Freedom of the sea

Freedom is diving into the white-capped waves and for a few seconds feeling as if I don't ever have to come up. It’s feeling my body move through the water effortlessly as a dancer moves into a dance routine her body knows by heart. The water doesn't judge me or tell me I'm not good enough. It doesn't have to. Underwater my eyes stinging not from the salt but the beauty of this whole other world, I can put away the feeling of suffocation for one more minute taking in the colors swirling around me in living art beneath the sea. My body moves and twirls in beautiful strokes of an ancient dance. My feet flick the water slightly and my arms and legs throw me into a spin. I move and I don't feel the chill of the water causing goose bumps to take over my skin. I move and my dancing body resists the gentle but persistent tug of the ocean's current. I rise to the surface for a split second hating my fragile bodies need for air. The cold air whips across my face slapping me for staying down so long. I breathe in swallowing all the air I can before a simple twist sends me back down to a vision I won't ever be to blind to see. 1

In the water the scars that drive away everyone around me, cease to exist. My heart feels that the tears and fractures are beginning to heal, filling up with freedom. The tiredness that weighs down my limbs as they try to listen to my pleas is gone. I want to soar through the clear blue water swimming above the keepers of the sand. The pain that clouds my eyes over in flashes of memories is a dull ache as my body dances among beings far stronger than I've ever pretended to be. 2

Vibrant colors move around me, never touching me but never leaving my side. Fish whose destiny will always lie in these waters look at me curiously. Their scales shimmer with reflecting lights as the colors echo my movements in a dance of light. Thousands of shapes emerge in the reflections, moving up as I move down and away as I move close. The fish that live and breathe these waters follow my path, curious and hesitant. As I glance down at the sand I see the ashes of rocks flying in the water while the creatures lying below come out of their hiding places. Flat bodies glide through the water, with an ethereal grace. Their skin is a mirror image of the rock ashes from which they came. The imprints of the tiny pebbles on their back are optical illusions depicting the land beneath the surface. My giant presence in their midst doesn't disturb them at all. The flat-bottomed creatures are too old to care about a temporary presence like me. As I move in my dance above them they float on through the liquid, disdaining to notice me in their superiority.3

Clown fish and Rainbow fish dart forward and than seem to glide. Their quick little movements propel them forward as fast as my body can turn and move into each stroke of the routine. The vibrant colors on the fish create baby rainbows that appear in each blink of an eye. I glance to the left at coral statues and I see a flicker of colors all bled together with the giant paintbrush of the current. The black and white stripes and triangles of the Clown fish are a stark contrast to the vibrant colors demanding my eyes attention. They stick out with such an opposite beauty. The black and white and the rainbows in the water together add to the magic of this place. While my eyes dart to the deep ocean blue, they can only return to the blinding white right beside it. My eyes take in the yellow and red of the setting sun but then they notice the subtle patterns of lava rock black. I stare at the oranges of fire melted in the water and that wild beauty clashes with the stunning shades of light pink and pale yellow and tame purple contained by the coral. 4

As I turn in the water feeling the warm sunlight pierce the white-capped waves to caress my skin, I am where I want to be. My heart pumps the drum beat that I dance to with a borrowed grace. The waves burst above my head explosions of white ashes of the water, the soft foam that is the remnants of the wave that was. Underwater the pain and breaking of above don't touch me. I only feel the wild power of these beings that could take me away in a breath if it forgot how powerful it was. My past and my present don't matter to a power that can't ever be tamed. While my slightest movements give me a beauty non-existent in the air, I fly. The dance of movement and the feeling of freedom is the beauty of the sea.5