this just can't be summer love (you'll see) | chaennie

I

Ever since she can remember, there’s always been something about the sea that felt like home to her. It might’ve been the way the waves crashed against the shore; sometimes slowly, in a combination of soothing sounds and movements, and other times angry and loud, washing everything on its way without sparing a second thought to it. In her teenage years, she’d realize that her moods changed with the tides, that the moon controlled the movements of her heart much like it controlled the movements of the sea.

In a world where she often felt like the odd one out, the sea gave her a feeling of belonging.

Some people were scared of the sea; scared of how vast and mysterious it could be. How so many things were hidden in its depths, lurking in the darkness, never truly revealing themselves because people feared the unknown - couldn’t look past the things they couldn’t understand to see how truly beautiful they could be. That was yet another thing that she identified with; in the sea, she could be herself. She didn’t have to hide.

In the sea, she was free.

She liked to lie at night, the sand against her back - sometimes reaching the worst possible places - and gaze at the stars while the waves crashed against her, thinking of how small she was, in comparison to the whole universe that was out there. That, in the end, nothing she did really mattered, because she was just one in billions, someone that could disappear in a second and no one would really notice. And maybe she should feel like that with the sea, but she never did. It was as if, in the sky, she was one of many. There was nothing connecting her to the sun and the stars.

But the sea was water. And her body was water. It made sense that she always felt such a pull towards it because, in her mind, there was no place she could possibly return to than the one that she was convinced she came from. It was a silly thought, of course. She was a human being and human beings walked the land, not the sea. But that didn’t matter to her; had never mattered, really. Not since that first moment when she was a toddler and her parents took her for her first summer in Hawaii.

When her feet touched the sand and her eyes met that endless stretch of blue, she was a goner.

She was home.

♡

She’s 19 now, and Hawaii is actually home.

Somewhere along the way, her love for the sea became her love for surfing and that became her way to deal with life; her escape. When things got rough - and they did, for quite some time - she would disappear into the waves, only coming back when her skin was completely rugged and her teeth were shattering.

In a perfect world - or, the world her foster mother wanted for her - she’d be in college. Probably majoring in something pretentious like law or business. But that’s not the life she wanted for herself, and she knows that her parents would’ve wanted for her to be happy, no matter what. And Hawaii makes her happy. Surfing makes her happy. The sea, most importantly, makes her happy.

There’s no place she’d rather be.

Everyday, she rises with the sun and she hits the waves first thing, because there’s never been a better way to wake up, really. She usually spends a couple hours in the water before she goes on about her day.

Most of the time, when the sun is setting over the horizon line, casting an ethereal glow against the sea, she finds herself sitting on the sand, surf board stuck by her side, the familiar fresh seaside scent surrounding her.

In her mind, there’s nothing better in the whole world.

 ♡

Safety measures dictate that swimming is ill-advised after the sun has set due to the influx of man-o-war’s resulting from the wind and current changes, not to mention that the waves get bigger and the sea gets angrier, which means even seasoned surfers and swimmers can get caught between the waves and never make it back to land. If there’s one thing she’s learned in her life is that if you don’t respect the sea, you have no place in it.