Blue Was the Color of Home
A tumultuous childhood on the sea and the pull to return
Blue was the color of the landscape I grew up on, blue in every direction, blue as far as the eye could see. Days at sea on the ship were my favorite, where time would loosen, like a modern Sunday with no plans and no screens. I’d swim in the pool, filled daily with ocean water that was sometimes rough from our tiny vessel’s swaying. I’d explore secret, crew-only passageways and back rooms where machinery ran hot in toil. I’d post up on a lounge chair near a window and stare into the expanse, getting lost in books and my imagination.
It wasn’t all dreamy. I also spent restless nights in bed, the ship rocking so intensely that we once even laid in life vests, holding my breath every time I swore we were about to capsize. During the day, tables flipped over themselves and armoires filled with drinking glasses shattered while we sailed through rough seas. We tried to have fun with it—I would sit on one side of the ballroom floor, where my mom was teaching dance classes, and slide across the shiny hardwood as the boat oscillated—but the persistent unease took its toll on a kid.
I began to obsessively pluck out my eyelashes, eyebrows, and a little patch of hair at the top of my forehead, which I hid beneath an elastic headband as it grew back. Slowly, my increasingly anxious mind latched onto alarming visions: our boat sinking in the middle of the night and water flooding into my room beneath the doorframe; accidentally stepping on the spiny barb of a venomous Lionfish while swimming in the sea; a barracuda zipping to the surface and violently tearing my flesh if my swimsuit reflected the sun just right.
Living on the sea during such formative years imprinted saltwater-everything onto my genes, for better or worse, that has created a deep yearning for and dread of the blue.
The idea of one day living in a landlocked place went against everything I centered my world around—water. My dad began spending his summers in Colorado while on break from being a professor. I’d visit him and think, I could never live this far from the ocean.
Yet here I am, nearly eight years in Colorado, and I’ve discovered comfort in life on land, something needed after many years of chaotic currents and foreign air and inner turbulence. Waking up to an unchanging horizon soothed my nervous system. The land holds me. I love its dark forests in early winter and the distinct summer smell of pine needles baking under the sun that’s a mile closer here than on any coastline.
All this comfort and calmness and familiarity and still, the pull of the sea hasn’t eased.
I have a folder of saved posts on Instagram entitled “data.” Anytime I come across an image or caption that stirs something deep, that sensation of primal yearning, the post goes into the “data” folder. It’s a collage of tiny blue, emerald, and grey squares—photos of wintery seaside towns, women freediving in long snorkel fins, underwater dreamscapes and artworks.
One image that has stuck with me is of a woman standing waist-deep in the ocean, arms outstretched, on a foggy morning where the horizon is nowhere to be found. The caption reads “5am club. 5am is now my favorite time to be alive.” I’ve projected much onto this simple and discreet post, like how she must’ve been there with her girlfriends. How they must’ve had coffee while sitting in the back of their pickup trucks on the beach, sandy and wet and stickily wrapped in sweatshirts and towels. How they must’ve made a pact to wake up at five every day for a month to see how it affects their mental health, “Let’s call it 5am club!” How the water was probably frigid and she must’ve arrived tired but I bet she left feeling alert and belonging to something bigger.
Why are we sometimes most drawn to the things we’re most terrified of?
In my mid-20s I lived in Wellington, New Zealand, and each week I would ride my bike across town, over the eastern hills to a little bay called Hataitai Beach. One of my New Year's resolutions for 2016 was to swim in a natural body of water once a week. I would tread in chest-deep water, too scared to go out as far as the regulars doing laps between the buoys for what seemed like hours. I envied them.
Just like I envy stories of women living life in and around water, like Liz Clark’s memoir SWELL about her ongoing life aboard a 40-foot sailboat, or artist Tracey Emin’s daily practice of swimming on the north coast. Despite Tracey’s health issues, literal brushes with five-foot-long tentacles of lion’s mane jellyfish, and anxieties of the sea, she swims in open water every day.
“Since I was little I’ve had the same reoccurring nightmare that I stand by the edge of the cliff, the tide has gone out for miles, revealing the land mass below the sea, and as I look toward the horizon, a sound that’s louder than any I’ve heard before comes with the moving sky, a tidal wave, a giant tsunami towering hundreds of feet high ploughs towards me. I have no escape, I turn towards the cliff and then I turn towards the wave, it splashes over me and through me and I’m left standing.
I’ll be back in the water tomorrow.”
-Tracey Emin
Some fear of the ocean must be universal—healthy, even. From an evolutionary perspective, I suppose it helps us avoid danger. But fear has layers and, like in Tracey’s recurring nightmare, the ocean represents more than a body of water. It’s vast and uncontrollable. It’s also free.
Lately I’ve been questioning if this pull to the blue is a worthwhile pursuit. I fear I’m overly romanticizing the idea. I also fear I will always wonder if I don’t go back.
I fear, I wonder, I fear.
I wonder what life would look like in the 5am club. I wonder how being in, smelling, seeing, existing next to the water would change me. I wonder, would it feel like returning home? Or would it feel big and lonely? Probably a bit of both.
The truth is I don’t know and never will unless I go. Maybe that’s enough reason to.
This was such a beautiful post, my friend. It took me to some of the places you described (especially on the ships) and also reminded me of what images/stories in my head kept me up at night as a child. And these are the big and impossible questions of life, aren't they? Like is there one place where we can have and experience everything we want? I'm not sure what the answer is, but it resonates... especially as someone who grew up on an island and is also now landlocked in the middle of a country. I love things about the country, the mountains, and the ocean. Is there a place that has it all? AND the community I'd want?
I really loved the creative practice you shared in the middle of this post: how you collect data on Instagram and what it shows you. These are the types of practices we probably don't think to share with anyone, but which could be profoundly inspiring and helpful to one person.