the ocean and I
I am 18.
As the waves clash and the sea salt sprays on my skin, I dip my toe in the water to see what it's like. It is visceral when I recoil and pull my body away from the cold cold water, clawing at my feet.
'This was not what I was promised,' I plead to myself.
'I was not told it would be this cold. They told me that I would feel warmth and the comfort.. It was a lie.'
I retract and gently fall upon my back to feel the sand beneath me. It pulsates with the water and tells me its thoughts.
I was never ready. I take a deep breath and can taste it, the bitterness that comes with the ocean. Right as I lift myself up, the water engulfs me.
I can't breathe. My nostrils burn as the salt attacks me and the water invades my being. I flail and thrash as I beg for mercy and relief. The whole time my eyes are shut as I fear what I will see when they are open. I am pulled, against every fiber of my being, into the water and deep into the ocean. The world only becomes darker as I submerge deeper and deeper. I open my eyes.
Rejecting my body's pleas, I keep them open. I see shapes. Senseless. I see a light at the bottom. As I will my body to approach it, the water pulls me back and I am now in a fight with a being I know to which I will lose.
I am nothing compared to the force of the ocean. It pulls me and lets me go. It spits me back onto the sand and retreats slowly, as if the mischief it had caused was a product of my imagination alone.
Alone, I am alone.
I turn my body to cough up a piece of the ocean within me. A tear streaks down my face and licks the sand off of it. I begin to sob. Uncontrollably.
I convince myself I had flirted with death. But really, life had been flirting with me.
I had let it go, and it had become angry and jealous. I had closed my eyes and let myself fill in the gaps for beauty that life had created. And when I was curiouser and desired to know, it was taken away from me. It wanted me to see, even just for a moment what it had in store if I was ready to plunge into it.
I slowly but deliberately stood up and approached the shore. Where the sand and the ocean met, I would meet it too.
"Hello."