"For the first time in my life, I felt as if I mattered. On the surface, I was less than the dirt on someone's shoe. But underwater - I was a princess."
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Born without a wolf, Charlie aspires to be a ballet dancer. But a deliberate sabotage crippl...
While we were waiting for the pack to get in touch with us, GiGi suggested I take up swimming again. I hadn't gone near a pool for the last two years, but with her encouragement, I decided to dive back in.
It wasn't long before I was spending my weekends in Blackpool at one of the leisure centres, and I was immensely happy to be back in the water. I'd missed it, and it was a good way to unwind and let out some of the recent tension plaguing me.
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After a few sessions, however, I realised that I wanted to do more than just swim. I wanted to dive deep, to explore the underwater world without needing to come up for air all the time. So I decided to learn freediving. GiGi was impressed when I told her.
"You're going to fit in well with your new pack," she told me that afternooon. "They're more comfortable in the water than they are on dry land. And their packhouse is a floating residence, so they can take it wherever they wish."
I was impressed - less so when GiGi referred to them as my new pack (but I was willing to let that go) - and this spurred me on to learning as much as I could, not just so I could "fit in", of course, but also because I wanted to.
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I didn't want to break any records, of course, but my instructor - Barry - told me he was going to teach me everything I needed to know about freediving. In his words, one could never know when one might need to hold one's breath for a long time.
"I was a surfer," he told me, the afternoon I had my first lesson. "And you know we wipeout all the time. And occasionally we get caught in two-wave holddowns. They're not pleasant, I can tell you.
"But I was young and cocky, and a bit full of myself, and I didn't really believe there was such a thing." He chuckled. "I got educated pretty damn quickly on my second surf.
"I paddled as hard as I could to catch this one wave, and when I stood up the lip of the wave threw me forward. I fell for a second or two and got the wind knocked out of me. Then I felt myself get sucked backwards by my feet and then pulled up and thrown back over the falls. This time the impact wasn't as hard because the weight of the barrel already penetrated the surface so my body just followed that path under the water.
