(part 2)
I know why I’m here. Of course I do.
She was right. My friend who somehow always knows what I need before I do. She said I had to experience this. But I’ve never been here before. Never done this before.
There’s a difference between knowing the plan and knowing what it actually feels like. Between reading about something and living it. Between the idea of a place and standing in it, breathing its air, feeling its sun on your skin.
“We’re here!”
Someone shouts it from below, and I scramble to the front of the upper deck. Right at the point. Where you can see everything.
And then I see it.
Turquoise. Not the word. The actual color. The kind that makes you question whether water is even real or if someone just painted the ocean.
We’re approaching a reef, and the colors are spectacular. Layers of blue and green and light, all shifting and blending like the sea can’t decide which shade it wants to be so it’s just being all of them at once.
There’s activity on the boat now. People moving with purpose. Voices. Energy.
It’s stunning here. Properly stunning.
I was practically born on a sailboat. Anchoring, mooring, the sound of ropes and water ; that was my entire childhood. My parents took me sailing before I could walk. So watching what happens next feels like muscle memory.
No anchor.
Instead, one of the crew grabs his fins and mask -no tanks- and dives straight into the water. Disappears beneath the surface like it’s the most normal thing in the world. He’s tying mooring lines. Underwater. Five of them. Securing us to something I can’t see, something deep below.
It’s oddly beautiful.
A few minutes later, we’re settled. The boat rocks gently in place. The breeze picks up : warm, steady, carrying salt and sun. The kind of breeze that feels like it’s doing you a favor just by existing. The sun is burning. Properly burning. The kind of heat that makes you forget what cold even feels like.
I sit there, taking it all in.
The beauty of the simplicity. All these shades of blue and nothing else. No noise. No clutter. Just the breeze, the sun, and this enormous, ridiculous peace.
After a cold spring -a long, gray, stubborn spring that refuses to let go- this feels like more than a treat. It feels like medicine.
Me. The storm-winter girl. The one who loves wild weather and dramatic skies and the kind of wind that makes you lean into it. And yet here I am, completely undone by warmth and blue and stillness.
There’s movement again. We’re getting ready now. Bikini. Fins. Masks. The organized chaos of people preparing for something they’ve been waiting for like, forever.
And then we’re climbing into the zodiac.
The anticipation is thick. Electric. Beautiful.
This is it…
(continue reading part 3)
image taken with my phone
The Feel Good Way 
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