CW: mentions of suicide, blood

When I remember the girl from the ocean, I always picture her looking out at the waves.  "I came from there," she had said then. Not understanding, I asked her what she meant "I was  born there."  

"Literally?"  

"In a sense.”  

When we first met, I was sipping at a sickly sweet tea concoction in a coffee shop, whilst reading a  book. It was a collection of Sappho’s poems. She was sitting at the table opposite, facing me. I  could hear the deep bass beat from her wiry headphones.  

“I have that,” she said when our eyes met.  

“What?”  

“That book. I have it.”  

“Oh,” I replied, uncertain.  

“I read it a while ago. I liked the part on marriage and maidens. Her writing is really beautiful.” I  nodded slightly, then she continued speaking. After a while, she moved over to my table, and I  listened to her talk some more. It was just like that that we became friends.  

The night I met the girl from the ocean, I woke up and my body was warm. My blanket felt too hot  for my body. I decided to go downstairs and get a glass of water. I sat at the dining table, next to  the stairs, sipping at my cool drink, but I still felt hot. I felt oddly tempted to go into the garden at the  time. I longed suddenly for the night's air. I unlocked the front door and stepped outside, feeling the  cool, damp air against my warm skin. I walked out past the garage and looked up into the sky. It  was a starless night, and I could only make out a few clouds. I stared then at the yellow streetlight  opposite the house. The whole experience felt foreign to me, as if I was a different person. I locked  the front door and came back to my room. My phone was lit up: there was a message from her.  

You awake? 

Yup  

Had a feeling you were.  

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. I was silent for a while, staring at her message. Try reading some Sappho. The lighter stuff. That might help. 

Will do.  

I wanted to say something else to her but was not sure what. Incomplete thoughts made their way  through my mind. 

After a while, my phone lit up again.  

Goodnight.  

I told myself I would reply in the morning, and tried to go back to bed. 

It was after that she started texting me at night often. After a while, we progressed to calls. She  called me the first time, because she said she was fed up with my lacklustre responses, so at least  she could tell me off when I went quiet. The girl from the ocean and I often stayed up talking about  abstract topics. One such night, the conversation turned to death. I talked for a while, from my  limited knowledge of theology. I had tried to sound moral and talk about living a good life in hope of  a good afterlife.  

"Or I suppose, well it's nice to think that everything we do here is for something." I had said. She  was silent for a while after that.  

“I was close to death once,” she said, softly 

“How do you mean?” I asked. I don’t remember how exactly she replied, but she changed the  topic.  

The girl from the ocean had a way of talking that reminded me of blood soaking into cotton. Her  words would slowly spread through you as you processed them, and then they would stain your 

thoughts with hers. Everything she said seemed to profoundly affect me. I would ponder over her  words for hours afterward.  

When she was fifteen years old, the girl from the ocean thought about ending her own life. She  pictured it, the many ways in which she could die. She described her closeness with death as  having stood at a door knowing with certainty that death was the one on the other side.  

When we’d been friends for about a year she asked me to take a day trip with her to Penang. “I’d like to go for a bit. Would you like to come?”  

I agreed, so we left on a bus around noon. I watched as the sky changed colours until it reached a  warm orange, while she dozed next to me. I don’t remember much about us arriving, but there we  were on the beach.  

"I was right there," she said as we sat next to the ocean. It was sunset, but the side of the beach  we were on was facing East. The sky was gradually fading from a light to a vivid and deep blue.  We were covered in a cool-toned filter. I remember thinking this image suited her. This was before I  knew she was from the ocean. Perhaps it was a premonition of sorts. Until then, in my mind, she  had just been ‘the girl from the coffee shop’.  

"I came from there," she said, gazing out at the vast expanse of water  

"Literally?" I pictured blood blooming in water. A baby’s head emerging from between a woman’s  legs. Exhalation. Relief. 

"In a sense.” I waited silently for her to elaborate. She did not, for what felt like a long time.  "I was so close to it. I didn't really feel like I was alive anymore. I felt as though before that I'd been  something of a corpse walking around. Up until then, all I'd felt was exhaustion, pure exhaustion. It  was as if my body had given up on trying. But then I was there, in the water. And I felt everything. I  could taste the salt on my tongue, and the movement of all the waves, I felt it in my entire body. I  can remember everything about that moment, with absolute clarity. I moved to a shallower part of  the water and the sand was smooth between my toes. I was alive, and I was there. I felt like a  newborn, experiencing the world for the first time. I had been alive sixteen years before then, and  that was the first time I really felt as though I was living. It was an incredible feeling. So yes, I was  born there. I came from the ocean. It is my original home.” I felt as though there was an anchor in  my lungs, stopping all of the words in my heart from being verbalised. They never made it as far as  my throat. Each time I inhaled, it was like pulling back an arrow, only to never shoot. The most  horrible, incomplete feeling had formed a nest deep in me, steadily growing branch by branch. I  wanted to tell her I understood, partially, and that I felt for her pain. But all I could do was not, and  feel my eyes welling with tears that didn’t fall. After a while all I could manage to say was  “Yes, of course you came from there. You were reborn.”