During summertime, my family would always go on a trip away from the city and visit the beaches near our provincial home. As a kid, I enjoyed swimming and feeling the waves roughly splash against my face as I blinked. But unlike my cousins or my siblings, I did not want to go far out to sea. Instead, I’d swim inches away from the shore.
I have been afraid of the ocean. I was not afraid of the water, or of the rough rocks, or of the unsettling texture of epilithic algae that may cover them, but I was simply uneasy about not knowing the existence of tangible entities beneath the surface of the sea.
The depths of the sea scared me; the unsure and uncertain calmness of the water terrified me. And instead of facing my pelagic fright, I surrendered—toe-dipping and scavenging for seashells, pebbles, and small, disfigured rocks, before placing them inside a wide-mouthed bottle to carry safely to Manila.
Whenever we traveled back home, I’d inspect every bottle as if it were an artifact—holding it between my forefinger and thumb like penny-sized fossils from a long journey of deep digging.
On our way back to the city, I used to watch the sand sift through the empty spaces of the bottle like an hourglass, contrasting it against the rays of light that penetrated through our car window as the sun set. The only difference was that time stood momentarily still. It was among the most beautiful, vivid images that I could still recall seeing as a kid. I remember just gazing at it until I fell asleep, tightly tucked in the rear seat of our tiny car, amongst our sea of baggage.
My already damaged left eardrum was severely ruptured when I tried to swim away in the sea. It happened during our vacation when I was 7. Subsequently, after the incident, my mom would take me to an ENT doctor every two weeks, for most of which I had no clue of what was happening. I used to hear only on one side of my head, and the other half almost felt blank—like white noise mimicking the sound of the sea, of the ocean breeze, of echoes of the waves in littoral caves. The sensations of that memory only brought completeness to my fear of the waters. There was no longer fear in the absence of sounds that occupy the frequencies of the terrestrial chaos. It must be the reason why I long for the ocean now. But each moment I step onto the boundaries of the coastline, I can only hear my mother’s plea of warning. “Iho, you must always wear your swim cap and earplugs before you swim!”
The waters are uncharted territories, and I have learned to live by the restrictions of my impairment. There are times when I wish I could just dive and plunge deep into the water, like a fish with gills and a body that floats. No hesitations, no approval coming from my mother, warning me not to go too far, to listen, or else go deaf.
Each time I think about it, the more I imagine myself floating in the middle of the ocean. The image in my head extremes. I picture myself looking at the sky, wanting so much of the things I never felt before. The petrifying thrill of knowing the great pelagic unknown has suddenly become a concept out of the unusual. And the more I think about the ocean, the more I think about the atmosphere, the space, and what is there that we do not know that exists beyond our senses. There is a pining in feeling the blankness of floating, in not feeling any gravity —in nothing pulling me down, restricting me. Each time I reminisce about my experiences as a child, it never occurs to me how simply innocent I was, but how I long so much for answers to my questions. I was always curious.
How do I scream underwater?
How do breathing apparatuses work?
How spacious is the space?
Will it be able to contain all my thoughts?
The next time I think about these queries, I will occupy myself with reality before I sink into the deepest trenches of my fascinations. I will try keeping my feet steady, above the surface. I will stay near the shore, away from the vastness of the ocean. The vines in my gardens will remind me that the rest of my days shall be spent in the middle of dirtied soil that touches the soles of my feet and the sky that will be by the tips of my fingers each time I raise my arms to the unreachable heavens. And on this humble earth, I will patiently wait for the next comet to pass by and hope that maybe, one day, I will get there, floating with celestial bodies in space. I will gaze at the open sea like a long-lived souvenir, filling my hollow wonderment of a world that I will ever long for to know. And with a great sense of uncertainty, I will remain hopeful that the curiosities that we have gathered and the answers that uphold them will never become vestigial bodies of knowledge of the beautiful world that we could only admire and, by all means and might, dare to preserve.
