Beneath the Surface

“All ready, miss?”

I look at the cheery receptionist beaming at me. If only I had that much energy at four in the morning. Then again, it’s her job: to sit behind that desk and smile at people like me.

I nod in return. I’m not a morning person. Hell, I can’t even pretend to be one. The one time I stuck to a morning routine was when I made a bet with my therapist that I would get up out of bed at 7 am, every morning, for a month. And all for one free therapy session. Well, I still managed to win that bet, but had the routine stuck? Not exactly.

I take my backpack off my shoulders and lean it against the reception desk, pretending to look at my phone. My ears perk up at the blissful sound of nothingness: birds chirping, trees swaying in the wind, the faint whir of motorcycles weaving up and down that one main road that threads through the island.

On a hot January morning, the island of Boracay is perhaps, for once, submerged in silence. The loud karaoke, the bar dancing, the beachside partying have all faded into the stillness of these long vacation nights. A single yawn escapes my lips as I glance at the bean bags beside me, now completely empty. Just a few hours ago, I was there, surrounded by other hostel guests, eating burgers before dawn, swapping stories and searching for the secrets to our lives. Nothing unusual, really.

But now, it was all coming to an end.

Besides the receptionist and me, everyone at the hostel seemed to be asleep. The people I had met in the last few weeks, the strangers I’d played beer pong with, scuba dived with, danced with, laughed and got drinks with, people I’d eaten burgers with and struck long night-deep conversations with. Somehow, they seemed wrapped in a haze, as if all of it was a fever dream and I was starting to wake up.

The first wake-up call came with the sharp honk of the minivan. My ride to the airport had arrived.

A man, smiling just as brightly, jumped out and greeted me, swinging open the back door of the van. If this had happened in my hometown, I would’ve bolted the other way. But here, it was standard procedure, nothing shady. After weeks spent among locals and tourists alike, the island life had started to grow on me, like a grapevine curling around my legs, quietly pleading for me to stay.

I inhaled and smiled faintly back at the man. Saying goodbye to the receptionist, I slung my backpack over one shoulder and climbed into the van. The music in my headphones faded, the song I’d been playing on repeat ending for the fiftieth time.

The door shut with a soft thud, and I was left alone with my thoughts, staring at the empty street beside the hostel that had become home.

And then it hit me.

Like a wave building on the horizon, swelling with quiet anticipation before crashing at the shore, the feelings washed over me. And before I could grab hold of anything — shout, move, jump out — the man started the engine and slowly drove away.

I can still see it. Like a movie, the scenery is forever stuck in my head, a never-ending loop, enveloped within my throat like a chunk of something, something that holds me still and is begging me to cry, or at the very least, to weep. I feel the tears build up, and as the van takes a turn by the east coast, one of the two long beaches of Boracay, I’m greeted with the scenery that does end up breaking me.

It sparkles, like shattered glass, kissed by flames. Like the fuzzy bubbles in a fuzzy drink. Like someone’s hand gliding over yours. The sun is kissing the ocean as if to wish it a good morning, but the sea is fast asleep. The beach is quiet, only the palm trees move steadily, up and down, as if waving me goodbye.

I can’t recall when I first fell in love with the ocean. Maybe when I was a child. It was a quiet, gradual sort of love, one that built slowly over the years, like a sandcastle, shaped tide after tide. It began with snorkelling alongside my dad, exploring the deep sea. The more fish we spotted, and the more corals we discovered, the more the vast, blue abyss had a pull on me that I could never truly describe. Then came the breath-holding contests, the races to see who could swim the farthest, and the splashing wars that soaked the sun-drenched afternoons.

But as I grew older and my energy softened, leaving more room for anxiety, I had grown to simply coexist with the sea.

Don’t get me wrong, I never grew afraid of it.

If anything, it became the one place I could always find peace.

It sort of became my ritual. When I felt my thoughts gripping at my lungs, pulling me down, I had to go to the sea. There, I would lie on my back and slowly tip my head until my ears slipped beneath the surface, the water balancing out the sound. And so I would look at the sky and simply float. I would float and let my thoughts carry me away, carry me over the waves, gently stroking my thighs, my arms, my back, my neck, wetting my hairline. I would shut up and listen to nothingness. Sometimes that nothingness would possess a pinch of sand noise, stroking the shore, or a distant boat engine roaring in the distance, or a sound of my own shallow breathing.

But compared to the thoughts that usually crowded my mind, that silence felt like a rare kind of peace. Or maybe it was the only time I could truly hear myself breathe without the weight of it unravelling me.

I do wonder. Does everyone feel this way?

That after twenty-five, they still feel like they’re eighteen inside?

That no matter where they pause — seventeen, thirty, forty-five — they still feel like a mess?

Like their worries fill their lungs, weighing them down, while their heads drift off into the clouds, untethered and lost. As if the body and the mind are two separate beings, trying to find each other in the noise of this chaotic, modern world.

Perhaps that’s why I fell in love with it. The ocean. Once I’m floating at the surface, my thoughts soar, finally free, streaming through my hair and out into the deep blue below. And my lungs, they empty, ready to serve their simplest purpose. For the first time in a long while, I remember what it feels like to just breathe.

In that moment, my body and soul find each other.

And I am, so quietly and completely, unexplainably happy.

Tears roll down my cheek as I wave goodbye to the beach in Boracay, the place that now holds so many pieces of me. The place where I emptied my lungs, and in return, was left with just a little less of that gnawing feeling of worthlessness.

I knew when I first arrived that I was lost. That I had come here to escape, to figure out my next step in life. I was standing at the crossroads, but instead of mapping out my exits, I forgot how to breathe. And then the water rose, the bubble formed, and my lungs were pulled under.

Before coming to Boracay, I had plenty of plans for the future. Yet, nothing was working out. Everything seemed so vague, so distant, unreachable. Perhaps everyone feels this way in their life at least once. And if they don’t — well, they’re not missing out on much. Just the dreaded doom of existence. A doom that pulled me into an endless loop of panic attacks, night after night, for more than three months.

I couldn’t breathe.

And each time it woke me up, I had to remind myself how.

The first time I went scuba diving was in the crystal-clear waters around Boracay. Stepping into the water with a gas tank strapped to my back, a moment of sheer panic hit me. For a brief moment, I thought I was caught in a nightmare.

What if I forget how to breathe?

The same thought haunted me in the van, on my way off the island.

It followed me to the boat, then to the tuk-tuk, then the airplane.

And as I took off, leaving the island behind and returning to my vague, monotonous life, back to reality, back to lung-filling problems, I thought of it again.

“What if I forget how to breathe?”

I closed my eyes and, for a moment, pretended I was back in the water, just about to dive in. I held my breath, and as my chest rose, my lungs seemed to malfunction, as if forgetting how the system works.

One, two, three.

The plane ascends, and I sink.

And in that moment, when my soul finds my body, I come alive beneath the surface.

I never forgot how to breathe. I just overthought it. But once the ocean, my favourite place on this planet, embraces me, it all becomes clear, like that Boracay street, at four in the morning, on a hot, sunny winter’s day.