The Ocean
Preface: I wrote the following after 2 weeks at school. I was sad and emotional so I wrote and this happened. Going away to college is exactly like when you parents want you to learn how to swim, so they throw you in the deep end and tell you to figure it out. In the first few moments, the cool water is refreshing against your hot dry skin. The new freedoms you can enjoy are limitless, the days of dependence and following your parents dumb rules are over. But soon the shallow pool of freedoms turns into a depth of responsibility. Your head is the last of your body to be submerged. You can feel the water going in your nose, mouth and ears. The liquid eats you as you go deeper and deeper, you toes reach out for something solid to grasp on to, but there is nothing. The pressures of the real world, fill your optimistic and eager mind. The realization that you don't know how to swim sets in, you're drowning, so you panic. You can remember looking at the ocean of opportunity, wondering where the current will take you. You can now understand that underneath that ocean the forces of gravity are still at work, trying to bring you down. When you grasp the infinite amount of pressure you are under, panic and anxiety set in. You begin to flail around like a fish out of water, looking for some solid, finite anchor to keep you from drowning. In this moment, completely submerged, in this new situation, the past is irrelevant. It is done, you can use what you have learned to help you, but you soon find that in this unique situation, very little does. The future too has no place in your mind. No hope will save you, it must be earned. At this point, the future is far less of a concern as the immediate present. You use every part of your body to try and push yourself up out of the water, but the water ignores you and laughs at your lack of progress. When you see something in the water, possibly big enough to support your weight, you grasp with everything you have and for a moment the water clears up and you get a brief taste of oxygen to rejuvenate your spirit. But soon, your anchor begins to drown and you find that you are in almost a worse situation. Now you and your anchor are drowning in the abyss of confusion and uncertainty. Drowning at twice the rate, you see the option to release your anchor. And almost miraculously, it floats. Your only companion on this horrible ride abandons you for the lighter atmosphere. And maybe in time you realize that you anchor was never meant to keep you from drowning or help you stay a float, because the anchor, the finite solid was never an anchor to begin with, but a friend. Someone in the same body of water as you. In this realm, you can swim alone or drown together. First, the anguish in your soul, then the tiredness of your body set in, all of this flailing and movement has taken its toll. Time literally stops, you remember no past, you see no future. You see the murky light get smaller and smaller and as you stop moving and let the inevitable come to be, you are bewildered that it hasn't. You feel something light inside you. Something instinctively drawn to the place where you want to be. With your eyes closed, you don't see it happen, you feel it little by little, first on your face and then your torso. More of your body emerges from the depths. You feel the air, but it isn't until you gasp and completely fill you worn out lungs with this new breath, that you feel the difference, the rebirth. Your new eyes look around to see that nothing is different yet everything has changed. What seemed like it's own lifetime was only a brief moment for the spectators. Everyone gives you impressed looks, not realizing that you aren't actually swimming, you've just learned not to drown. // Things have changed. Come on in, the waterâs fine.
