Ocean full of Secrets

Part I_16

13th of March 2014

I haven't been going to school lately. It's no use. I'm not participating, therefore I'm not learning anything and Nick and Saki can concentrate a lot better when I'm not around for them to worry about. They wont have to try to talk to me or make me feel better. They can just go on with their lives and forget about me.

Okay, I'm sorry. I'm being overdramatic here. But the first part is true. I really am not participating anymore and I can hardly concentrate on any subject for longer than a minute or so. I remember I used to be able to concentrate on schoolwork for hours straight. I even used to enjoy doing homework ... well, in some subjects at least. And especially essays. I loved writing essays. But last week for example we were supposed to write an essay on a book that changed our lives for French and I didn't even get any further than the date. I couldn't even decide on a book. But in my defence, the topic was kind of stupid. I mean, how can you tell which books changed your life and which didn't? Or rather, doesn't every book you read change your life in some way? Some more profoundly and evidently than others, while many changes might have gone by completely unnoticed. But still, they happened.

Everything that happens to or around you changes and shapes you to some extent, just like the small butterfly landing on that daisy next to me right now changed my life forever. Believe it or not, but I wouldn't be the same person I am, if instead of a yellow butterfly it had been a red ladybug, or, god forbid, a disgusting fish (I know that doesn't make any sense, I'm just proving a point. Had it been a fish, not only would I be different person, I would be a different person sitting on top of the tree house right now instead of down here in the grass). And you wouldn't be the same person you are now hadn't you just read these lines of mine. But you did and you make it undone now. Just like you can't make any change undone once it happened. And trying to do so might change you even more. Each and every one of us, however small and insignificant they might feel, plays an important part in our universe and every move we make, every line and every pause has the power to change the course of the story irretrievably. So we have to be careful of what we say or don't say, always keeping in mind that our actions might change other people's lives forever. To better or the worse.

I have been pretty down ever since I wrote that last entry. I didn't go to school. I barely talked to Neil, let alone Nick and Saki. But today something cheered me up a little. I climbed up the ladder to the tree house and when I opened the trapdoor and then I saw it. A tall Starbucks cup, filled with hot Pumpkin Spiced Latte and on the cup sleeve somebody had written a Haiku. (In case you don't know, that's a certain short Japanese poem.) It read,

"The Cure for all Wounds

is the Touch of Saltwater.

Sweat, Tears or the Sea."

It didn't take me long to figure out Saki must've snuck up here before school and, knowing I'd come here. She can be so incredibly considerate sometimes and it makes me love her and crave her presence so much, even though I know I don't deserve her.

But her poem reminded me of all the hours we spent sitting at the ocean together. In complete silence but for the waves, the sea who never once stopped kissing the shoreline even though it was being sent away again every single time. The same spot we sat at after we first went running together. We used to sit here almost every day after school, listening to the waves, completely unaware of the time passing by us, not caring about anything else than the ocean's overwhelming majesty and limitless depth. And that's where I'm heading now.

I particularly remember one time, not long after my mother's funeral, I was sitting right here, all alone except for my thoughts. And there was nothing and nobody whose company I craved less at the time. As you might have noticed, my thoughts have a slight tendency to turn against me, to become self-destructive. And so I wrote to Saki, fully knowing that she was in training and probably wouldn't check her phone for the next few hours, asking her to come over. I told her about how the ocean is full of secrets and somewhere down there my mother is waiting for me to unveil hers and I just can't do it. I was letting her down again.

Sure enough, not half an hour later, Saki jumped off her forget-me-not blue bicycle, her short black hair still dripping wet from practice, and sat down next to me.

"Wow", she said as she took in the ocean's vastness, her eyes looking out beyond the horizon. "This sure is some big pile of secrets."

And then I told her about the philosopher Heraclitus and about how he said that a person can never step into the same river twice. Firstly, because the water is constantly flowing and therefore it will never be the same as it was a millisecond before. And secondly, because you too are never the same person as the last time you stepped inside. I figured it must apply to the sea just the same, after all, it has a current as well. And so I tried it over and over again, in the hopes of emerging as a different person. A person who would know what to do, how to feel and how to move on. But no luck. I was still just me. Plain old clueless Cassie. And then Saki looked me in the eyes and she said,

"The heart of man is very much like the sea. It has it's storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too. Just like you. That's van Gogh. Except for the last part. That's from me. And if plain old Cassie is all you are then plain old Cassie is all anyone could wish to be.
Come on now, let the sea set you free!"

And with those words she took my hand and guided me into the depths of the ocean, letting the saltwater work its magic.

Yours,

Cassie