the sky. I can swim a kilometre to the shops from the car park, or I can swim pole to pole in a triangle, marvelling at a view of the city that I had never seen before.
How did I not know what this world offered? I had not only been too scared, I had not known my own strength. And I had not known the power of a group of swimmers to push each other on, to provide hope and a welcome which would buoy me.
As a child, I remember often feeling a sense of threat in my world.
“Don’t do that, you might get hurt! Don’t go out too far! Look out for the dog! It might attack you!”
Now I know that I can go places I never thought I could and that to go beyond my depth is to feel truly alive and free, supported and empowered, alone and embraced. And that I can be me, at ease, at least to a degree, in the watery world.
Though I can see the shoreline and know that I’m safe, I also know that I’m at risk, and now that’s OK. I’m alone but I’m not alone, as are we all.
I’m afloat.
There will always be threats, stingrays in these waters and sharks further out; there will be tides and currents and rips. I’m not quite a mermaid, but I can now inhabit that golden world which transfixed me one early morning some years ago. The future is now. It’s sparkling and salty.
• Anna Sublet is a freelance writer
