Finding Refuge in the Ocean
A life fed by tide, scarred by rope and held together by salt — spears, storms, and the silence land never gave me
Pages are wet again. Rum and seawater. I can’t tell which stain belongs to which anymore. Doesn’t matter. The sea doesn’t keep score. She just keeps taking.
Salt doesn’t wash off, it just sinks deeper. Rum’s cheaper than peace of mind, but it never bought me silence.
Refuge. That’s the word land people use when they talk about safety. Out here it means something else entirely. It’s not safe. It’s never safe. It’s just the only place I can breathe without the weight of concrete and clocks
The land grates on me. Too many mouths, too many engines, too many goddamn neon signs buzzing like flies. Everyone rushing, no one listening, the air thick with chatter that doesn’t mean a thing. It’s all horns, headlines, receipts. The language of people who’ve forgotten silence.
But the sea, she pares it down. She takes the tongue from you and leaves you with breath and bone. Out there, the only grammar that matters is lungs holding, heart beating, water pressing. The only speech is the crack of a wave, the hush of tide pulling back, the sound of your own breath rasping through a snorkel. It’s not conversation, it’s survival. And it’s cleaner than any word I’ve ever heard on shore.
I’ve fed myself out here more times than I can count. Spearfishing on a single lungful, body coiled like a spring, eyes straining in the blur. Lungs screaming, heart slowing, waiting for the flicker of a fish to come too close. Fish move like ghosts, quick enough to make you feel like you’ve already missed them before you even raised the spear. And then, sometimes, the strike lands. Dinner spasms in your hands, still alive when you thank it. That’s honesty. No supermarket plastic, no neat cuts. Just salt, blood, and hunger. Sometimes I surface empty-handed, lungs screaming, and the shame burns worse than hunger
The fish looked me dead in the eye before I killed it. I thanked it, but I don’t know if it cared.
Lobsters are worse. Mean little bastards, waiting in cages you set for them. You haul the pots up, knuckles shredded on soaked rope, wrists aching, shoulders screaming. Every rope burn smells like home. Every scar is just another tide mark. They snap like they know you by name. Sometimes I swear they do. But you eat them all the same. Survival doesn’t wait for politeness.
I’ve learned their hiding places, their tunnels and tricks. And I’ve learned that a single breath is enough. Down, reach, grab, wrench them free, then kick for the light with my chest about to burst. When I surface, it feels like I’ve stolen treasure from the sea herself.
I’ve dropped deeper, too. Strapped on tanks and fallen into silence where light bends like lies. It’s not peace down there. It’s judgment. Sharks gliding past like muscle wrapped in ancient rage, their eyes black as a priest’s robe. I saw a great white once, from the safety of a cage. It should’ve been terror, but truth be told, it was boring. Metal bars between us turned menace into spectacle. Better the times I was alone with smaller sharks, no cage, no script, just that feeling in your spine that says, “Careful, boy. Careful.”
Sea turtles, though, they move like old gods who don’t give a damn. Slow, steady, older than your regrets. And dolphins, quick as knives, laughing at you, circling like they know every wrong thing you’ve ever done and still don’t care. Their joy makes you feel small. Good. You should feel small.
Scuba taught me patience, but freediving taught me honesty. No tanks, no hiss of regulators, no bubbles to betray me. Just one lungful of air and the promise that it won’t last. You count the beats in your chest, the slow slide of pressure as the water folds you deeper. The silence is thicker down there, heavier, like the world itself is holding its breath with you. Fish look at you differently when you’re on their terms. They don’t spook as quick. They circle, curious, like they’re deciding if you’re kin or carrion.
Every dive is a bargain. How far can I push before the black creeps in at the edges? How much pressure before the skull sings? Sometimes I go just to touch the sand, press my hand into it like signing my name before I claw back up. Sometimes it’s for the hunt. Lobsters pried out of rock holes, crabs dragged from shadows, a fleeting chance at something sleek flashing away in silver. But mostly it’s for the quiet. The kind you can’t buy, can’t bottle, can’t find on land. Just the thump of your own blood in your ears and the knowledge that you’ve got seconds before you vanish.
The black at the edges is patient, and one day it won’t let me back.
The night sea is a different animal. Phosphorescence boiling under the bow, sparks spilling from every kick of your fins like you’re tearing holes in the dark. I’ve gone over the side under nothing but a moon that barely bothered to show its face, diving blind, feeling my way down with only the sound of my own pulse. You don’t see much down there. Just shadows moving where they shouldn’t, silver trails vanishing as quick as they come. Every breath feels stolen, every second stretched thin. The sea owns the dark, and you’re just borrowing it. Sometimes I swear I wasn’t alone, a shape, a flicker, a brush of something big that didn’t care if I lived or drowned. That’s when you learn if you trust yourself, or if you don’t.
But you can’t stay below forever. The lungs demand their due, and sooner or later the surface drags you back up. Breaking through, gasping, coughing, the world suddenly too bright, too loud, it feels like a rebirth you didn’t ask for. The silence is gone, replaced by wind and gulls, by waves shouldering each other like drunks in a fight. That’s when the board comes out. When you stop sinking and start chasing.
Surfing is a different confessional. Chasing storms on charts, chasing silence on boards. The crowd stays on the sand, packed and shouting. But out there, in the line-up, waiting for a wave that might break you clean in half. That’s where refuge lives.
Every wave sounds like it’s calling me by name. Maybe I’ve forgotten mine and borrowed hers.
You surrender to it. Six seconds of godhood before the ocean spits you out like a broken tooth. Then you paddle back in, salt carving your throat raw, because once is never enough.
I spit blood into the surf once and it looked like the sea was claiming me in instalments.
Surfing spits me out raw, throat carved with salt, body rattling like a bell rung too hard. Chaos and grace smashed into seconds. Fishing’s the opposite. Fishing’s the smoke that lingers. The penance after the sermon, the quiet bargain with the tide. It’s where you shut up and listen, where the storm in your chest cools to embers. Surf takes. Fishing waits.
Standing on the rocks feels like standing on the edge of a cathedral built by storms. The sea at my ankles, cold as confession, tugging like it wants me gone. I cast and let the line arc out into the dark, watch it vanish in the churn, then start the slow ritual of pulling it back, gentle, steady, like coaxing a secret out of the deep. Each turn of the reel is a prayer I don’t say out loud: take it, bite, let me earn this. The lure flickers, imitating life, imitating weakness, dragging back through the swell toward me. I wait for that jolt, that flash of resistance that means I’ve convinced something wild to believe in my lie. Until then, it’s just me, the tide, and the ghosts watching from the foam.
Caught one the other night. Not a pretty catch, not clean, the bastard fought like it had the whole ocean behind it. The rocks slick, spray licking at my boots, tide gnawing at my ankles. I dragged it in by hand, knife ready, heart thudding like a second tide in my throat. Split it open quick, steam rose against the night like smoke from some burnt offering. The blood ran warm down the stone, and the gulls came shrieking, mad little priests in torn black cassocks, ripping at the entrails before I even let go. The sea took the rest without ceremony.
Later, over coals, the flesh flaked white and sweet, kissed by salt and smoke. I ate it with fingers and hunger, no plates, no forks, no goddamn witnesses but the stars. That’s the only way it feels true. No packet, no barcode, no gloss. Just me, the knife, the blood, and the bite.
Work ties me back, always. Boats, cameras, money I can’t live without. But work out here still tastes cleaner than any office. You sweat, you balance, you curse, and if you fuck it up, you bleed. That’s a fair deal. The sea doesn’t care if you’re late. She only cares if you’re paying attention.
Some nights I take the sand instead. Roll out a swag, dig my heels into the beach and let the tide breathe a lullaby I don’t trust. You sleep lighter there, skin salted, gulls screaming into the morning before the light’s had the decency to rise. The sand holds you like a shallow grave, damp creeping up the back of your shirt, and you dream of waves breaking just a little too close. Safer than the deck, maybe, but not by much. The sea still keeps her hand on you, even ashore.
The sea wants the hull, and I can hear her teeth in the chain. Every groan of iron is a verdict. The bow jerks like a hanged man at the end of the rope and I lie here counting breaths, waiting for the moment she decides to take me sideways into the rocks.
The cabin reeks of damp canvas and diesel, water dripping steady through the hatch. Every time I close my eyes I see the anchor dragging, see the seabed giving way like loose flesh. My words slur into curses, or prayers, I can’t tell which. Doesn’t matter. Nobody’s listening but the storm.
The boat shudders like an old dog in the cold, and I’m her captain in name only. Tonight I’m just another sack of bones hoping the sea spits me back. I tell myself I’ve survived worse, but the dark doesn’t care about old victories. It only wants this one.
The rituals keep me. Knives sharpened on stone until they sing. Wetsuit dragged on with curses, seams biting at the shoulders. Wax worked into the board with the same hand that ties hooks and knots. Rope coiled neat, not for beauty, but because order is the only armour against chaos. They’re small things, stupid things maybe, but I’ve learned without them the day unravels quick. You think you can skip a ritual, leave the knife dull, the coil messy, and that’s the day something bites, something snaps, something drags you under.
They’re not superstition, they’re survival. And survival is all I’ve ever asked for.
So I live here. More below than above. Crowds on land chew me up, but below the surface, the locals make sense. Fish get curious, crabs get angry, seals follow you with eyes like detectives. It’s quieter than anywhere else I’ve ever known. Not peaceful, no. Nothing out here is peaceful. But it’s honest. And honest is enough.
The sea keeps her ledger. She’s taken blood, bone, hours I can’t count, whole friends I’ll never see again. She’s eaten years from me like they were crumbs, scattered them across tides I’ll never chase back. And yet, she’s the only one who’s ever paid me honest in return. Fish on the line, lobsters clawing from the dark, salt on my skin when the world felt unlivable. She gave me silence where land gave me noise, gave me work that broke my back but kept my soul moving, gave me storms that stripped me down until there was nothing left but breath.
That’s the debt, and it doesn’t clear. I give her pieces, she gives me peace. Not clean, not gentle, but the only kind of peace I trust.
I don’t dress it up. It’s bruises from boards, cuts from rope, cold that sits in your bones like rent you can’t pay off. But it’s mine. My catch, my scars, my storms. Refuge isn’t comfort. Refuge is survival. And survival is all I ever asked for.