eggyeolks brain dump

I grew up by the harbour. The low hum of the passing ferries serves as the backing track of my life. It’s the lullaby that accompanies me in my slumber and plays throughout the night, until the sun rises above the horizon and a new day is born. 

It’s a Sunday morning and the old man reels in his rod. I discover him one day while I am strolling down the harbour. Days turn into weeks into months and he’s still there, unchanging. I have a sudden urge to ask him why he’s been here more than half the time I’ve been alive, before he looks up at me. 

“Stability,” He attaches bait to his hook. “Why must we always thirst for change?” I don’t pretend to understand what he means then. His voice is even but the look in his eyes is almost morose. It’s a far more complicated look than I could ever know. 

“Where do we go next?” My mother questions me one night. She asks me where I would like to go. Where I’d like to live. I’m only young, and I don’t understand the vastness of the world.

“The ocean,” I tell her. “I like the ocean.” Because it’s all I’ve ever known my whole life. 

I stare out my bedroom window, nothing but the gentle waves and blinking lights of boats returning home appearing before me. It’s my last night but I can’t seem to wrap my head around the idea that I will no longer bear the privilege of waking up next to the ocean every day. I don’t like change and I am scared and anxious and afraid and it consumes me whole, deep into the night. I wish for my tears to somehow gather in the ocean before me so at least some part of me will remain here. 

We don’t go to the ocean. The land and sky separate me and the sea. I peer through the clouds and see the rolling plains under me instead of the endless seas I had hoped for. 

I touch down and the air is stifling between the foliage; the branches prickle my skin as I venture through. Instead of saltwater on my tongue, the unfamiliar dampness of morning dew on leaves forces me to acknowledge its presence. I hate for others to press against me, skin to skin, reminding me of the heat and humidity and everything the ocean isn’t. 

Night falls and I’m alone again - solitude has never been more apparent to me than in that moment, no longer just a theory but a reality that I now live in. Everything is too loud, too vibrant during the day, but I find myself craving the commotion when I am alone and everything is too quiet - silence feels louder when there's nothing to fill it with. I quickly learn that humans aren't meant to be solitary creatures.

The phone rings over the steady buzzing of the fan and I pick up, not expecting much. But it’s a warm, familiar voice over the line - how did they get my number? How did they find me? Far too many questions, but those that I found didn’t matter once she ran across the hall to embrace me in a hug. One that I didn’t mind at all, her laugh like a precious fragment of a memory that reminded me of home. 

She shows me the quickest route home, feet easy on our skateboards as she guides me through. The wind sifts through our hair, cool against the perspiration on our foreheads. It’s the coolest breeze I’ve felt in a while - incomparable to the ones that smell of salt and carried the waves back home, but close. It’s a nice feeling and I let myself enjoy it for once. 

Seasons change and the weather grows slightly cool enough to trek up the hills. 

“Where do you want to be, now?” I pretend to give this thought, stopping in my tracks before I answer: “The ocean.” 

I know this for certain now. Not because it’s all I’ve known my whole life - I’ve seen and believed things I never thought I would have before. But because I know it is where comfort lies in between the turbulence and unpredictability of the future. For I know there is an end to all things good and bad, just as the tide rises and falls without fail every day. For I am assured that the currents will carry on in constant motion despite the harshness of the world. As I reach the peak and peer through the sliver of space between the trees, I spot a coast I’ve never seen before.