Thalassophilia

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Selene Sezer

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I remember the day you asked me if I already knew how I’d die.

I assumed you were simply starting a conversation and would follow up a second later with your own answer. But no. You, with your green shimmering eyes, fixed on me. I was both confused and perplexed by the way you looked at me so attentively.

“I… don’t know,” I stuttered and then “I am hoping that I’ll feel fulfilled with life,” I added while gazing at your face to gauge whether my response actually satiated your curiosity.

“No.” You shook your head fast and in disappointment. Even then, your charm had lain in your tenacity, “No, I asked how. You know… as in the cause of death,” you added, and I could see your impatience building.

You didn’t want to hear ‘I don’t knows’ or ‘how would I knows’. You wanted a well thought-out answer as the ones woven with both logical reasoning and sensory details so you could actually imagine details of my final seconds.

I never told you that you were my first childhood memory. I remember the day, so vaguely, but I remember: I hit you on the head, really hard, with a metal spoon that I stole from the second kitchen drawer and four-year-old you cried for two hours straight without telling anyone the reason why, not even a soul.

I never let you that you were my first adolescent cover-up, a perfect one, and first go to alibi: I told my parents I was staying over at yours, but in reality, we raved in the woods until the sun rose.

You were always there and ready for me – whether I called to praise my first victory or to wail about my first loss. You were the person I absent-mindedly found on the other end of the telephone line when I needed to talk.

We were sitting on a bank at the end of the pier, which was illuminated by lamp posts, one after another, with their warm-yellow, dimmed glows. I couldn’t answer how I thought I would die. Instead, I let my gaze drift to the black waters of the moss-scented sea, as living was, perhaps still is, when the things we needed to deal with were only contemplative.

* * *

You know me; you know my affinity for the seas and oceans and my thrill of diving into salty depths: they call it thalassophilia.

Going swimming in the early mornings, when the blue vasts were silent, still, and chilled because of the sleeping sun. That was our favourite time. We created our own silly competitions: holding our breaths, surfacing smooth white stones from the seafloor, mouthing sentences underwater. It was a mystery to me how effortlessly you could dive, how well you had taught yourself such things when no one else in your family could even swim. Of course, I hid my admiration, just as I hid so many other things.

You see, I’m Mediterranean on both sides of my family. People born in waters like us know how to dive and hide things deep, so deep that we wouldn’t dare dive back down to face what we once buried.

* * *

I had no idea what possessed me that early August morning. I woke up, and though
the sun was just on the edge of the horizon, I could tell its imminent rise was about to happen
from the colours streaking the sky. Next thing I remember, since the weather was scorching
even that early morning and I was still half asleep, I leapt off the pier into the water. The
water was still cold from the night before. I broke the surface and gasped, the air combining
with the salty taste of the sea on my lips.

I didn’t hear anything; I didn’t even check the way I had just come, but in that brief
moment, I sensed, I knew you were coming right behind me. I heard you splash, and then you
were there too, in the water, looking at me. I smiled, and you smiled back, but you saw
through me, as always.

“What’s wrong?” you asked, a puzzled look of scrutiny on your face.

“I wish I could breathe underwater… to breathe like a fish, like I could somehow use
the liquid oxygen in the water and stay below as long as I wanted,” I said in a sulky voice,
without hesitation. “I know it’s irrational, but it’s making me feel… kinda mad,” I added,
because I knew you’d ask; because I had already rehearsed my response for the fishes below.

“You’re silly,” you replied with a huff, relieved now that you had truly thought
something was wrong. “No, I’m not. Maybe I could, you know, breathe underwater. Maybe I
just need to try again and again until I evolve,” I snapped back in a bold, daring tone, a sly
but faint smile tugging at my lips.

You simply shook your head, making it clear you didn’t take me seriously. And then I
dived. You dived after me. I saw you watching me underwater, and I made sure you were
watching closely.

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Selene Sezer an emerging writer from Oslo, Norway, with a background in Behavioral Genetics, like to explore the borderlands of identity and the hidden layers of human experience. She enjoys crafting narratives that blend psychological depth with atmospheric, dreamlike settings, blurring the line between reality and introspection.

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