A lesson on diving headfirst into waves

I am learning how to allow words to simmer and give birth to the new. I am learning that, slowly, I am unfolding into something beautiful. I have started accepting my humanity a lot more recently. Making room for the new without disregarding the old. I am falling in love with the way I see life. I like how embracing my mistakes and insecurities makes me stronger than I ever was.

Then, if I am embracing the new, I am also acknowledging that there is newness in everything. Even the old can turn into something new in the blink of an eye. Memories can change. We are not in control of our lives’ collected fragments, even though sometimes we let them rule our present as a compass. I am slowly learning how to embrace change but diving deep into things as a survival mechanism. I am learning that I can only find peace when jumping headfirst into waves.

I grew up in a seaside town. Learned how to mimic herons before I even learned how to speak grown-up words. Me and the sea have much more in common than me and the last guy I dated. In the bay, there is endless stillness. Even during summer storms, I feel like the waves wouldn’t be able to swallow me alive if they tried. The open sea is different though.

My mind is filled with sticky sweet memories of summers spent in my hometown. The sand stuck in the backseat of the car. Applauding the sunset. Getting my fingers stuck inside the brand-new beach umbrella I borrowed from my grandma. Even if I piece all of these loose fragments together, nothing ever leaves me more in awe than my habit of always swimming towards the open sea. I hear mom calling out my name from the sand, saying I shouldn’t go too far. Waves are dangerous, is what she always says. There is a strange force pulling your legs from underneath. In the blink of an eye, you’re drowning. I am twelve when she says that, but I am also twenty-two. I realized this fragment is not only a summer memory, but a life one.

I am learning how to teach myself things from observing my old habits. I have always liked spending hours on end diving into waves just so I could be waist-down covered in cold salty water. I never minded the struggle. I enjoyed floating from time to time, whenever the waves ceased. I liked being away from the trash slowly piling up near the sand overcrowded with beachgoers.

One thing I learned about diving into waves is that most of the time, I couldn’t reach their crests. Whenever I tried to, I would end up being carried by the Atlantic current only to deal with my hair and ears filled with way too much sand later. I also learned that the current is very much real, and my mom was always right about being pulled against my will. If I fight it, swim against it, it only pulls me impossibly closer to the open sea and then I would drown for I wouldn’t be able to get out of it.

It works like a cycle: Fight it, struggle, get pulled anyway, your lungs fill with water and then you are found looking like a dead blowfish in the sand. My only route of escape was going through the middle. If the crest and the bottom give me low chances of survival, why not just jump headfirst in, and then wait for the next one?

Wait for the next one.

The next.

Is there going to be a next one?

So, the thing is… the sea renews itself. Every day, hour, minute, second. There’s newness in waves: where they form, the shapes they take, what they end up carrying just before crashing. I am learning that life is relentless like that, and there will always be new waves coming. Most of the time, a second wave comes before you’re even ready for it. Before your feet can touch the ground after the dive. Before you struggle to open your eyes filled with salt crystals. If the second wave is already here, you have no choice but to act. See, it is simply survival. You get ready to jump in again, gathering impulse from the water itself. You are a gymnast of the sea without a certificate to prove it, but you have the experience and the scars that tell the story.

As you learn how to dive into waves, you find that in the middle there is calmness. You feel, for a brief moment, that you are a fish in a pool. You don’t have to struggle against anything, your surroundings flow alongside you even if you’re shifting in the opposite direction. To me, it is as if the sea is telling you are brave enough, so you can go through. It is okay to go against the current, but only when you find the right point to cross you can find peace in the process.

I always tried to swim against the current through life-threatening escape points. I have struggled with feeling inadequate for the world and how it turns in on itself. I feel inadequate in all of my relationships. I feel inadequate as an artist. I feel inadequate as myself because there was always this feeling of what the hell is wrong with me. I was stuck in the cycle. In the drowning. Watery lungs, heavy heart, almost out of consciousness. I was fighting the hardest battle I could ever fight: the one against my own nature.

Therefore, I realized, if I like being waist-down submerged in the water, if I feel like the sun is a lot more pleasant when I am standing there, if I don’t like living half-way, being half-way alive, half-way in love, why would I continue engaging in this battle against me. I was the one hurting me, and that was a lot to take in all at once, but then the next wave came.

I am gathering strength as I pour these thoughts into words. I do it as I add dots and break paragraphs. I am learning how to live without a lifeline, finding peace in being submerged in myself, crossing barriers, hearing my mom screaming from a distance and finding comfort in knowing I am not about to drown again. My new cycle goes a little like this: feel it, acknowledge it, do not fight it, jump into it, let it change me into who I am meant to be, let it go and then get ready for the next one.

Movies are a lot like life because we, humans, make them. It is funny to see things on the big screen that I always tell myself I would never go through. But then the next wave comes. People are a lot like waves too, and through music and literature I have learned that they never really die. We carry pieces of each other inside ourselves. We are always crashing and being born again into something new each day. I am not the same as I was yesterday, and I am a lot different than what I am going to look like tomorrow. I see myself loving people a lot more now. Falling in love was always so brutal to my whole being. Feeling sick, helpless, and vulnerable.

Vulnerability is the key to diving. The dive is embracing the breaking point and placing yourself inside it. I feel like being vulnerable and honest is probably the best thing that I embraced about me. The world around me tells me I am wrong; therefore, I feel like I am doing something right.

This rawness of life hurts, but it can also be so sweet. Falling for a smile, or the way someone phrases things. Allowing myself to breathe into what I became after two decades of struggling. Learning how to uncover parts of myself and share this experience of being alive and, sometimes, not so well, but alive, nonetheless.

Again, I want to be in the middle.

Why live life half-way?