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Writer's picturegigigoodwin

When the Girl on Fire meets the Mammalian Diving Reflex

Updated: Jun 16


What I started as a poem, I decided to keep expanding on. Many words were left out of the poem, and kept for myself. I believe I left the parts in the poem that are more relatable, and create waves of mood that dip and uplift, as shared words on tough feelings do. The feelings are all there.


TW: This writing was a means to process the effects of trauma


Girl on Fire and the Mammalian Diving Reflex - By Gigi Goodwin

I forget that I used to write through the tears

Pools of them on the paper, inked words running away

Under the waterfalls blurring my cheeks


I would follow the emotion as it flowed through music, travelling through all of me

Music that I still listen to; disconnected

And wondered all this time why I cannot write anymore


To write is to open the flood gates to a body of water so strong it could crush me if I dive, or sink, deep enough

To write is to use weapons of utter destruction in an everyday form, as though they are harmless

As though they were not the destroyer of my world, a nuclear eruption that buried my brain and nervous system


To write is to write through the fears

Fear coursing through electrical systems, a current of thermal energy, rarely surfacing, rarely felt, a past that was constant and heavy

The circuit is always lit up, sparking dry fires around my body

Sparks flickering amongst the darkness inside my brain

Pulse compensating for the feeling of heart strings tearing


To write is to feel everything.

To write is to slowly drown in an ocean

And watch every flicker of light go out as you go under in the darkness.

Completely unseeing.


You can’t feel the sparks anymore as the thermal energy fizzles out

You grow weaker than you have ever known, and your strength dissolves before you

Drifting further out, directionless into depths unknown

Until you reach calmer waters, and you don’t know how, but you are floating


And I know you can have a pleasurable swim, out in the open waters

But that isn’t for me anymore

I always think ‘anymore’

As though it ever was so easy for me to swim.

I may have been stronger, but the currents and waves always dragged me down with them.

And they never let go of me.

I get so stuck by how it looked to me from above, when the gentle sea foam topped the waves, all sound background noise to the crashing

Pretending there was no turmoil below the surface, trapping me in the middle of an ocean

It's weight unbearable, it's pull exhausting


I have faith that a calmer sea waits for me

Sometimes it is in the same way that I hope those who passed on have somewhere better to go

But don’t wholly believe that for myself

But sometimes I truly believe smooth and open waters are ahead of me. I can see that in my head.

I just have to find the courage to let my flames go out every time that I submerge

The flames that protect me and feel like safety have to be extinguished in order for the water to heal my burns


It's not water that is scary. It's not scary to dip your ankles in the water, no matter how cold

But pushing off from dry land once you’ve found it, knowing you won’t be able to turn back and see it, removing the option to just reach back and grab it.

No matter how calm and clear the water looks. You know you cannot trust it. Deep down something lurks. Gut-twisting.

Once you leave safety, your legs will be lifted from the sand floor, and you will be carried away. In that one choice, a single moment, you surrendered all your control. That’s scary.

Especially when you are out there on your own. You are a small dot in an unimaginable vastness.

I think that’s one of the most important parts of it, making sure you’re not on your own out there.


Anyone would feel uneasy; fearful. The kind of fear that can turn your blood to ice.

In waters a million times deeper than yourself.

When you found land, you had to stay there a while, to catch your breath.

You try to rest that way, but in your frozen condition, you keep your both feet in one place, locked into the ground. You turn to fire again and again, to warm you back up. Freezing is a slow death, or at least feels that way.


The wind can be so brutal, it is barely easier to be on land

Pains sharper than ever, that take you right back

I keep going back to the water because I know that I need it to heal me

Even though it was the thing that broke me

It’s like I can’t survive staying on land for too long

And it is unsustainable because

There’s something in the water that I need to keep coming back to


An unexpected movement in the water, a gush of a current, sends fear like I've known it before. It will have me rushing back to where the waters are warmer, so that I can claw my way to land, fearful, panic-drive, survival mode on.

Or looking down into depths where I can’t trust that what I really see is the actual* bottom

Because I know how much colder it is down there, darker

The darkness is an illusion, of how dark things can really get

It doesn’t make it bad, but it is out of my depth, much bigger than me

It's easy to get lost

And I know that the pressure could crush me

Some depths are not meant for humans to swim at

Limits.





The immensity and depth might as well be infinite. Why am I punishing myself?

I am meant to adapt. I am human.

But I must remember while water is healing in all its power

It is dangerous if I am to remove the fear completely,

I must remain mindful

Why weaken myself with recklessness?

My body is only ever trying to save me, it is not to blame

It would not only be pointless but it would be an unjustifiable cruelty to take it out on my own body, or my own scrambled mind


The Mammalian Diving Reflex is part of the process that tries to heal your body’s broken systems.

It mixes the chemicals and changes the electricity in my mind, fixing the malfunctions that always seem to strand me out here, adjusting its flow

I am meant to be able to swim most days without feeling I am drowning

And while the water is working its magic, I can only try to grip onto anything that feels like me, while I am lost and surrounded only by the water.


I know I will always return to land for a break, when I feel too heavy to float among the waves crashing around me, especially when storms pass over. There will always be the storms. The crashing can become deafening. Sometimes you can only cover your ears and wait until it passes. You remember the shipwrecks and know you must leave the water in case lightning strikes. But really you know they will pass over without harming you.

Maybe I can only be entirely myself, finding some internal alignment

When the waters have carried me past the point of returning to safety


No. I know that it is true

But I feel murky, as dense as a fog above water, as I deny that fact to myself at least a hundred times a day

A sentient voice never stops demanding to be heard. It is what any beating heart wants and it is a wanting that cannot be ignored forever. It is only a matter of time.

Sometimes your soul or spirit or magic is found in the deep waters. You cannot see it, only sense it. It might feel tingly but not prickly.


There’s something almost too terrifying to face about going out there to find it, into something so unpredictable and powerful, as what is blocking diversions in your mind and finding sanctuary in your body.

But it will wait for you until you face it. As they say, and I believe honestly, you must “face your fears, so your fear disappears.”

When you swim further out, if you can, make sure you're not alone

Bring a friend with a lifeboat, a vessel to float beside you as you explore


Actively deciding to swim towards something that represents everything you fear most, fears you might still be in denial about, is better than staying lost and panicking, grasping for land that you don’t need any more than you need saltwater when you're dehydrated. To regain control, you must know you can survive without it. Or you will only ever be a master of striving and not of living. Anyone can learn to live, with practise.


And letting my body be motionless while I rest, letting the water do all the work, when I can afford to hibernate core functions for a reboot, is half of it.

But we are not only core functions, we are running on raw emotions, and so we are not living without them.

I am carried through these waters, my pen deciding the way, my mind awake and lost in an immeasurable, unpredictable consciousness. Day and night, light and dark passes.


Sometimes a new opening will appear, only found by swimming far enough out, far away from land. Forming a new path for me to swim.

I can still try and swim against the tides in another direction. I can make a dive for new land, a blur I see in the distance, a risk, an uncertainty, once that might pay off, or exhaust me and strand me.

I can stop swimming for a while, but the water will still carry me somewhere.

And I cannot pretend that I will begin swimming where I decided to stop before.

The ocean is a body of water that can never be still, controlled, or its reactions fully predicted. It can never be wholly understood. But we can try with all our might. Connections are never wasted time.

The weather won’t ever stop for any of us, and then there’s everything that is happening below the surface, and it is all beyond our means of control.

I can only get free by putting a pen on paper, even though I don’t even faintly feel I am the one guiding it. Maybe that is what makes writing a lifeline for me, the absence of control and making me be okay with it.



As the final lines in the last chapter of my novel go (on a different note with a different message); "And remember, if you see a hand reaching out of the water, grab it. Not everybody knows they need saving. Nobody realises how easy it is to drown until it is too late. Sometimes in life, we get the opportunity to save each other; don’t miss it."


I feel the Mammalian Diving Reflex already, I do. From the comfort of my own bed. From the reassurance of safety. The restless waters will always exist in my mind, but it is my decision whether to try to guide myself or be carried by them.

Ink and paper connect me, and the pathways in my mind to quite possibly my soul.


The sun peeps through the curtains, and my environment comes back into focus. I feel like putting the pen down now. I choose not to slip into a daze as ignition fires up in me, time and again. I hold onto the moment of calm I feel now, with two fingers, and do not move anything but my mind and wrist. Lifted by the music, I feel like I am immersed in cool water over every surface of my skin and pressure lifted from my muscles, my heart is slow and I am weightless. I am submerged in the ocean waters, sometimes a merciless thing, but controlled by my hands in this moment.

Even though the spark of the fires inside me make me feel better, stronger, while I burn, I must redirect the oxygen from the fire, and contain it only to the crucial systems like my lungs and heart, and let the fire burn itself out. I will find out who I am without it. Fire isn't meant to burn forever, only when we need it to survive. A fire without sparks or an open flame, removed from the fuel and heat, may feel powerless, but really it has just been saved from self-destruction. The only thing you really need to learn how to control is your breathing.




*The picture used in this post is Jennifer Walton's Dark Water Swim 6 ▪ oil on canvas — from her Below the Surface, Swimmers in Dark Water collection.

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