Cliff Dive

The mornings of competitions, I always wake with a jolt as if I’ve been dropped back into my body from a great height. Shockwaves radiate through me from my pounding heart, deadening and prickling my extremities with a kind of pins and needles numbness. It doesn’t seem to matter how many events I take part in or how well prepared I feel the night before, every time it’s the same. Through breakfast, my legs bounce uncontrollably under the table. As my coach gives me her last minute chat I have to force my mind back into the present, to focus on her lips and follow the sounds coming out.

As I make my way to the cliff face across a series of floating platforms, I suck air into my lungs, hold it and then expel it between teeth that are gritted to stop them from chattering as the tension threatens to bubble out of my mouth. The other competitors ahead and behind are wrapped in their own little cocoons of focus, no doubt running through combinations of tucks and turns and rotations, visualising take offs and the entry into the water that will turn them into a chalky column of bubbles beneath the surface. I rub my palms against the material of my costume and reach for the first in a series of ladders and ropes that trace the way up to the diving platform. I need to anchor myself.

Five things you can see.

Five. Rock. Grey, pitted rock. Rising high above me. Spreading out on either side of me. Stretching further and further below me. Hand over hand, foot follows foot; grey, pitted rock slides past my face. Concentrate on the detail. It’s pockmarked like the skin of an old drum. Sharp edges erupt here and there like razor blades set into the cliff’s face. Imagining grabbing one of the edges and feeling it bite into my skin sends a shock of cold down to my feet and I grip the ladder a little tighter.

Four. Trees with violent green leaves and skinny, brittle looking trunks emerge from cracks and crevices in the stone. Their foliage is an acid burst against ashy grey.

Three. Between my feet, the sea is a deep mirror. I try to think of a word to describe the colour; teal maybe, or turquoise or jade. Further away towards the horizon it shines like a sheet of beaten silver.

Two. As the person ahead of me reaches the top and steps off the ladder onto the diving platform, I catch sight of the soles of her feet. They are dirty and tough like my own; salt water and clambering around barefoot on cliffs tends to result in fairly well armoured feet. Her skin is much darker than mine but I’m struck for a moment by the lightness of her soles. One heel is cracked. The other foot is taped.

One. Following her feet, I too emerge over the top of the platform and step across to take my place in line. High above the world now, I can see for miles. The horizon fades into mist where sea meets sky. Being this far up affords some spectacular views. You’d think I’d be used to it by now; by definition a large proportion of a cliff diver’s life is lived on high, clinging to ledges like a sea bird ready to take flight, but every time it seems a revelation. The view sinks into my soul and I exhale.

The girl two before me prepares herself. She is the competition but I silently wish her luck and precision anyway. Mistakes at this height are fairly unforgiving. As she flings herself from the platform and plummets to the water below, my breath quickens and catches in my throat again. I run through my sequence but everything seems oddly far away, as if I am in a bubble and can’t quite reach the world, can’t quite remember the exact order of the tucks and twists that I know are imprinted in the fibres of my muscles. It’s like that dream about going onstage and not knowing your lines, or turning up to an exam you haven’t studied for.

Four things you can feel.

Four. The platform is perfectly flat beneath my feet, it is incongruous and alien against the weathered rock I’ve just scaled. Man-made imposed on something relentlessly, unapologetically natural. I drag my sole over its manufactured smoothness.

Three. Leaning back into the shadow of the cliff whilst the girl ahead prepares herself, I press my hands against the rock face behind me and drag them over the grain. It is rough and it grates across the pads of my clammy fingers.

Two. The heat of the sun on my skin is almost like a physical touch, caressing and just on the edge of being oppressive. It is a hot day, and sweat from the climb joins the cold prickles of nerves, setting fire and ice in a dance across my skin.

One. As the girl with the cracked feet takes her place at the end of the platform, a sea breeze slides silkily around my shoulders and whispers over my arms.

In front of me, the girl turns. Her face is a mask of concentration and she steps back towards the edge, positioning her feet with precision, making minute alterations to her stance. Her muscles are tight beneath her skin, sculpted by countless hours of training and practice, and tensed now, ready to go. One last tiny foot adjustment, one last breath. One bounce on her toes and she is gone. A writhing knot of mercurial snakes slips down into my stomach, their cold squirms bringing a sheen of sweat to my palms. I’m up.

Three things you can hear.

Three. The creak of the ladder as the person following me shifts their weight for the final few steps to reach the top.

Two. Far below, the shucking and sighing of the waves at the base of the rock whispers a siren call. The water is waiting.

One. A gentle pat-pat-pat. My own feet as I step forwards.

My body fizzes and hisses with anticipatory energy. I feel effervescent, suffused with electricity that crackles inside my skull.

Two things you can smell.

Two. Dust, dry, blown from the rock face.

One. Sweet hot skin, baked in the sun.

My heart beats a hummingbird tattoo against my ribcage. My routine slips back into my mind and my muscles twitch as I see each shape. Toes to the edge.

One thing you can taste.

One. Sea air. Salty and tangy in my mouth.

Deep breath.

Time slows; seconds hang in the air and then fracture and splinter before coalescing into one single crystalline moment. Two beats of pure focus and then I am gone. Weightless. Free.