Sea Swims for the Soul
By Aoife Gately
You've probably heard it a million times. I know I have. Get in the sea. Go for a swim. Just jump in! You'll feel ten times better. I promise. I heard it specifically from my Mam. She’s a huge believer in the healing properties of the ocean. The peace it brings. She's brilliant for it. Whether she’s deep in the pits or over the moon she gets out to the sea and jumps on in. Battles through the cold and comes out winning. And I dismissed her. Of course I did. It's difficult to listen to that all-knowing voice when you can barely get out of bed.
But I was forgetting. Forgetting those years I spent in the pool as a child and a teenager, learning first how to swim and then to save. Never enjoying the lengths and the ‘right’ way to do things, but always, always relishing the feeling of peace, those perfect moments when the world went still, as I held my breath and sank to the bottom. Underwater, there is an absence of sound from above, but also I’d find an absence of sound from within. My mind, which has always been a cacophonous minefield of thoughts and worries, is suddenly shocked into a beautiful quiet.
Two years ago, after a brief stint in hospital, I was reminded of these feelings. My parents had decided to drag me to the beach, in an attempt to separate me from my motionless position in bed. It was my first time leaving the house in days. I was a mess, and the last thing I wanted was to suffer through the biting cold air into the even colder sea. However my parents were desperate, and I could tell. Wanting to see them happy, I agreed to brace the icy water. And it was horrible. And fucking freezing. But I did it. And when my head finally submerged (after a near brush with tears from the sheer horridness of it all) I felt that beautiful quiet again, after so many years.
In those moments, my vision blurs, and silence arrives, bringing peace. There’s a sort of innocence, a feeling of almost foetal-esque enclosure. Now, even when I can’t make it to the water, I think of that feeling, and allow myself to imagine I am enveloped in the beautiful blue. It's not always feasible for someone to just up and go to the sea, but if you do have the time, and the means, maybe it could help you too. And so, I will reiterate what has been said to me, and you, and everyone else: Get in the sea. Go for a swim. Just jump in! You'll feel ten times better. I promise.
