Going Back to the Water

The water was always my place. Long before any of this, if I had a spare day I was on the bank or under the surface somewhere. It was not a hobby exactly. It was where I went to feel like myself, and I never had to think about why.

So when everything changed, the thing I grieved was not really the food. People assume it is the food, and it is not. It was the thought that I had lost that, and that the version of me who did those things was finished with.

Getting back to it was slower than I wanted. The first trip was short, and I was cautious to the point of being daft about it. I planned it to within an inch of its life, packed for every eventuality I could imagine and several I could not, and told myself the whole way there that I would turn round if it felt wrong. But I went. I sat there. And for a few hours I was not a patient, or a set of numbers, or somebody's appointment. I was just a bloke by the water.

That is the part worth holding on to. Your illness will take a lot of things and it is entirely fair enough to be angry about that. I was, and some days I still am. But the things that make you who you are do not automatically have to be on the list. They might look different now. They might need more planning, more kit, and more patience from you than they ever used to.

Start smaller than you think you need to. Go for an hour if an hour is what you have got in you. The point is not to prove anything to anybody, and it is certainly not to get straight back to how it was before. The point is to remind yourself that it is still yours, and that nobody has taken it off you.