I always loved the Black Sea. I like the mountains, but I love the sea. I almost drowned at least once until I was 5 and that is the most vivid memory I remember from my early childhood. Me falling in a water basin and people looking from the top. And I don’t remember any fear, just curiosity.
At 6 I learned how to swim and since then, the sea has become my friend. I almost drowned several times since, never in the sea, though. It didn’t stop me from loving it.
Every time I go to the Black Sea for the first time in a year (around June, usually), the water is cold and I stay out for 5 minutes at least before going in…. but after that, the feeling is… I don’t think I can describe it, but feeling the water around your body, feeling like you belong to it, there is nothing in the world that can compare to it. Not seeing the beautiful mountains of Switzerland mirrored in the waters of Geneva Lake, not feeling the beauty of Istanbul by night, from the plane, when it looks like being alive, nothing. Just the first time you enter the sea and swim, after a long long time.
The sea as a friend. Sounds crazy, right? It may be. But it is a friend that doesn’t judge, that doesn’t offer advice, that doesn’t try to interpret. The sea just listens. It was there when I lost money and business, it was there when I fell in love, it was there when I wasn’t sure my decisions were correct. It was there when I just needed to not speak. It was there when I was walking up and down trying to find my steps.
Yesterday I went to the sea. As always when I need to just speak out loud. It may sound crazy, but this is the way I get balance in my life. Did you ever watch the sea during the storm and thought the turmoil of the waves is exactly what you feel? Nothing makes me calmer. Yesterday, the Black Sea was calm in the morning. Different colors for different feelings, but calm.
Sometime ago I started to dream on the shores of another sea. The sea told me: “The dream is over”. So I woke up. Things change. Times change. Decisions change. London, here I come.
I will die on the shores of the sea.
