The Journey Home to Who I Am

I’m heavy in the water, weighed down by my oxygen tank. The light blue, starchy stinger suit clings to my skin in a way that sends my somatosensory nerves into overdrive, making me uncomfortably aware of how I move. The tight, rubbery feeling flippers on my feet are the most familiar to me, propelling me forward and toward the open ocean. My oxygen mask hisses loudly as I desperately practice inhaling and exhaling through my regulator while my mask gathers water, evidence that I am new at this. The way the equipment tugs on my skin and at my attention makes me overwhelmed, like a discombobulated performer suddenly cast as the role of a fish. I’m trying to move in a way that feels less like I’m about to drown and more like I was born to breathe 12 meters underwater, but I panic and flail upwards, squeezing the hand of my instructor so tight that he has to wrestle out of my grip and grab my shoulders so he can look me in the eyes and say, somehow without words,

“You are going to be okay.

I know this is scary.

Breathe.”

I nod, the movement so tiny it’s almost imperceptible, and refuse to break eye contact with him as I wrench my heartrate back into my control. I am reduced to a being that breathes, no longer human or fish, just an organism that breathes in and breathes out. Somehow, I am able to look down and remember the reason why I’m in the Great Barrier Reef in the first place – and my breath is taken away from me once again. I am awestruck by the multitudes of green, black, pink, red, yellow, orange, blue, and white scales glimmering underneath me as schools of fish flit around the coral, darting between the dozen flippers in the water and dancing around me in an uninterpretable oscillation of color. 

My eyes prick with the sting of emotion as the logistics of breathing fall into my subconscious and the pressure in my chest grows and I choke back tears – I am transformed into an organism that is surrounded by and made up of salt water, breathing in and out as if I have no way else to exist. I am in the ocean, but somehow, I am the ocean. I see the spirit of Natalie’s father wrapped up in the fabric of the shadows and light amongst the depths and my insides collapse inwards, existing, radiating grief and power on a higher wavelength than I have ever known before. There is something so broken and so beautiful about this body memory, and I am crying without weight, a spiritual osmosis returning me to the universe where I was made.  

This feeling burns like a fire in my muscles, but the gentle ebb of the undercurrent reminds me that I am capable of movement, of control, of compromise with the water. So I compromise, drifting towards the coral with curiosity and respect – I am smaller than I ever knew. Before long, my tank becomes lighter as I use up oxygen and I float towards the sky alongside the bubbles I create, spilling outwards and upwards towards the light leaking all over me. I burst through the surface and spit out my regulator, swallowing oxygen and saltwater with the intensity of desperation, remembering how my body belongs in the world. And I have discovered something animal about this life, where I met consciousness and shook the hand of God.

I spend the rest of the afternoon exhausted and stretched out underneath the sun, worn out from liberation. 

I spent five months in Sydney, Australia. It is the beginning of my origin story, where I was created and spun into being. I had to figure out where I came from; where I had access to. My passport granted me physical entrance to the country, but the social access was not so simple. Where do I fit in this place? Who will want to know me? Who do I need to understand? What do I know? How to connect across borders and experiences was complicated, but the relationship making process was exhilarating. I learned to understand how other people worked in the context of their experiences, which changed my relationship to connection. I had a space in that world that I didn’t know how to make a part of me – but I created it.

I had a responsibility to myself to prove that I am not just an American. The gross association with American exceptionalism warps the global community and made me afraid to speak because my voice gives away my roots, where I grew up - for me, it is difficult to associate myself with ideas of ‘Americanness’. However, I was able to leave that behind. I am more than that, an amalgamation of self, built and proved through my own doing. There is nothing exceptional about being an American, but there is something exceptional about me. I found it in the oceans and the buses and the pubs along Anzac Parade and on the back of ferries moving through the harbor; the places that I was originated alongside are part of me, too. And I am exceptional for those things because I am made more by them. 

I am very proud to say that I have returned from my time in Australia with more of myself tucked into my pockets, spilling out without remorse or hesitation. I am healthier, stronger, and sillier – I am exactly the person I want to be. And that knowledge, more than anything else, is what I carried home with me for fourteen hours on the plane ride to Los Angeles, next to a beautiful boy who held himself alongside me for the five months we were there together. Everything I have prayed for was carried up to me on the shores of the Australian coast. I loved it deep into my veins, scrubbed my edges and corners clean, and poured warmth into my story. I was washed away with everything I’ve ever known.

Yet, I have been found. 

December 17th, 2019