There is a silence that lives in the depths of the ocean, and another that lives in the depths of the human heart. Both are difficult to imagine until you have stood close enough to experience them.
When you sit by the sea in complete silence, you begin to hear everything else more clearly—the rhythm of the waves, the wind brushing across the water, even your own heartbeat reminding you that you are still alive. Strangely, that awareness can become frightening. There are people who walk through crowded streets smiling and laughing every day, while quietly carrying a silence inside that no one else can hear. They appear alive to the world, yet somewhere within themselves they feel disconnected from life.
So she went to the ocean.
She wanted to borrow water because she had forgotten how to cry.
Her tears had dried long before she arrived.
She could neither gather the courage to walk into the sea nor find the strength to walk back into the world. And so she remained at the shore—the only place that felt capable of holding both her grief and her hope. There, with no one watching, she finally allowed herself to cry.
It was winter. The cold wind coming off the water passed through her body until her skin grew numb. I often wondered why the cold could numb the body so easily, yet never seemed capable of freezing the heart. Somehow, even when everything else grows quiet, the heart continues beating with remarkable persistence.
She stayed there for a long time without moving, almost forgetting why she had come or why she couldn’t leave.
People might have mistaken her stillness for weakness.
I never did.
I thought she was one of the strongest people I had ever known.
Not because she never broke.
But because she remained there, carrying storms both within and around her, and somehow found the strength to stay alive through them.
