now, Feel
Here I am again.
Back face to face with the ocean.
A stand-off.
“Are you ready to float yet.” It beckons.
But there I am again, frozen in time, frozen like the frozen particles of light that make up my being, cards close to my chest, poker face instinctively on.
What even is this strange fear that has amassed in my heart towards the false ferocity of the ocean waves? No longer able to swim comfortably in the ocean, even though now I live 10 minutes away from it.
A lot of it is, what it always is, the unknown.
In the many ways we understand the way physics work: laws of attraction, laws of proximity, like attracts like.
Which is why when our thoughts change, the people around us change, when our habits change, the things we do start to change, when we explore outside of our habitual nature, we begin to attract a new environment.
In the same, funny, slightly scientific way our traumas appear in circumstances, in proximities, in manifestations that have nothing to do (in immediate observation) to the original trauma.
I’ve lost my innate ability to go deeper, to be willing to be carried by something greater than myself, like an incoming wave.
Surrender, to what is truly, the complete unknown.
So when I stare at the ocean, what stares back at me is my inability to let go—what lies in the darkness of the ocean floor mirroring what lies in the darkness of my own heart.
When I was a child, my family and I would travel to the Caribbean.
My brother, sister, and I would play for hours in the waves.
It was our greatest game, always awaiting to ride the biggest one of the day.
One would experience a full cycle of emotion amongst the waves.
The anticipation of noticing a massive one swelling in the distance, the setting up and preparing for what will be a crazy ride. Suddenly, it arrives, and you’re drawn up into the mass full body, full force.
Once you reach the top its like a flash, the anticipation dissipates into a moment, the conqueror has reached his peak, you take a gasp, your eyes scream open as they spell, “it doesn’t get better than this.”
Then, the crash.
Your stomach lulls,
Your eyes close shut,
You take a gasp of air as a souvenir and, you descend.
To ensure a safe descent you allow your body to go limp, until you feel the compression of the crashing wave on top of you, and the firmness and safety of the ocean floor.
When the rustle and tustle of the water above you settles, you rise from the blue blanket and check to make sure all passengers have arrived safely.
We laugh, and prepare to do it all over again.
Our mother tried to join us once. She ventured into the waters, waited and waded with us until, we spotted the One.
This was the Behemoth.
The biggest one we’ve seen yet.
As experienced wave-travelers my siblings and I rode it together up to the peak, our mother rose successfully as well.
But on the crash, since the descent was going to be so dramatic, it was of even greater utmost importance to go limp, and let the wave guide you back down,
don’t fight it,
let it work its magic.
But our mother didn’t know at the time, that important skill, and the wave took her, and she crashed onto the ocean floor, hard and painfully.
She ended up fine, a little shaken, but fine, but I remember the moment clear as day in my mind.
My mother now finds herself facing a similar massive, tsunami of a wave.
But as I watch her endure the circumstances of her illness, with a brave heart and open mind, I see she’s learned through the ebbs and flows, that is often the trajectory of life, the importance of,
letting go.
And as mothers often do they lead the way,
and we follow as obedient daughters into the paths they’ve paved.
So now, this Pisces, that was afraid of the water, finds her float again, in the great unknown.
