Essay: Selkie Soul

By: Grace Hewitt

I don’t remember learning to swim. I know I went to lessons but I don’t remember the act of actually learning. I don’t remember fear, thrashing and struggling through the water or floaties perma-attached to my child arms.

I do remember being five or six years old however, and slipping effortlessly below the surfaces of backyard pools; my thin little arms and legs propelling me through the chlorinated water. I remember the dark plum coloured smudges that grew under my eyes from chemical irritation. I remember a faint watermelon tinged sunburn that never left my cheek bones from where I kept wiping the water out of my eyes and the sunscreen off my cheeks. My mum told me if I stopped opening my eyes under the water they wouldn’t hurt so much, but if I didn’t open them how would I feel fully immersed in the liquidy world beneath? So she bought me a pair of goggles and my aqua affinity grew.

When I was seven my family moved to a coastal city. My dad, an avid beach lover, finally had a new world of water to introduce me to. The beaches on the east coast of Australia often have surf not for the faint of heart. So it wasn’t until I was ten and routinely swimming kilometers at swim training twice a week, that he deemed me ready to be enrolled in surf life saving Nippers on Sunday mornings. I’d like to be able to say that I took to the surf like I took to suburban pools, but I didn’t. I was very small and the waves often seemed very big and the currents very strong. It took a lot of reassurance from Dad to convince me I should use my agility and litheness to work with the waves instead of trying to brute-force my way against them.

Sure enough, he was right, and before too long I realised that surf swimming isn’t so different from lap swimming—if you use the ocean to your advantage. Pick out the riptide, let it carry you out past the breakers, then body-surf those same breakers back to shore. Never try to force your way through a broken wave; always conserve energy by diving under it as deeply as is safe. And—heaven forbid—never underestimate the sheer power of the ocean.

Eventually, you couldn’t drag me out of the surf. Two hours of Nippers on Sunday mornings turned into whole days at the beach: running into the water, swimming out past the breakers with Dad, and catching waves back in. Repeat ad nauseum. The plum smudges under my eyes stayed where they were, as salt is as irritating as chlorine, and the watermelon sunburn embedded itself further into my cheekbones. But damn if I didn’t feel alive. In the water, in the surf, I felt a counterintuitive sense of safety. I felt held. I felt seen. I felt home.

When I was fourteen, a few years after my parents separated, my dad and stepmum moved into a rambling house right on the beach. That house became the place to be. My friends, my brother’s friends, my step brothers’ friends all congregated at the house by the beach—rightly so, as we basically started living in the surf. When we weren’t actually in the water we were slouching over fences and stretched out on storm water drains observing others who were in the water. We adopted lingo and habits which demarcated us as “eastern suburbs kids.” For example, under no circumstances did we wear shoes or even thongs (the Australian name for flip-flops) over to the beach; this kind of shit was sacrilegious. Instead we abused the soles of our feet by picking our way gingerly across hot pavement and even hotter sand. Sometimes we wouldn’t even take a towel over with us, but simply trudge back for lunch, worn out and wet as drowned rats. And don’t get me started on the sand. I can’t believe my stepmum didn’t kill us for all the sand we tracked through that house.

But we were surf-savvy, independent teenagers. We were basically allowed to be at the beach whenever we wanted during daylight, but had to be extra cautious at dawn and dusk, the witching hours for sharks. Without the exceptionally long leash our parents kept us on, I’m not sure my confidence and ability in the water would have continued to grow. From what I remember, we never got ourselves into any seriously dicey situations—at least I didn’t—but we did some risky stuff and learnt our limits. Undoubtedly it was these years of unsupervised and unfettered exploration that allowed me to fully develop into the water creature I am.

I continued to feel most at home in the ocean. On land I was an awkward and insecure teenager trying to come to terms with my annoying and seemingly endless puberty. I grew body hair I had to think about hiding or removing before every beach trip. My perpetually thin frame inexplicably gained a few extra kilos and breasts; I no longer felt comfortable in a pair of swimmers. I took to wearing long board shorts and rashies (Australian slang for rash shirt - the sunsafe swim attire) like the male surfers. My period complicated things even further, frequently rendering me unable to swim due to how heavy, painful, and unpredictable it was. I’d never thought of myself as much of a girl, so it felt like a betrayal when my body started to remind me on a daily basis that I was in fact born female. I resented my brother and stepbrothers their seamless transition into adulthood.

But the water didn’t care if I were a teenage boy or girl. It didn’t care what swim attire I wore. It didn’t care about the changing shape of my anatomy. It didn’t even care whether or not I enjoyed its company, though I always did. In the water I was confident and competent. I was sleek and I swam swiftly. I was fearless and my soul soared.

As everything in life, puberty didn’t last forever. At seventeen, for no discernible reason, I became as thin as ever once again. I got distracted by life—boys, studies, the usual—and stopped spending so much time with the Pacific ocean. Eventually I left Australia altogether and at the beginning of 2011 moved to Helsinki, a city with 130 kilometers of coastline, the capital of a country which boasts around 188,000 lakes. Coastal swimming in the brackish Baltic sea didn’t really excite me that much, but swimming in crystal-clear lakes proved a thrilling way to reconnect with water. And it was so easy. There’s nothing to worry about in a lake: no strong currents, no meters high waves, no marine stingers. Not to mention you’re rarely expected to wear a swimsuit. Diving into a lake naked for the first time woke up the watery part of my soul I’d been neglecting for some years and was probably the closest I’ll ever come to completely merging with water.

I know from an evolutionary point of view I should be a little distrustful of water, but I am not. I trust water in the way I trust my oldest and closest friends. I trust that, no matter how much space and time may exist between me and the Pacific ocean or a particular lake in Karis (a town in the Raseborg municipality of Finland), these bodies of water will always accept and welcome me just as if I’d never left them. I trust my relationship with water so much that the first time I ever “met” the Karis lake I decided to swim in it while tripping on some excellent acid. I guess most people would caution against swimming alone whilst high, but I had no fear—I knew in my soul that the lake had my back. That swim turned out to be a beautiful experience. I was beneath the surface, embraced fully by the lake, watching honey-coloured sunbeams dance and shift with the lapping motion of the water. I’ve never been to heaven, but I can imagine it looks and feels a lot like how it felt to be swimming in golden liquid that summer day.

Recently I went swimming at Mustikkamaa (an island nestled between Kalasatama and Kulosaari in Helsinki) with a new friend, Arttu. We swam out as far as is considered safe by the lifeguards and then proceeded to tread water lazily. I have this style of treading water which takes very little energy and keeps me easily afloat: I basically sit with my legs outstretched and feet breaching the surface while my hands gently scull. It might be slightly unconventional, but it’s chill. Whenever I tread water like this I wonder what it looks like to other people. Do I look as relaxed and comfortable as I feel? No one had ever commented. Until this particular afternoon, when Arttu said matter-of-factly,

“You really look as if you belong in the water.”

I don’t think my facial expression betrayed my shock, but for a moment or two I felt cracked wide open, as if he had somehow seen into that waterlogged bit of my soul. It was an extremely validating observation. But why did it feel so good to hear? Why did I feel so seen? Was it just because the comment came from a person whose opinion I appreciated and respected, or would it have felt as good if a stranger had floated by and said the exact same thing?

One of my colleagues would say my affinity for water comes from the fact that Scorpio rules my moon. I’m not well-versed enough in astrology to analyze this theory, but I will admit I have once or twice thought of my friendship with water as almost mystical. Perhaps I’m really a selkie? Or maybe I felt Arttu saw me not just for my abilities in the water but for who I am in it—neither female nor male, purely a being in their element. Most likely, at the end of the day, it simply feels deeply connecting to have somebody intuitively stumble upon a treasured part of your identity.

They say the human body consists of 60-70% water, so it seems only natural to feel as if my soul is also overflowing with the stuff. If my organs, bones, skin, and blood are all sloshing about, my soul may as well be too.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up with gills.

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Grace grew up in Australia but has called Helsinki home for a decade. She's a writer and postal service worker who loves post-punk, tattoos, hockey, and swimming.