I’ve always swum in the water with ease, letting my body float as the water coats my skin. I kick into the deep blue every time, watch my hands cut through waves, feel salt and sand embedding itself onto my lips. I open my eyes underwater and although it stings, it’s the only place where I can see clearly. I see ripples, shells embedded in the sand, and my own shadow leaving an imprint only while I am there. And then I breathe out. It’s a comfort, seeing my breath in the form of bubbles. It means that I’m still there and I’m still alive, still living, still feeling.
Eventually though, I have to leave. I have to return to the place that expects so much from me and it’s exhausting. Every time I see the ocean, every time I dip my feet in, I expect my cup to be filled. But I feel a hole, a leak that immediately empties because I am in a place where I cannot see how I breathe. I feel the entire weight of my body, my aching knees or tension in my shoulders. I feel like something that doesn’t belong in the place I am forced to be in. The world is grey, concrete, solid, and I miss the water every second I am not near it.
Perhaps I always belonged in the ocean, away from the expectation of it all. Being a Ngarrindjeri woman, being Aboriginal, First Nations, Indigenous, it comes with expectation. You cannot fall, you cannot falter any step because the second you do, there is an expectation that you were always meant to fail. The stones, the rocks of the world have always been stacked against any action you do, and you still have to beat against them. Like a wave, you hit against them over and over again, only making small changes every time.
It’s a hard lesson to remember that you and your people were never meant to survive. And even when you did, you were never supposed to remember who you were. You were meant to just fall in line and be like everyone else. Yet we don’t. We resist. We remember. We insist that everyone else hear us too.
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