This is a story about my on-and-off love affair with, metaphorically, the beach, open waters, and the sea.
My first ever date was in the first post COVID summer, in coastal Victoria.
I ventured out to meet a guy I met online. Through text, he was emotionally available and aware he was avoidant. The hot beach day was the perfect environment to bring any incompatibilities to the surface; looking back, I realize how the sound of crashing waves was a beautiful, soothing sound, but being caught underwater as the currents break was not. Almost immediately, we were in an anxious-avoidant trap, and it would take me two years’ worth of poems, and counting, to learn how to love myself enough to not go into steep shorelines unprepared.
After that, my longest ever relationship, although it is best defined as a situationship, was here in Vancouver with a guy I used to say was the sea, Poseidon himself. If I went with the flow, I had a wonderful time; the best dates, though technically hangouts, were trips to the beach. Blissful sunny happiness quickly clouded by my capacity to receive love that did not come with any strings attached, and unfortunately, without this clarity of what I needed, intention, I was once again in an anxious trap. A strong cycle manifesting itself like a lunar calendar. Fortunately, through poetry I was able to capture and reflect on the push and pull of the tide through this period of my life, and wonder where and why I was repeating it. Similar to the erred myth that the Aztec calendar was believed to foretell the end of the world, and not that the Aztecs were resetting their seasons, this loop of breakups and reconciliations revealed itself at the beach on January 1st:
In 2012, my cousins and I went into the sea.
Before we realized, the high tide took us away.
We tried to swim as we screamed mayday,
I split from my cousins and tried to get help,
We all got away, but not the fear that I felt.
I don’t trust the sea like before,
my sandcastle falls when a wave knocks on the door.
My comfort zone lays in more stable terrains
I even ask friends to play the water levels in videogames.
So you could say I am afraid of the sea,
Because I wouldn’t be able to blame it for drowning me.
The sea did not try to kill us, we ventured too far.
The sea does not have a memory, we remember the scar.
The sea will drown you if you let it be guide,
The sea behaves in a pull and push of the tide.
I compared you and the sea, and now I don’t know what to do with this commentary.
Let me offer my hand and help you down from the pedestal,
Take a hammer to the columns and pipes and let the water flood my skeletal.
I lean towards the synchronicity:
It’s the color blue that beacons to me.
The blue in your eyes, or the blue in your name,
Or the blue in the way you move.
I want to get out of the water, but I don’t know how.
Question the trail dripping from my body,
Wonder:
If it was an emotionally aggressive father, no,
If it’s how I process emotion and choose a path to follow, no,
If it’s how my Mexican blood reacts like oil to Canadian waters, no,
else trying to heal every other part of me when the pipes in my sandcastle are spilling water, yes.
This life isn’t sustainable.
You can’t heal personality.
I’m never in reach of the perfect standard of healing every single part of me.
How many rooms do I split myself into before I forget where every part went initially?
In this new layout of my castle, where do I fit your memory?
The thought makes the tide in my mind go red, I’ve ventured too far.
I can reason the sea’s behaviour but not a man’s vocabulary.
For that ethical ambiguity, I have no vacancy.
Not for the men I am unsure if I even “dated”,
or whatever definition fits from your dictionary.
Not for those whose banter belittle me,
Make a joke out of me and try to convince me it’s funny.
Not for the men who cross my boundary,
And dare to say the walls of my castle are imaginary.
It’s through time, in each wave that hits the sand.
That the sea and sand bank resemble each other’s hand.
I lose sight of what works for me and start becoming part of a narrative
That exists only in your mind and what I twist into poetry.
Only when I focus on what I felt
not what you said does the tide relax.
I know I’ll put the memories, the good ones left,
Not in the sea or the places we spent time in,
But in a brand new room.
Of people I rode the bus with, whom
I flirted like we were strangers,
driving away from Wreck beach, away from the currents and dangers.
Destined to get at different stops.
Dead calm waves, the high tide drops.
The idea that a place can have revealing properties is not a new one. In The Exterminating Angel, by Luis Bunuel, dinner party attendees become trapped in a sociological limbo that eventually reveals all their secrets and unravels their relationships. Robert Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, Prime Video’s Yellowjackets, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, break and rebuild social hierarchies after crew and travellers are castawayed.
I’ve gone to the beach alone, with friends, family too, and have found similar results: an exposition of ideals and compatibility. Do you go to the beach with people who leave trash behind? Do you? How comfortable are they seeing their and other people’s bodies? How comfortable are you? Is their job really “beach” and are they qualified for it? Are you? Do they go to the beach only during summer? Do you?
I love that poetry, like the sandy coast, is as much an external as an internal space. Privacy shared publicly coexists with the secret agenda of knowing, being “in” on personal intimacy of a shared story. Being caught naked or seen in your underwear has a different moral weight than being seen at a beach wearing a range of birthday or bathing suits.
After spending the last day of Vancouver Pride weekend at Oasis in Wreck Beach with a diverse, safe, stable group of friends, I wrote about these conclusions in a poem called The beach:
I love the smell of sunscreen, sand, coconut oil;
Touch hungry, I’m picky as to who I ask for help.
At a shy distance from the ocean, water, turmoil,
I’ve learnt going to the beach’s Reckoning itself,
Of what is not said but felt: interpersonal health.
Here, where there’s not much to do but connect
We watch, talk, listen, or that’s what I’d expect,
We wear our comfort levels, habits, our neglect:
Wreck/Jurassic/Oasis, SPF, over, under dressed.
By the coastline, waves flirt with the sandbank.
A touch, a kiss here and there, a look at a chest,
A drift, a rip current wipes the shore prints blank,
Washed it away. Replaced by beautiful patterns.
The tide’s intention revealed in the rill and ripple:
It is Nature, to mix below the surface, “we” aren’t
But an undertow of elements chasing currents is.
As in, not ideal, life at the beach. I’m sunburnt
From a Sun’s hand, the Moon takes over control,
Rising and setting the pace of the ebb and soul.
I head home to myself, entirely made up of sand.
Today, as I visit familiar or new beaches, I am more aware of my qualities and needs, because I’ve been to the beach and continuously see how anxious, shy, body-dysmorphic, sexy, creative, secure I and others can be.
Today, firstly, I know myself and get a life jacket for open waters, wear a speedo and SPF 50, and trust I am capable of swimming… for survival, probably not for recreation.
Today, if I am curious about the health of my relationships, with myself or with somebody else, I go to the beach.
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