An ocean full of love
I miss the ocean. It's been about two years since I last saw it, when I travelled up north to Salvador, and before that I only saw it sparingly, never more than once per year. My father's union owns an inn by the seaside in Santos, and the stay is quite cheap for people who work there, so we travelled almost every year, but I stopped going around, God, a decade ago.
It is a strange thing to miss a place whose last memory you have is terrible. I won't linger on how that day, visiting someone I believed to be a friend, started with foodless wanderings through an unknown neighbourhood to buy medication and new shorts, or how a friend of theirs whom I knew didn't like me was invited without my knowledge and stuck around, or how the three of them always insisted I ride shotgun in the uber rather than on the backseat with them, or how that same friend of theirs, after getting tipsy during lunch, made me uncomfortable by pretending to fellate a straw while staring at the friends I had come to visit. I don't even have to linger on how all of them made sure to remind me on every occasion that I was a Man who could never be anything else, a boy with a boy's head and a boy's body and a boy's heart, not transgender or nonbinary like them. There isn't much to tell about these things aside that they happened.
What sticks in my mind was the moment we were on the water instead. No "open relationship" girlfriend of hers and former friend of mine insisting to be around all the time, no unwarily rude domestic disputes between them, just us two, a beautiful green tropical forest with red macaws singing, and the water of the Bay of All Saints which baptises the state with the name of Bahia.
I don't even remember what we talked about, I just remember her turning gentle like she used to be when alone rather than with her other girlfriend nearby, of playfully "falling" on top of me a few times and letting the current take her closer, of peering at me from under pink hair matted to her face. I linger there, the only moment of a half-week long trip to visit her where I actually found myself alone with her. Does it really matter that I found out later that she was only interested in getting in my pants? Or that all that friendly gentleness was a product of getting buzzed to work up the courage to flirt with me?
And yet I still miss the ocean. Not necessarily the ocean of Bahia, devoted to Jesus Christ and all of the saints, but even this southern ocean dedicated to His mother is still beloved by me. I don't miss the dark, asphalt-like sand, the overcast days when we were unable to go out to the beach, the thoughts about how busy the hospitals would be if I needed them. I especially don't miss how yellow my feet got because of the sand dollars we couldn't help but step on, the lingering stickiness of our skin after emerging from the water, the residual sand that even got inside our underwear, or how everything eaten felt vaguely wet and salty like snot.
What I think I miss is the sound of the waves, the lights of the fishing boats at night out in the distance mixing with the stars, the seafoam leaping in the air. Most of all, I miss being in love. This isn't to say I'm lonely right now, although I was for a very long time, or that it is a particularly complex feeling stemming from other things which bubble under the depths of my character. My life goes quite well, I have gotten a promotion since that time, I have health, friends, my hobbies which are a massive part of my life are going fine, and yet I am not in love with anyone, not have I been in the ocean.
I miss that because to some degree I am an envious person. It does no good to deny it. I love my friends and my communities, I love to hear them gush about their partners or see them interacting, but every so often instead of the feeling of loving love, I instead get this strange, elegiac feeling of yearning. I miss that, and yet have I ever really had that? I've had many girlfriends, it is true, yet how many of them can I truly say to have been in love? And how many can I truly say loved me back? Alas these numbers aren't the same. Nevertheless, even if it wasn't true, I still miss it, and even if I don't miss the noise of the beach and all of the traveling sellers and the loud music and loud people, I still miss the waves lapping at my feet and the far horizon, the silent affirmation of this world being much wider than I can ever comprehend, and the subtle promise that the entire thing is kept together out of love.
I want a cup that overflows with love
Although it's not enough to fill my heart
I want a barrel full of love
Although I know it's not enough to fill my heart
I want a river full of love
But then I know the holes will still remain
Although I know the holes will still remain
