The sea is one of my Big Loves. I’ve written poems about the sea. I moved my whole life to be near the sea.

But I have a healthy fear of it. The yawning maw of the ocean has my respect and deserved wariness.

For the first few years I lived on the island, I looked at the sea. I paddled. I stared and I wondered and I loved.

It was only last summer, rekindling a friendship with a fellow islander and Activity Enthusiast, that I began to think about being…in it? Really in it.

What if I, a land creature, could enjoy being inside of the sea and not in fear for my life? It was a huge mindset shift for me and a slow one, but I did get in and I liked it. I bought goggles!

But I did not swim. I was mostly lolling about.

This year, the year of possibility, I started to branch out and build some confidence. I learned how to tread water – a gamechanger! I finally understood how people were managing to do this for an extended period of time rather than thrashing about exhaustingly. I started using yoga breathing to relax into cold water instead of tensing up. I began to swim.

Not well. But I don’t have to swim well. Of course I want to swim for joy, but I also think it’s very important to be able to keep yourself alive in water when you live on an island.

I started small – five minutes with my feet off the bottom, treading water. Then 10 minutes, half of it swimming. I tried again and again to float on my back, then cracked it (the secret is you have to get your ears fully under water, which I was reluctant to do). Over the course of last week, I increased my feet-off-the-bottom time to half an hour and was swimming out far enough to pull myself out of the water to bask on the stone ledge that falls into the sea, with the waves lapping over me. A pure joy.

My fitness data shows my HRV (the variation in heart beats per minute, which is a good stress indicator) going from a very low norm of 13 to a decent 30-50 on days I swam. My cardio fitness is also up – after one week. These are numbers that I rarely see move.

I’ve got a stupid bloody hip injury right now, so zero-impact exercise is amazing. My shoulders ache and I’m breathless, with my heart rate up to 130bpm. It’s not nothing.

I do feel like people are keeping an eye on me because I look like I’m in distress, but that’s just me plodding along and trying not to get smacked in the face by huge waves. Before, just the mental image of a looming wave terrified me! I’m doing my best, which is good enough.

A few summers ago, I was in Ibiza. Don’t ask. I was on a boat and everyone got in the sea. I climbed down the ladder and got in, but could instantly sense the dark void beneath me. As I didn’t know to relax and slowly tread water, I felt like I couldn’t actually keep myself from being pulled down into it. I got straight back on the boat and didn’t go back in the water, while everyone else jumped off and had fun.

It seems like a small thing, but no one had ever taught me how to tread water. Maybe it’s something that comes naturally to other people and doesn’t need to be taught. Maybe it’s another thing where my brain and body weren’t talking to each other yet. Now I’ve learned to relax my muscles and trust myself, my body’s figured it out and my brain knows I won’t die.

I love being in water more than anything, so gaining access to this new, giant water is such a gift. A gift I gave myself.

The sea, the sea

Its kiss and its bite

Rolling white mists and ships lost in the night