Tuesday 31 March 2015

Take Me To The Sea, It Knows Me Well



Since being back home I've felt a little colder. Not due to the twenty degree temperature drop, but to my hardened sense of self. I know that this is a product of a somewhat emotionally difficult year, and it unnerves me. It makes me like myself less.

I hate feeling that coldness inside, it's icy touch creeping all over my little heart. I have this feeling that maybe I will never really be the same again, that this is one of those things that happens as you grow up that makes the world seem a little less easy, that makes life seem a little bit more fragile. I have always been resilient, in the sense that I have always been able to see the other side, to know that the other side is inevitable. And I still feel that. I just haven't crested the monstrous hill yet.

The months following my return have been so bloody busy that I have hardly had a single evening to myself. I've crammed my days with work, and my evenings too. I've been running and going to classes and applying for jobs. Recently, due to a project reaching it's climax, I have found myself with more time on my hands. And I've realised that all that busyness was a somewhat calculated plan on my behalf - if I was busy, then I wouldn't have to face what was stirring up inside me. Now I can see that the dark thing that was once an iceberg is still near-freezing water, burning at my insides. And now that I am forced to look at it, I'm scared it will flare up again, spurred on by the cold winds of my focus. I'm scared that it will bring down all the work I have done, piecing myself together.

I have never been so afraid of my own darkness. I have never wanted to run away from something, but I really, really don't want to spend any more time trying to defrost. It exhausts me, it takes my breath from me.

Things in Cardiff are slow, in a hectic, busy way. In an everyone-rushing-about way. I find it harder to meditate here.In an unrewarding way. I find myself checking my phone instead of checking my feelings. I find myself surrounded by consumerism, waves of sales and plastic bags and statement hats.

All I really want is heavy, powerful, pure waves of water rushing and crashing over and around me.

The water and I have this special thing. It's something I think people who have grown up around water share. I went back to Pembrokeshire on the weekend and I took a chilly dip in the icy sea, my swimming costume clinging to my goose-bumped skin, the wind rushing around me, pinking my cheeks. I only swam for a few minutes, but I felt instantly calm. Instantly cleansed. Instantly closer to myself. My soul came home and I was able to see through the fuzzy, white noise that has been plaguing my mind for so long.

I whispered a thank you to the water and got out. I changed and sat in a cave watching the water gently stroke the sand, like a lover stroking a cheek. I was able to think in linear. I was able to stare and I settled within. I was able to get lost in the magic of that enormous being.

My whole body buzzed for hours afterwards, and I remembered how much I needed the sea. How much I was magnetised and hypnotised by it.

I am returning to Pembrokeshire, to the sea, where I can submerge my body in the water, submit my mind to it's power.
Because life just feels better with it by my side.

JoJo