Me, The Shape and The Sea

This week, the Wellbeing College Blog content is contributed by Amy, who attended our Telling Your Story course in September last year.

Me, the shape and the sea…

A small shape works it way through black water. I puzzle. What… is… that?

The rippling waves schmooze with the rocks, licking them like thick oil. It’s masses of meandering marble from where I’m sat. Ebony calls. I can barely make anything out, but the expanse of blueblack congealed ink, scribbling at the feet of cliffs. Glistening like something near solid. Taut, turning, twisting tar. An undulating void to lose my gaze and time in. And I have.

I didn’t notice the shape arrive. I’ve lost hours. And somehow it’s just there. Grabbing my consciousness, only a moment ago, waking me up from God knows where.

The biting air and smokey grey sky push up against me. The small shape cuts through my void, secreting slow motion. It oozes. Yet I sense that it’s splashing, slicing, speeding where it exists. Wind on my face, so thick with ice, it’s almost as though i’m finally being held, by the world. I’m not in the city, at last. It’s just me and the sea and… this shape.

The shape morphs like a fly in treacle. Waves foam, up and around, fragment of something. It’s there, i’m here. We’re bound in this moment somehow. It’s looking at me through our void.

I squint, split with pleasure and paranoia. One half indulging in the mystery of my unknown entity the other hyper vigilant, picturing… a spy in scuba wear with a long-lensed camera? I scratch about, without averting my gaze. Drawn-out-frantic, grasping for Dad’s old binoculars. I adjust the blur too far one way and then the other. Morphing still, it’s outline bleeds into my black sea. And then… Focus, to reveal. A swimmer lost in the moment. I am the spy, he knows not that i’m here after all.

With thanks to Amy.

If you would like to contribute a piece to Bristol Wellbeing College’s its-about-you.blog, please email ali.mcallister@second-step.co.uk.

We encourage contributions from those who have personal or professional experience of mental illness and recovery.