Drowning fish
I resurfaced ten seconds later, but in there I’d felt like it had been ten thousand seconds. I cried out loud but the frothy water that entered my mouth ensured that no sounds emerged. My lips opened and closed and I felt like a drowning fish. Drowning fish, an epitome of irony. Just like tripping humans and falling birds.
What a waste of all those early morning swimming lessons that my parents had forced upon me. That too, with a religious faith that I’d come out with the stellar abilities that would help me overcome a situation just like this. I could but whimper in silent despair, when I felt a sharp pain hit my body as a current caught me in its wild eye, twisting my suddenly fragile body around like a twig caught in a gust.
Kicking against the water underneath me felt like a futile tug in the merciless clutches of the inky ocean I was getting consumed by. The ocean that contradicted itself constantly. The ocean that drowns and sinks ships of daunting optimism, yet mothers entire ecosystems with creatures still unknown by name to mankind. A nurturing bosom of creation yet a vengeful coffin where things disappeared into, never to be found again.
To be trapped in the heart an endless ocean would be the plot of nightmares that awaken many with a jolt, accompanied by beads of sweat on the forehead. That moment was my moment of realization that I’d been caught alive in a nightmare.
Caught alive in the stuff nightmares are made of
Nightmares are fleeting, much like dreams and memories. Somewhere underneath, one’s conscious always knows it will shake itself out of this complexly constructed pseudo-reality. Nightmares are nothing but a concoction of disturbing, yet seemingly authentic scenarios constructed in dark spheres of our mind before it manifests in the hapless state of sleep. But living in a nightmare takes a different kind of valiance, one that I knew I must draw from the deepest depths of my being.
A leap of faith in this nightmare in the flesh, much like a flicker of light in dark dawn. Summoning some courage, I let myself float up to the surface of the ocean — dust that rises to the surface. Waves crashing violently around my body, I tilted my head to look at the sky as if I was waiting for hope to rain down on me. An absurd voice in my head instructed me to swim parallel to the current, in a baseless belief that I might manage to levitate close enough to the shore, eventually getting washed ashore alive.
My arms oared me along the waves, my body protesting against the strong winds threatening to dunk me back into the dark abyss. I don’t know if I swam, or performed something resembling that verb. But whatever I did with spiritual vigour brought me closer to murkier, warmer waters. Murky waters that tasted sour and dirty only made me happier — it meant I had to be close to humans who littered the coast.
The very thought of the word coast had my system pump some adrenaline across my being, for it meant I would soon get closer to rescuing myself. I’d have a story to tell — I’d be the girl that swam across choppy seas with the bravery few could boast of. Even when the ocean tried to engulf me, I had found a way to resist the invincible. At this moment, sprawling on soft sand under the Sun felt like the only salvation I needed. Even when every nerve in my body begged on its knees to give up, the thought of hitting a beach kept me going in my rhythmic clockwork. Giving up just was not an option.
A day later, I awoke on the beach that I’d yearned and prayed so long to be on. Turns out I’d been washed onto land, after all. The merciless mother had absolved me from her depths.
Prickly little stones pierced into my sopping wet flesh, still wet from billowing waves of the beach, probably. Something warm and ticklish flurried across my shoulder, a confused crab, probably. I sat up, groaning involuntarily as every sinew of my being felt sore. I sat perched on the coast for as long as it took for the sun to tire and set in lazy red colors on the distant horizon.
Apart from feeling sore, however, I felt nothing. No elation from saving myself. No pride from tiding over the near-impossible. No jubilance from finally escaping the clutches of the ruthless ocean. No emotions. I felt numb and senseless, my head spinning and my eyes seeing nothing but plain white expanse. Protest rose in my head like bile in my stomach. I realised I did not belong on the coast.
I wasn’t a shell that lay in blissful, mindless nirvana once I got washed onto a nameless beach.
I wasn’t a crab that sidled across the salty ground mating in ecstatic glory.
I wasn’t a seagull that squawked around trying to nest on damp beach mud.
I wasn’t a grove plant that found happiness in growing out of salty water and grasping onto beach earth.
I wasn’t any of these shore dwelling creatures, and never will be. The coast, no matter how safe, brought upon me an ennui I couldn’t try and explain, quite devoid of emotion.
The ocean, as much as I would hate to admit, was the entity that empowered me with the multitude of emotions it swallowed me in. I was gravely mistaken to have thought I’d find salvation on land. I knew I had to get back to the ocean to feel, to be able to feel anything.
