“The Water Will Always Be There” by Claire Ingram

A few years ago, I moved with my parents from our home in the city to a semi-rural property. When we first moved here, I was very sick. I wasn’t quite bedbound, (I’d already made a little progress,) but I was close to it. I had to spend most of my time in my bedroom resting, and even talking took too much energy. The idea of calling a friend felt beyond me.

My bedroom is at the opposite end of the house from the living room and kitchen, and walking there usually seemed too far. I’d make the intrepid journey to the living room maybe once every few days, and it would feel quite special. All the rest of my time I’d spend either sitting on the deck where Mum brought me my meals, or in my bedroom.

While my parents and sister moved us into our new home (courageous city dwellers living on eight acres for the first time), I stayed within a few square meters. I didn’t feel too sad about this because none of my emotions were very strong. Feeling emotions takes energy, and all my emotions were dulled under layers of exhaustion. Strangely, it often felt quite peaceful. 

One way I knew I was making progress with my recovery was when I began to feel pieces of emotion again. At first, this felt so uncomfortable that I would often enjoy the sense of peace which returned on my lower energy days.

It felt strange to be living in a place where I had little idea what the land around me looked like. Before I got sick, exploring nature had always been one of my favourite things to do. Now I hadn’t even seen most of the area where I lived.

Instead, I formed an idea of what our property looked like from things my family told me, and sometimes from getting people to drive me down our road. I learnt that at the bottom of our property there was a large dam. It was fed by springs from the mountains that flowed into it, and apparently, even in all the years of drought it hadn’t gone dry.

I’d never seen this dam because it wasn’t visible from the road. It was at the bottom of the property, and the only way you could see it was by walking down a steep slope. Even though I’d never seen this dam, I liked knowing it was there. It brought a sense of safety. We knew that if our tanks ran out, or bushfires came, we would always have somewhere to draw water from.

So, the dam remained at the bottom of the hill where I couldn’t see it: an unseen but grounding presence. 

I’ve made it my goal the last few months to begin to strengthen my muscles and walk further. I’d been going on a few small walks over the last few months, but this time I decided to set out in a direction I hadn’t been before.

As I walked towards the edge of our property, I felt the scenery around me changing. The deciduous trees and mown grass gave way to gum trees and wildflowers, and my feet crunched over fallen bark. I started to walk down the hill.

As I walked down and further into the bush, I felt something stir in me that I used to feel while walking in Nature but hadn’t felt for a long time. It was an old part of myself that I remembered, a part that had always taken joy at being alone in Nature. It was a feeling of freedom and expansion, of dreams and possibility humming in the leaves and air and smells around me. This part of myself had been asleep for a very long time, but I could feel her beginning to rise to the surface.

I kept walking. After a few more steps down the hill, I felt a shifting in the air, a sense I was moving towards something. I heard frogs. I looked down and saw water. I saw the ripples on its surface, and the reflection of trees. The dam is long and rectangular, and large enough that I wondered what creatures lived in it, and how deep it was.

I stood still, my hand resting on a tree. Here was the water. Here was the water I had heard about for the last three years but was only just now seeing. I felt the primal sense of peace I think humans must always have felt when they come across water. The knowledge that you are safe, because the water is right there, ready for whenever you might need it.

Looking down, I was staring into the water’s surface and encountering a part of myself again. A part that had been asleep through all my years of illness, drowned under layers of exhaustion, and small routines, and enclosed walls. She had lain under the water encased in silt, unchanged as the years had passed. Now, she was beginning to rise to the surface. As she floated slowly up, I wondered what she would think as she looked up the hill to where I stood. Would she recognise who she saw?

I wondered how this re-awakening part of myself would fit back into my new body. She had been asleep for so long, while a decade had transformed me. The time she had been absent for had been stale and flat, illness smoothing all the rough edges of life away.

Now as I felt this old part of me return, this meeting of pain and hope merged to form a sharp edge that began to puncture the bubble of illness I had lived in for the last few years. Through this rent, I could feel the world beginning to flow through me again. And as I felt the promise of everything this would mean, I wondered if it might be easier to stop that flow, and stay in that old dulled and peaceful state.

But as I looked again at my reflection in the water, I knew I didn’t want to stop anything. I don’t want those hard years to make me so scared of feeling grief and pain, that I shut all my emotions down, and numb myself to the joy as well.

I want to be open to everything. I want music and dancing and crying. I want to sit on the couch with my family some nights, instead of being so tired I need to be alone in my room. I want to write, and hang pictures on my wall, and learn to prepare more of my own food. I want to talk to new people, and have more deeper conversations with my friends, and ask for more hugs. I want to continue to walk further, and my muscles to keep growing stronger, and for a day spent moving, instead of sitting, to become what feels normal. I want to start to leave my house more, and to not feel as scared when I think about doing this. I want to explore interesting new places, even just for little outings, and have the experience of doing different things make my day feel longer. I want to be able to start dreaming again about things I want to do, even though this feels risky because everything felt unattainable for so long.

I want to make sense of where I’ve been, so I can move forward. I want all the life that wasn’t there when I was bedbound, with an eye mask on, and earplugs in, and the entire world blocked out. After having a time where I thought the rest of my life might be severe illness, I want to be brave enough to now ask for everything back. Everything, even fuller and better and richer than I had before I got sick. I want the courage to ask, ‘What is the life that I now get to have because of how sick I was?’ A life that perhaps I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. A life that will be beautiful, and interesting, and often difficult. And I’m curious to find out what it could look like, and I hope I’m brave enough to walk towards it.

I looked back down at my reflection. I took a breath. I allowed myself to feel, just a little of it. The very beginning, knowing I had years, and then my whole life, to feel it all.

And then, after I had felt enough, I turned around, and began to walk back up to the road. I knew that the water would still be there, waiting, for when I was ready to return. And beyond that, the rest of my life.