I feel nervous about the free fall. At 20m the ocean will start pulling me down into her depths all the way down to the sea floor like gravity. I wasn’t worried about it much when it seemed likely I’d never go that deep. Why would I? What’s for me down there?
And now I feel the nervous excitement in my chest and belly. Now I realize I will reach 20m and at that moment I will feel the pull, stop kicking and fall. I’m pretty sure now in the gut I’m the way I know other things. I know because I have tasted my first bite and instantly wanted more. My introduction to freediving was rough and traumatic. I dove away from the ocean into new music. I got back on the seahorse with support from friends, journaling, somatic descent and literally just dipping toes in the water, then hips, then lips and eyes. I broke it down into baby steps and wonder returned.
This morning I swam down to maybe 3m effortlessly, turned around and looked up. Sunbeams waking up the water. Shimmering bubbles on fingertips. Long hair floating in water and light, illuminated from behind, changing colors in a dance around my head. I saw the electric dots again, underwater fireflies.
I describe the electric dots to Captain Bubbles and he stared at me blankly. I stare at this pirate who knows every identified fish in the sea by their Latin names and feel crazy. How can he not know what I’m talking about? I see these neon specks, tiny light creatures, blue and purple nearly every time I open eyes in the ocean. They’re mesmerizing as an ocean fairy would be. I can’t help but lean in with attention to observe them more closely and under the spell I could easily be swept away to the horizon. How has the fish pirate boy noticed them or perhaps the words I’m choosing to describe the fluorescent blips doesn’t do them justice. I suppose a Google search and a Latin name might get the point across.
Today I saw the sunrise from under the water, rays through almost clear water, a gentle haze. I only receive a few seconds down there before this buoyant body is drawn swiftly to the surface again…and again.
Life is so good here. For the millionth time I feel in my bones how good life can be a standard everyday experience, taken for granted as much as it is appreciated.
Vacation may be perceived as a chance to live the good life for a week or two, a break from the slog of the daily life back home. It feels good to live the good life on the daily so a vacation may be lived as an out of the ordinary adventure. Vacation can be the spice of a good life instead of salvation from life lived unwell; a special treat in a field of diamonds.
I remember thinking, with a twenty year old mind, that I’d very much like to live a life I never wish to escape. Perhaps, I pondered, I ought to take vacations to very dismal places to give me perspective. Once a year I’ll go to a total shit hole and immense gratitude for whenever I live will be undeniably flowing through open eyes. With this brain, now thirty four years old, I can say I’ve been there and done. I’ve been to some dark places (and I’ll probably see more between now and whenever this body dies), and I no longer fear the darkness as I once did. I actually long to sit still in the darkness regularly. I remember being joyful as a girl and young woman, effervescent light was bubbling in naive wonder. Now my own life experience has me nodding in agreement with the sages. Swimming courageously in darkness has trained these eyes to pick up on even the most subtle light.
And oh how I kicked, screamed and cried when the doctor told me I had to embrace the darkness. Twenty-seven years of silver livings and choosing happy had cemented a stubborn habit of a positivity, an addiction to light, a total rejection of dark. This “toxic positivity” as I’ve heard it called was concerning the balanced humans around me and thoroughly irritating the negatively minded ones. We need both. Yin and Yang. I believed touching darkened, even looking at it, would melt my joy like the water thrown on the Wicked Witch of the West. I’d been taught how to pick positive perspectives. I don’t recall many lessons in how to hold myself in darkness. I heard friends speak of their love for the darkness. I squinted at them, judging them in some way for being sick or depressing. Why would anyone like the dark? I could barley understand how someone could tolerate it let alone enjoy it.
There was a giant cyst on my ovary though and the doctor said I had to face the darkness. I was becoming sick emotionally, physically and spiritually and I needed to face the full spectrum of who lived inside me. There were answers in the darkness that would help me heal. Healing would come through wholeness. When I could finally hold myself, all of who I am, light and dark, dreams and grief, wonder and terror, love and judgments, passion and resistance, anger and compassion, determination and surrender, youth and wisdom, openness and boundaries, this seen world and something beyond the mystical, this is when I would be at whole, healed, healthy. This I have learned in the body is self love. I love everything I see when I look inside myself. If I look inside and find something I don’t love, I know now that I simply haven’t learned to love it yet.
And so I drive a scooter through the rice paddies (sawa), slide feet through black sand, hold my breath, pinch my nose and stay under the surface of sunrise water for a few more seconds than before and I feel how good and healthy this life is. Everyday gives me light and dark and all of it is loved.
Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde