The Sea, The Sea

Inspired by a picture prompt and my life love love affair with the sea.

You’ve always loved the sea.

It holds this magical power over you that you’ll never truly escape. The minute you see it - that flat blue-grey line on the horizon, you feel like you’ve come home. You feel the anticipation building in your chest so much it makes you want to cry with relief at the mere sight.

It’s like visiting an old friend after a long absence and worrying that they’ve changed while you were away. Maybe they aren’t the same person you remember? Maybe you’ll be uncomfortable and have nothing to talk about. But when you see them and they smile, that’s it, you’re in love again. They might look different but it’s still them. You love them just as much as you always did and you can’t believe you stayed away so long. All absence is instantly forgotten.

The ocean is like that. It’s forgiving of absence. It just wants you to return, to lure you to its shore again so it can try to pull you into its depths with gentle watery fingers. It wants you to stay - forever, and later when you have to leave, when you pack up your things at the end of the day, it’ll stay with you. The memory of how lovely it’s embrace had been will linger for days in your mind. How beautiful the surface looked in the sun, rippling like liquid crystal around your feet. The smell of salt water, warm and ozoney and welcoming. The feel of the sand, pooling and shifting around your toes as it tries to absorb you.

All these will soon be your memories, but for now, it welcomes you back.
‘I’ve missed you,’ it says as you walk across the warm sand toward the waterline. ‘Say you’ll stay this time and you’ll never have to worry about a thing.’

You turn briefly to check the world you came from is still there, like a tether. It all looks so small and humdrum from here. People going about their business, worrying about their appearance, arguing over money. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s all just pointless repetition. These are things people do to make themselves feel like they’ve accomplished something with their lives but in reality, it’s nothing but worry and noise and expectation. It’s draining and soulless.

You look back at the ocean. Nothing but water and sky for miles. It’s enough to take your breath away. It’s the most beautiful and perfect thing you’ve ever seen. The water is powerful but whispery, lapping away endlessly at the beach. It’s eternal. Long after you’ve left this world this will all still be here.

You remember reading a story once about a man who loved the sea so much he turned himself into fish so he’d never have to leave. You wonder if that’s possible. To love something so much you become a part of it.

A few tentative steps forwards and the sea pulls you still further like it wasn’t enough to make a half-hearted effort �" you have to commit. It wants all of you. It senses your unease and wants to soothe you and take away your worries.

And it does.

Out here, with the water up to your knees you feel the calmest you’ve ever felt in your life. The daily worries you carried have been drawn out to sea, like poison from a wound. Everything is quiet and still inside. It’s amazing. The only thing you feel is the flow of the water. In and out, in and out �" a constant.

Your eyes follow it out to the far horizon, the gradual darkening of the surface hinting at the depths it hides beneath. That’s the thing about the sea, it hides secrets. The deeper you go, the more you’ll find. It’s full of dangers but at least out there the dangers are real. Most of the fears you carry were made in your own mind. You conjured them up like ghosts. They whisper in your ear throughout the day, making you worry about unnecessary things. Worries and doubts that have no substance or form. The ‘nothings’ that the sea has now lifted from you and carried away.

You sit down in its shallow water and the waves threaten to push you down flat. Maybe, if you had the courage to lie back and surrender, it would take over and pull you under and out. You’d float away with the tide like seaweed and vanish, forever part of it - just like the man in the story.

It’s so beautiful and hypnotic - you just close your eyes and listen, fingers buried deep in the sand. The Ocean is singing to you in a voice only you can hear and you just can’t help smiling. No one on this Earth will ever hear this. Not now, not ever. It’s yours and yours alone.

You sit there quietly revelling in it until eventually you feel a hand on your shoulder and the spell shatters. The water falls silent and returns to cool, glassy liquid. It looks so ordinary now �" always hiding its secrets.

It’s time to leave. They want you to come back. Back to your normal life of worries and routine. Back to civilisation.
‘You don’t get to keep me today,’ you think, stroking your hand through the sand under the water. It billows and swirls like a storm. ‘But I’ll be back. I promise. I’ll always come back.’

You take the hand offered and haul yourself up carefully out of the water. It surges, pulling at your clothes but loosens its grip on you reluctantly. It knows it can’t keep you, not today.

This is always the worst part. Walking away and not knowing when you’ll return. Months? Years? It’s all too long regardless.
You want to cry but no one will understand the pulling in your heart so you keep your face plastered with a smile and you swallow it down. It’s not forever, you tell yourself, it just feels like it.

They guide you away but you can’t resist sneaking glimpses back when no one’s looking and you keep doing this as it gets further and further away. You keep looking until you can’t see it anymore and resign yourself to going back to the car. Back to your concrete life.

On the way home you’re quiet, sleepy but utterly, utterly calm now. The sea’s taken everything you didn’t want from inside and left you with peace and tranquillity. It won’t last forever, it never does, but it’ll be long enough to enjoy. It’s gift to you - like the dried salt residue it left on your skin.

You turn the pebble you snatched around in your fingers. It’s like a talisman, a reminder of your private exorcism and when you get home, it’ll go in the box with all the others as you wait patiently for the next time.

Because as long as the sea exists, you’ll always go back.

Reviews

[Charles E.J. Moulton]

Kirsty, this is fabulous. Touching and deep. When you speak about this, you speak from my Soul, you are speaking about the afterlife. The feelings about the ocean mirror the feelings about the afterlife. I've written stuff about the ocean and the feelings that it conjurs up, but nothing as touching as this. I grew up by the ocean coast, so I know what you are talking about. Lovely. Good work!