Why I swim
It's a kilometre walk in to the beach by the loch and I'm not feeling it this morning. My mum is unwell in hospital and there’s a ball of anxiety wrestling in my stomach. I don’t want to swim. My mind is not in the right place.
It's Friday though and that means Friday morning swim club. I am swimming today because I know others who will be there too, bringing along their own anxieties, anger, happiness, fears. Knowing friends will be there gives me motivation to get in the water. To allow it to heal, calm and bring clarity.
There are folk there already when I arrive and I say hello. Sometimes the conversation on the beach or in the water is casual or funny. Often though the talk is refreshingly direct and therapeutic. I wonder if this happens because we are stripped down, no clothes to conceal us, no sunglasses hiding our eyes. Just bodies in the water, above, below, back on the beach - red, refreshed, rejuvenated.
It's a bit different in the pool. I haven't been there for long enough to know many people who go. It makes me self-conscious. I went with my daughter a little while ago. She swims much better than I do and insisted I try butterfly.
It was embarrassing.
I spent the rest of the time swimming under water where no-one could see me.
At the loch I get changed and walk into the water. A friend is up to her waist and looking hesitant. The water is still cold. I suggest a good woo hoo makes everything better and give a half-hearted “woo hoo” myself. Then I dive in. It feels good. Thoughts disappear, replaced by sensations. Twenty strokes and I'm relaxed, the unpleasant feeling of cold water under my chin subsides. I swim out to the turn point around the buoy and start front crawl on the way back in. I could stay out here all day as my arms thrust into opaque green and create a fine mist of bubbles, rising to the surface around me. The cold grips my jaw and dares me to resist it.
When I get out I shake my hands of water and walk up the pebble beach. I find that perspective has replaced anxiety.
My favourite swims are those when I am alone but I really enjoy these swims with others. It is the conversation and familiarity as much as the swim, that I enjoy. It is the conversation that defines a part of me as much as the swimming does, though I would consider myself neither a conversationalist nor a swimmer. It is a part of me that nourishes and calms and I don't want to lose that. So I keep coming. And so do the others.
We walk back along the track - time to catch up with each other. We talk maybe with more clarity, less anxiety and with bodies tingling.
We reach the road, hang out longer to finish conversations and then we all disappear.
We are all here because we want to be. Whatever emotions we carry with us on the day, the water can help us. We choose to swim together. There's no competition - we each do what our minds require of us. Sometimes there's cake.
We are a community.