1. The Ocean

we don’t drown because we swim against the water current, we drown because we swim against ourselves – As too much movement and chaos against a wave in the
ocean doesn’t help keep a body afloat.

Death can either be the last thing to cross a persons mind or the very thing that can utterly consume a being – how will I die? when will it be? will I be ready?. If you asked my younger self, she’d be terrified as she viewed death with fear, a fear that would strip away at her hopes and dreams that were driven by passion and purpose – as to die meant there was no happy ending. She believed that there was still so many colours to discover to paint across the canvas of her life as back then death felt distant, a shadowed corner somewhere she would never have to go to.

If you were to ask me now, my answer would be –

‘ I’d love to drown.’

As unsettling and tragic that sounds, to me it sounds like peace and freedom. There’s anonymity connected to the ocean, no one knows how deep it goes, no one knows how far, it brings a form of silence that can never be recreated.

There’s something about surrendering to the currents that makes me believe in release, in letting go to discover something deeper – as if the water can carry away all the weight a person has carried for so long, In the arms of the ocean, I cant help but imagining that ill feel lighter than I ever have on land. Allowing the water to embrace you as it holds you back at first from ending the life that you’ve fought hard to keep, until finally it doesn’t hold back anymore and begins to take you wherever it wishes to, I tend to wonder if in the very moment ,where my body relaxes and allows the water to win over my body, is the moment I will find the peace i have been desperately chasing for – I wonder if the only reason the ocean possesses that calming presence that you cant find elsewhere is because it is the only thing that knows of a freedom I’ve never been able to give myself.

It’s weird, right? reading about a person fantasying over their own death, over something that hasn’t even come, something that should be feared rather than fantasised upon – but why is that the case? why is death something to be feared if it is something that brings peace, something that silences chaos. I’ve come to an acceptance that death isn’t so much an end as it is a doorway into the unknown – and perhaps that makes me more curious than afraid. Sometimes I wonder if the real tragedy in human existence isn’t in fact death, but rather never finding a place where you feel at home, at peace – somewhere for your soul to rest. Perhaps the ocean is where id want to be my last place, because it is where I feel most at peace, the ocean is what reminds me that life is both vast and deep, that I have an existence of something far larger than myself.

Sitting by an ocean and watching the waves roll in has become a habit, a way to forget everything and just breathe. Something about the waves leaving the shore and always returning back provides a calmness in me – almost as if its a form of reassurance, that even though the water that calms me may fall back, it will always return.

But of course, just because you love the ocean, doesn’t mean you have to drown in it. I’ve thought to myself, maybe I want to drown in the ocean because of how much I love it, because of how much peace it brings me, that drowning in it is the only way that i can stay at peace forever – but through time you come to realise and learn that you don’t need to stay forever to belong – because the quiet truth is that permanence is not a prerequisite for meaning. I think that’s why so many people fear death, they fear not leaving something behind, not making something out of their existence. But thats the funny thing right, compared to an ocean, we are merely nothing – so why should we be so focused on permeance and not presence? People may forget how long you were around — but they remember how you were present: how you made them feel, what you brought into their lives, and what you left behind.

When it comes to dying, it isn’t death itself that calls, its the thought of finally being free, free from pressure, free from the weight that makes every day feel harder than the last – death may look like comfort in the moment, but the real comfort is found in healing, in small changes – in learning how to carry the weight differently instead of allowing drowning to release it for you.

If humans wanted to drown, if they truly wanted to die in the ocean, why is it they fight the water before they allow it to take control over their bodies? is it fight or flight or is it truly them realising that they don’t want to die ; because when death finally rears its head, you feel a sinking feeling at the base of your stomach, why, when death finally shows up at your doorstep,
you are afraid to hold out your hand, to allow it inside –
that you become filled from your feet to your crown with
so much terror, so much frightfulness –
that your whole body begins to tremble.
Why are you then, so afraid to look death in the eye,
why does your gaze waver?

You weren’t surprised at deaths arrival,
You always knew death was going to show up at some
point –
But rather,
You were surprised that now, of all times,
You suddenly have an overwhelming urge to live

because death is not what calls you, what calls you is freedom. Afterall, the ocean is not meant to keep you, it’s meant to remind you on how to let go – for it isn’t the water that drowns us, its ourselves, and in the moments where we are stranded in the middle of an ocean with hectic waves – too much movement and chaos against a wave doesn’t help keep a body afloat, its what causes it to drown.