Everything ends up in the ocean.
We are the ocean, each one of us.
We absorb the poison, our waters sickened by oil, plastics, decaying fish, broken vessels, rotten trees. We take it all.
And we have our top layers warmed by brilliant sun, and we go still beneath starry skies with blue whales breathing in our midsts, and roil and splash in raging winds forcing up massive tidal waves with all manner of life forms.
And we rest with seaweed islands on our backs as our waters turn orange and pink and violet and deep magenta and finally black after the sun sets.
We are oceans, each one of us.
This morning I walked out in the neighborhood beneath the bluest sky, utterly heartbroken on the first day of school for my sons. For all children. This is their world and look what we have given them.
I try and wrap my mind around so much loss. The communal losses are so great I can’t count them all.
As I watched my dog wag around in the grass, pure joy and harmony in every bit of him, I yearned to feel that.
I yearned to be free of so much emotional pain.
And then I kept walking beside him and it hit me.
I am an ocean.
I can hold it all.
Like the ocean, every emotion, every thought, every hope has room here in me.
I have no choice but to hold it all. The realities of now, so terrifying to consider. The future so terrifying to ponder.
And yet, I am the ocean. Maybe I too can hold it all, take it all in, let it float around. Not attach to all of it. I can’t control what comes in—the news each day, the sadness on others faces. The frustration in my sons’ faces.
But I can be present. I can continue to make room for the life that lives within me. The joyful leaping salmon and long legged herons getting their morning catch. I can make space for the neighbor kids to splash in my waters and look for crabs under rocks.
And I can keep swimming in me. Dive deeper and deeper, even beyond the light, where the eyeless fish roam.
Mary Swims 