Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
Coming out of the water my feet felt like blocks. They held me up, but I couldn’t feel the sand beneath them and my grip on the earth felt tenuous. They were a curious, bloodless blue/white colour where the wetsuit ended. My hands were similar. Claws protruding from the sleeves of the suit. There was no sensation, though I could make them move. Using them to take off my goggles and multiple caps was a challenge.
As we walked up the beach I wanted to share my excitement with the swimmer beside me. “HI, I’m Jen. That was amazing, wasn’t it?” But my lips were incapable of forming the words coherently. Together we stumbled out of the water, up the beach and into the clubrooms. My signature, as I signed myself in to show that I had returned safely to shore, was an illegible scrawl in the book, bearing little resemblance to the marks I’d made just 45 minutes earlier on our way out to the water. In that time, I’d lost the ability to identify myself in both written and spoken words!
In the showers, it was such blessed relief to get under the hot running water – possible damage to the expensive wetsuit be buggered! My whole body had begun to shake uncontrollably, and I had to clamp my teeth to stop them from chattering. I needed to lean against the shower wall to balance myself to laboriously peel off the wetsuit, but I wanted it off so that that the hot water could better reach my skin. We were 6 women in together, jostling for space and water under 4 shower heads.
And then, as the circulation began to return to my extremities so too did sensation – a fierce burning, itchiness and a lobster red colour with swelling at the abrupt edges where my wetsuit had ended. It was all I could do to stop from tearing into myself with my fingernails.
“Chillblains”, I was told. “Don’t worry. It will pass.”
What hasn’t passed, however, is the drive to do it again and again. Swimming in the cold, winter water has pushed me to new places within myself. It’s difficult to explain, but I have felt both physically and mentally clearer for subjecting myself to this challenge each week. And I haven’t had a cold in over a year!