In The Water

Tangled memories of university and sailing.

"Tack!"

I fling myself to the opposite side of the boat. I pull the jib sheet. It is caught on the other side.

"Pull! Pull!"

I yank it. It comes free. I hook the jib sheet and lean off the side of the hull. I can feel the boat slide back towards me, the sail rotating back towards the sky. I can feel the weight of the wind in my hands; we probably should release the sail. My skipper slows down, and I can now see the buoy in the distance.

My view is unobstructed; I can see the shore. The wind is sharp, and a grey cloud is unfurling from behind distant mountains. The spray of the water hits my eyes, and my cap flies off. "Dammit," I mutter while straining my body and arms to hold on to the rope.

"Tack!"

We turn again, again I throw myself. This time, my knee slides on the hull floor, and I know that it is bleeding. Water splashes onto it, and the sting is sudden. But I forget it all, the pain is now in my arms, abdomen, and neck. I must keep pulling myself away from the boat, or we will capsize.

This pain repeats. Turn after turn, my skipper is ferocious and quick. On land, she's a small, happy woman with colourful clothes and a forgiving demeanour. On the water, she is the force that bends the will of the boat and me. While we are on this small vessel, battered by the waves and wind, I am simply another part of the boat. Her words are simple, short, and direct: tack, loosen, tighten, jibe. It is loud and clear. My mind empties, the pain is temporary, and there are only ten words that I recognise. The sails rattle and slap, pulling every connected component with it. Something bangs, and at some point in the course, I pull the rope so hard it tears a piece of my skin off.

I think that if I admitted my enjoyment of sailing, many would think I was a masochist.

It had been many years after high school that I'd pushed myself and my body to this point. When I was younger, the bruises would be on my ankles from misplaced hockey balls. Or the pain would radiate from my lungs as I ran down the sidelines of the field, and I would disappear into the singular focus of a task. I used to think pain was unbearable, the physicality too much for my mind as I curled over with nausea. I try to find it now. Because, for the few moments that I'm pushed to the edge, my mind stills and I become a shell of flesh without thought, a memory of consciousness. The pain is still pain, even if you look for it. A paper cut hurts, and stubbing your toe hurts. The bruises after sailing hurt. Pulling the boat on a trailer with a flat tire hurts, being hit with the boom hurts, and assembling the boat is a pain because it's so old that there are several different coloured ropes to attach.

I enjoyed sailing because it was a pain I could control, or rather one I had picked for myself. After the boats had been disassembled and stored away, after the sun had touched the horizon, I would return to a different cycle of pain.

Test, exam, assignment, group discussion, homework: the relenting waves of coursework continued to move me on and off the water. There was no break, no respite from the battering because you weren't on a boat. It was just you stranded in the ocean, watching each wave rushing towards you. It's different on the boat, because at least then, sometimes at least, the boat will ascend the wave, and you'll see the sun.

One should never choose a degree for monetary gain. I'll admit it was a spur-of-the-moment choice with remarkable consequences. But all 'adults' glorify it, they wow and smile as if you've swum across the Atlantic. Even people who've done it barely remember the pain or difficulty, choosing to reminisce on ridiculous mishaps between friends, cool experiments, and the passion. But it is hard. It is hard when you watch high school friends drink wine at lakes, party at clubs, or pose by the beach while you sit in a beige cube. It is hard watching the sun rise from a desk, wondering whether it really will be worth it in the end. It is even harder to flunk the same course repeatedly, watching your peers disappear into adulthood while you're struggling to undo the nets holding you down to the floor.

It is unrelenting. It is painful. I sometimes wondered if I would survive it, the stress corroding my body until I was bed-bound for weeks. It repeats. And when you finally emerge, with feet instead of fins, the world has changed, but you have remained the same. Too focused on the singular task, the person who leaves university is the same person you were five years ago: a stagnant, festering pool of water. You have hardened, become sharp to the touch, while others have weathered into smooth pebbles. The friendships you've grown have become disjointed by geography, time, and clashes of values. It is both as bitterly cold as the Antarctic water and as warm as the Indian Ocean to realise that the world moves without you. It is less painful than sailing but equally liberating.

Every day, I enter the ocean. Every day, I swim and swim, hoping that the water will be clear and the waves rhythmic. I swim in rain and sun. I swim whether others are with me or not. I swim because if I stop, then I'll drown.

I think that I sail because it's the closest I've come to understanding life. The perseverance, joy, and pain are so entangled together that I can't tell where my life on land begins and where the one on water ends. It is a mirror image to me, except that when you sail, there is always something there. The buoy in the distance, the mountain range, the sun, the direction of the sail, the voice shouting at me from behind. There are thousands of lighthouses guiding me. Every time I sail, there is guidance and pain. But after each trip on the water, returning to land where the currents are strong and the sun is fading seems ever easier.