The Ocean

From the east coast, it’s blue-green, murky and dark. Mysterious, almost and scary to many. From the Caribbean, it’s such a clear color of blue that it took my breath away the first time I saw it. Alluring. In Hawaii, I heard that the sand around it is even different than it is back home. In both places, it is endless and farther than the eye can see. That, of course, is the ocean. I am amazed at how boundless it is, how it stretches across three-fourths of the world.

I have had a love affair of the ocean since I first saw it. My parents, apparently, first took me to the shore when I was three. Apparently, I ran right in and my dad had to speed up behind me to make sure I was alright. From the first moment that I saw the ocean, it was my home. When I was little, I used to feel a visceral connection with it and I thought that I could literally feel Poseidon. It was one of the only times when I felt spiritual and sometimes even at peace.  

Of course, I heard the mountain had the same allure. I was curious for quite a while, but when I went, I just didn’t feel the same thing. Right away, I knew that I was an ocean girl forever and I looked forward to the time when I would be near it again. My father coined me “Fish Girl”.

When I was older, I became less of a fish girl. The water was cold, the saltwater stung, no one wanted to play… I played in the water but I didn’t hear the ocean anymore. I tried, but I felt nothing.

Yet, in many ways, I still am a fish girl even if I don’t swim as much as I used to swim. I feel at home next the ocean, hearing the lull of its rocking waves and the sound of laughing people within it. The sand curls under my feet when I sink my feet into it and even the sun on my body feels good. When I jump waves, I feel almost as if I am on a roller coast. When I tore through the wave, I felt reborn. Even when I was pulled under or ended up with sand in a bottom piece that almost tore off, it felt right and it felt real in a way I didn’t feel anyone else.

I have just left a place where I saw the ocean every day. I could walk out of my hotel room and it was there. We had went there for one day and spent the entire day nestled beside it. Of course, being as I am in my shorehouse, I can still be in saltwater but… In the version of a lagoon and not the ocean.

The ocean is wonderful in a way most things aren’t. It is so unique in a way that absolutely nothing else is with its vastness, with its danger, with its beauty. It can offer fun and comfort and just about every other possible thing. It can leave you laughing even when you mouth is dry and you feel so uncomfortable everywhere. I don’t usually like nature but the ocean somehow is different, like it defies all rules.

The ocean is my home. I miss it and already I can feel it tugging at my heart. Yet the ocean is in my heart, in my memories. And I know that I will end up returning to it again even if it is next year.