For someone who considers words their trade, I’ve rarely been able to sufficiently articulate the connection I feel with the sea. In my bio on the front page of this website, I claim to be fuelled by it, but what does that even mean? How do I explain why I’m so enthralled by lighthouses or that I feel my shoulders relax when I inhale the scent of seaweed draped across temporarily exposed rockpools?

At least in part, I suspect it’s been inherited from my paternal grandfather. So deep was his affection for the sea that on the day we scattered his ashes in the calmly undulating water, my grandma softly remarked that we were returning him to his first love. Had she, his second and truest love, not been waiting patiently for him at home, I expect he might have stayed in the Navy for as long as they’d have let him sail the world. So, whether through some genetic predisposition or simply because I absorbed his enthusiasm – as we often do with the interests of those we love – I feel an extra charge of nautical protection when I wear the gold anchor Grandad used to wear around his neck every day.

There is something deeper than this though. As I get older, I understand that living as a spiritual being does not require me to associate myself directly with the organised religion where I’ve never found a contented home. Any fleeting envy I used to feel around others’ unwavering faith has long since been replaced by the comforting notion that we are spiritually connected to the universe we inhabit; to the natural world and, for me, to the sea especially. There is a reason that in almost every guided meditation that asks me to travel metaphorically to a place of peace, my feet land in cool, flowing, coastal waters.

In that sense, it doesn’t really need analysis or explanation. It just ‘is’. It can just ‘be’. I feel most myself with a waved horizon in my eyeline and maybe that’s all I need to know. (This surrender to not looking for answers is far easier to type than it is to put into practice.) As marine social scientist and surfer Dr Easkey Britton says in her book, Saltwater in the Blood, “A word sometimes used by Tupira surfers that captures the sense of embodiment is waswas, which means to literally be washed or cleansed by the sea, but also describes the process of connection with nature where the boundaries between body, board and water are blurred”. I can’t surf, not for want of wishing, but I instinctively understand this.

With disability, with my disability, there have remained tiny fractures in my heart left behind by the grief of losing the freedom I used to have to move and live with complete physical abandon. A lack of restraint I wish I hadn’t taken for granted. For all that I’ve accepted what has happened to me – and boy have I laboured to reach that place of friendship with medical conditions I never willingly allowed into my body – there is a quiet sadness for the things that still feel out of reach. My subconscious knows. I sometimes dream that I’m bombing down a big hill on my bike; a feat laughably impossible with my vestibular disorder. I dream that I’m running really fast for fun. I dream that I’m swimming in the sea again and I’m in a state of utter bliss.

This past December, reading Saltwater in the Blood had a profound impact upon me. It wasn’t so much that I expected its promise of oceanic healing to cure me of illness, but it did remind me that there was more and better living to be had if only I could find a way to grasp hold of it safely. I tweeted my desire to swim in the sea again… somehow. Dr Britton encouraged me to try. “Go for it and activate your beautiful ‘blue mind’, the sea is ready and waiting for you,” she said. It felt like an invitation I had no option but to accept.

It was another 7 months before I felt able to take the next tangible step, although I thought about it often. I dreamt about it. I manifested it. I considered whether I should pay for hydrotherapy with a vestibular specialist to acclimatise to being in water again. My physiotherapist recommended just going to a local pool by myself and staying in the shallows. When I received my diagnostic balance tests and had warm water poured into my ear, my vestibular system rebelled so intensely that the audiologist told me she’d never seen such a severe physical reaction. She refused to continue, to avoid causing me any further distress. Tears were pooling inside my headset. That day has haunted me for the best part of a decade, so my fear at getting water in my ears created a legitimate fear of drowning. The disorientation it can cause could leave me in real danger. So I spent a lot of money on pro-surfer earplugs designed to keep water out but leave sound and balance unaffected.

This past Sunday, I went to the pool. I had a new swimsuit, my special earplugs, and a head full of nerves. I breathed deeply and told myself that I had all the resolve needed to cope with whatever this would throw at me. There were lifeguards who may have had their sleepy afternoon disrupted, but they were there if I needed them. I told myself that all I had to do was stand in the water for a few moments to have won the day. I did more than that. I swam. Not for any substantial distance. Less then half a width at a time, really. But I swam. For the first time in 13 years, chlorinated water cocooned my skin and lifted my body.

I needed to find the floor and press my hands into the poolside to ground myself a few times. The shimmering of the water gave my eyes a little too much to do too, so I had to look away occasionally. In my efforts to keep my ears above water, I managed to trigger a spasm in my jaw and neck. An almost daily occurrence for me, but something to work on next time. I also felt intensely dizzy getting out of the pool. Back on solid ground, all the usual disequilibrium poked and pushed me into a zig-zagged walk. Still, I had done it and it was a form of weightless heaven I’d somehow forgotten could be so beautiful, even though I’d never stopped imagining it. Those who know me well will already have predicted that I went home and cried.

Right now, I have no idea when I might swim in the sea again, if at all. It certainly doesn’t seem sensible without the addition of a life vest. All the things that make the sea so intoxicating – its spectacular power, its inability to remain static, its skill for turning firm sand fluid, its unpredictability – are also barriers. The ocean bed isn’t coated in porcelain tiles for me to push my feet into. I’ve gasped at enough episodes of Bondi Rescue and Saving Lives at Sea to know that the current catches out even the strongest of swimmers paying the sea the utmost respect. And yet, there is an internal flame that now burns a little brighter than it did a week ago. An ambition being tentatively crept toward. If all I do this summer is paddle my toes in saltwater just as I did last summer, that will be okay for now… even if my subconscious disagrees.