The Shining Beryl

I used to love the ocean. Growing up, my family would take me to the beach every holiday. One, because my grandparents live very close to the sea and Two, because I used to continuously beg them to take me there. I loved the sensation of cold salt water against my bare skin, causing goosebumps to form there. My heart would leap at the thought of bathing in the warm sun rays while chugging countless amounts of sweetened iced lemon tea. I loved having sandcastle-building competitions with my cousins and I most definitely loved winning each and every one of them. But my favourite part was always to lay there on a beach towel and just adore the picturesque wonder of endless blue before my youthful eyes. 

 

My young self loved the thrill of not knowing what’s out there. It used to fascinate me how vast and mysterious the ocean was. Nothing was ever constant out there, not even its colour.  Most of the time it was blue, but sometimes it’s green and on rare occasions, a beautiful clear turquoise. However whatever shade of calm it was reflecting, I could never resist the urge to just indulge myself in the sparkling sapphire waters. My dad used to always tell me not to go in too far because the tide could easily wash my tiny figure away. But I was always a good swimmer and my dad knew that, so I never really understood why that was ever a threat for me. 

 

But the more I grew older, the more the ocean lost its charms for me. I never really had a reasoning behind it, I just figured maybe it was a phase and I grew out of it. However, it didn’t stop there. Not only did I fall out of love with the ocean, I gradually came to hate it. Fear it, even. The mystifying unknown that was once magical to my innocuous mind is no longer enthralling, it now becomes ghastly. And it was only last year that I finally disentangled the knotted strings of my chaotic being and fathom the true premise of why I came to despise the ocean. 

 

I was young and naive when I first loved the azure waters. The infinite navy didn’t scare me away, it lures me in because I was full of life and I craved spontaneous adventures. A need the ocean could satisfy. My young self knew that however deep I explored, my dad will always be just a few feet away watching me with piercing eyes. Even if one day I went too far and the tide washed me away, I knew that my dad would always go after me and bring me back to safe territory. And even if he didn’t, I had nothing to lose. I thought at least I could swim with the little fishies I used to see on TV and maybe made a friend with a generous kind-hearted mermaid. Of course, the only things I knew in life back then were only daisies and unicorns. And as much as I loved the ocean, in the back of my head I always knew that if the sun ever gets too scorching hot, I could always leave and go home. 

 

The ocean was only that, the ocean. However every single thing I associated with it back then, now I identify with life itself except I can never escape life. The ocean has always been beautiful, mighty, and tranquil but what my gullible eyes didn’t notice was that when it was all those wonderful things, it was at the same time restless, rough and cruel. And so is life. The more I cleared through the blue, the more I understood that I was never afraid of the ocean, I am just terrified of drowning in it. 

 

I may have never literally drowned, but I know what it feels like to gasp for air and scream for help but having no one there to even hold your hand. It’s like constantly running to catch a train but never getting on one. The worst part is that you can see the train, it's there right before your eyes, but whatever you do, the train will not stop, it keeps speeding away and even if the engineer sees you sprinting, he could do nothing about it. Drowning is pretty much the same thing. You kick and yell and cry and reach but you keep sinking. You can see the sunlight through your blurry vision but even if you drain all of your energy on trying to stay afloat, once the ocean core sucks you in, it feels like there’s no way out. Hence, drowning is the worst way possible to die in my book. 

 

But ironically, I was drowning, I am drowning. I could feel myself sinking more and more, slowly, every single day. I kept trying to swim because I am a good swimmer, at least I thought I was, but it seems like all of my efforts to keep my head above water were to no avail. And no, it was not like what my tiny self imagined, there are no fishies nor pretty little mermaids; it is all dark and cold and eerie. I could feel my lungs collapsing bit by bit and my heartbeat slowing down beat by beat with every tick on the clock. But again, they never fully died. Everything keeps shutting down, but none of them would actually perish. And eventually, this tortured me more than death itself. So I stopped kicking, I stopped screaming and I just ceased. 

 

I had no idea how long I had been drowning, but one day I decided to look up. And there I saw a tiny little dot of diamond, a shining ray I once forgot existed as I was too fixated on the loneliness grasping my once lively soul. That little speck of light, however, was a reminder that there is an entirely different and magnificent world out there. A world that was once mine before I started sinking, a world full of people I love, a world full of my beaming dreams. And it was at that split second that I found a new desire to start kicking again. I started swimming again, not because I wanted to stay afloat, but because I longed to go back to the safe haven I once knew, I longed to go back to the dreams I once fought for. 

 

I am not fully above water yet but at least I am slowly floating back up, at least I am not sinking anymore. All this time, my mind was always on the infinite blue that it forgot about the never-ending presence of a golden light. The realization has finally hit me that all those times I saw the blue sparkling was only because it was reflecting the shine from the gold. And so ever since then, even though I can still feel the cold nature of the blue grazing my skin, I choose to keep my eyes trained on the gold and my palms reaching for its warmth. No longer do I loathe the ocean because now I know that without it, I would never even glance at the sun. 

 

I am still kicking and screaming every single day, but now I know that someday my little muffled voice will be heard. Now I know that someday I will stop suffocating, I will stop needing to swim and I will get the air I am missing out on. I know that someday I will be okay and it will all be because of the golden and not the blue. I know that someday I will fly high and free and it will all be because of my dreams and not my fears.