Ocean Girl

Ocean Girl

When she is alone she likes to take a hot bath. She turns up the white noise on her phone. She waits for the water to fill to the top before she takes off her clothes. When she steps into the bath she hits her leg on the side of the tub because she is looking straight up at the ceiling instead of at her body. 

She lowers herself into the warmth of the bath and examines the bruise on her leg. There is thick hair on her legs. That is good. 

In the bath, she can look up and pretend the water is washing through her and she is nothing. She can listen to the white noise and let it drown out the thoughts that usually taunt her when all is silent.  

She can bend her knees and sink into the tub, and close her eyes as her neck is submerged. She can close her eyes as the back of her head is submerged and her cropped hair becomes warm tendrils of seaweed. She can close her eyes as her face is submerged and her nose dips under the water. 

She can feel herself becoming one with this tiny tropical ocean she has created for herself. Her legs are mangroves that take root on the seafloor and stand tall above the water and her arms are loose strands of kelp floating by. Her body is a single clump of coral, part of a greater reef, its lumps and curves sexless and neutral. She is a creature that lives in the warm ocean, barely alive, home to fish and other sea life but otherwise completely still and serene.

It hurts to become one with her ocean, but she knows it won’t hurt for much longer. She can feel her lungs and her throat fighting against the transformation as she lets water consume her and the last bubbles of air escape her mouth. She can feel every neuron in her brain fighting and thrashing and telling her to stop, but her roots are deep in the sand.

She is afraid in the physical sense, and even her rogue brain is telling her to lift her nose up, to bridge that tiny gap of water between herself and salvation. But in the spiritual sense she is filled with a silent calmness. Her chest burns and she feels as if her sins are melting away. She feels heavy and tired, so incredibly tired, but if she just stays under for a few minutes longer she will become an entire ocean.

She can feel darkness closing in on the edges of her consciousness. She is being pulled under by a current larger than herself. But suddenly, she begins to hear a voice from above, calling out, beckoning her….

 “Hey, you! Yeah, you!”

Someone who cares. Someone alive, a burst of golden sun she can barely glimpse, that the undertow will pull her away from if she doesn’t act soon. No- something beyond her romantic ocean fantasy, something real. In a moment when she feels truly friendless- a friend.

She sits up, abruptly. Her head is spinning. She looks around, at the tile walls of her bathroom, at the rubber duck smiling at her from the shelves above the toilet. She looks around for the person who has just saved her life. 

Her phone is sitting on the edge of the sink. It is playing an ad. “Hey, you! Yeah, you! Did you know that one in ten American homeowners do not properly clean their mattresses? With Glorbax Mattress Cleaner, discover a better way to clean! With its brand new chemical technology, Glorbax is capable of picking up five times more dirt than the current leading brand of cleaner! Choose the right way to clean! Choose the Glorbax way!” 

She dries herself off with a towel. She dresses herself facing away from the mirror, staring at anything but her half-clothed body. She feels deeply numb, and a poignant sense of shame washes over her. 

 How stupid could she be, to believe that the world made sense, that at the last minute, someone would barge in and rescue her from herself? She ought to get back into the bath and finish what she started. But instead, she finds herself draining the tub, watching doomsday recede before her as she listens to the commercial with a little too much investment. 

“For just $9.99, you can buy your very own can of Glorbax Spray! Because when life gives you sheet, Glorbax is there for you!” She can see the cheerful spokeswoman in the corner of her eye, a dark-haired woman flashing her winning smile as she holds a bright blue and yellow can in her hands. 

Here was a woman who she had never met, who on an ordinary day she would have clicked away with a tap of her finger. And yet, that woman had just saved her life. There was a connection there, an invisible signal cast between people that couldn’t be ignored. They were like two waves on different shores, she thought: distinct, but in the end part of the same sea.

Then she smiled, and felt that maybe she could stay in these imperfect, choppy waters for a while longer.