To fight grief is to forget my own vastness.
At first, I thought I was drowning in grief.
I fought against the waves, gasping for air, clawing toward a surface that always seemed just out of reach. Grief pressed against my ribs, filled my lungs with salt, and I told myself I had to keep fighting. Or else, I would sink. And if I sank, I would never make it back to the solid groud where i used to be.
So I kept struggling. I told myself that one day, the tide would change. That if I endured long enough, the ocean would spit me back onto solid ground, and I would walk away from it all—dry, whole, untouched by the weight of sorrow.
But the shore never came.
The more I fought, the more exhausted I became. The more I resisted, the deeper I sank. No matter how hard I tried, the ocean never loosened its grip. The grief never faded. The salt never left my tongue.
And then, in my exhaustion, in my final moment of surrender, I opened my eyes.
And I saw the truth.
I was never drowning.
For I am the sea.
The waves crashing around me, the sorrow I thought was swallowing me whole—it was not something outside of me. It was not something I had to fight. It was me. It had always been me.
I did not need to learn how to breathe underwater because I had never been fighting the tide—I was the tide. The sorrow, the longing, the ache that stretched beyond words—it was not separate from me. It is me. It flowed through me, filled every part of me.
To fight grief is to forget my own vastness. To fear it is to deny that I am greater than the waves that rise and fall within me.
So now, I let it exist.
I let it rage. I let it quiet. I let it become part of my being, like salt dissolving into water, inseparable, indistinguishable. Because I am the sea, the ocean itself.
And the sea does not drown.
