Journal entry
05/01/2018 | 9:45pm
I suppose it’s safe to say it’s easy to get carried away when swimming towards the sunset. Both physically and mentally, with the waves sweeping your body out further and further, but your mind doesn’t mind because it wants a challenge. Deeper and deeper, further and further, so far you can’t touch the sand any more without sinking under water. So far that all the people just look like specks and you feel like you’re surrounded by nothing but silky blue laced with ribbons of orange as the sun sets. You feel almost magical, like you’re floating in space, as you lay on your back and the sound becomes muffled. Everything feels like your own. It’s easy to float when the sea’s speckled with salt, until your arms begin to tire and you decide to return to the shore to what you know and what is true. Because let’s face it, you can’t stay out here forever in a world you don’t belong. But no matter how hard you kick and swim everything seems to stay in the same place and you feel like you’re not moving anywhere. The salt washes into your eyes and you breathe it into your lungs and you just blindly flail trying to find somewhere to stand, hoping and praying that you haven’t turned around and are swimming even deeper. You feel like you’ll never reach home, but you push through the sting and eventually, eventually, you find your feet brushing the sand you never knew was so soft and you are able to wade to shore. The water is soon at your ankles instead of your chin and you can finally use your body the way humans are meant to use it – for walking on land. Maybe you won’t be so … ambitious … next time.
Lauren Kathleen 