IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO CHOSE THE SEA

an ocean of emotion

I came across a plaque on Pinterest which read ‘In memory of those who chose the sea.’ A small engraved tribute that served as a memorial marking the seafaring; the sailors, the fishermen, those marine venturing souls who spent their time in crashing waves. They chose the risk; bodies plunged into treacherous waters, a living made from not knowing if they would make it home. Vocations spent in vast emptiness but also fullness - the ocean can make you a slave to it. The more I reflected, each letter and word flooded until they slowly poured themselves into wild watery pools.

To choose the sea is to choose to ride a violent and choppy current. It is to feel the world and its ebbs and flows  from the seat of your soul to the tip of your nose. To be willingly submerged by an innate sensitivity. To wade into treacherous waters that will bruise you. To choose the sea is to open every pore in your body and absorb the tides of life into your bloodstream, be filled with life and its pain and heartbreak and its death until it knocks you clean off your feet. To spend nights in kinks where your lungs are drowning in your own air. To only stand back up and edge your toe upon the shoreline. And ask for more. The ocean is EMOTION.

Have the muscles in your heart ever wound themselves into a knot so tight that your rib cage begins to cave under the pressure? Aortas coiling with your ventricles and tangling themselves with your arteries until they knot themselves like vines of pain down to your wrists. The arms symbolise your connection to the outside world, I believe long lost memories of pain might circle them, like bracelets that slither around your joints like a snake. Emotional imprints embedded like scars, biceps full of blame.

Some of us feel more because we are coded that way. Some just enjoy the ride. When I read a birth chart I can immediately see the depths a person feels; Watery moons, Plutonian intensity, 8th house, 12th house, deep deep deep. Some of us have come to Earth to gather emotional intelligence, but to do so we must dive inside of ourselves. Emotional exploration is an opportunity to experience the undercurrents of life, to explore more and then bring something undiscovered back. Collecting love like jewels, gathering pain like blisters. To rip the blister open is to release another fragment of self into the wilderness, to send a piece of your soul out roaming so that it can drown for a moment, become lost then find itself and re-emerge. To scream on the floor is to soak in one’s anguish, to engrave yourself into a hard cold surface and believe that that is where you will remain. But to stand back up is to rise out of the puddle that your eyes have just bled - and look - those droplets have crystallised themselves into silvery beads of understanding, empathy, knowing, wisdom - send them out into the sky.

To take the risk and be willingly burned by life is to allow the soul to feel. To drown is to discover all of your innards and pull them out into the sunlight. To scream is to breathe. To cry is to release. Very often, life's harshest experiences deliver us the most sacred medicine, a transformative singe that cleanses that which is not real. A heart so beaten from love, life and loss can only wind itself so tightly until it breaks through the bonds that fear knitted around it, it's like lifting weights - the heavier we go the stronger we become. Your heart is a muscle and it is not so different from your bicep.

A family member once shared “Every painful experience tears another strip from you. Eventually you’re left with nothing.” A memorial of what once was. The words sank to the pits of my guts because to feel anything less than whole is more terrifying than death. But upon reflection, in some ways is the opposite not true? Is every scar not soul texture, every chain a rope leading you out of your own abyss? To sink into the deepest lagoon of self, to feel it, then swallow it, is to eat your own tail. It is to turn emotional destruction into an act of creation. To be reborn with a shiny new armour, because you allowed yourself to devour yourself and in doing so, you gave birth to something new. To choose the sea is to be wild with the water, to be willing to catch the waves as you plunge into the nearest riptide. Every salty mouthful contains nutrients you didn’t know your soul was hungry for. Every rainbow of emotion is another colour to add to your palette. Draw the alchemy from every emotional waterfall because every dive in fact brings us higher, you’re simply choosing to embrace more of your experience.