Chapter 4: Water
There’s something about water.
Something that has a hold on my soul.
But it’s not just the vast blue ocean. It’s storms. Rain. Hard rain. Torrential rain. Lightning. Thunder. Give it all to me. Give me hurricanes and waterspouts. Give me floods. Give me an electrical storm with booms of thunder that jolt your heart. Give me scary. Pour down on me. Let me see that giant looming shelf in the sky that looks like the very hand of god poised to wipe us all away.
I should’ve been a storm chaser.
Many of my dreams revolve around water. Flooding, and the ensuing rush to safety. In my dreams I am frequently at sea, the nearest shore just a thin gash at the horizon.
I was born on an island, in a Florida Keys hospital just yards from the Atlantic ocean. I grew up snorkeling reefs and rummaging through sandbars during a low tide. I grew up in a place many people dream of taking their vacation. Pelicans and sand dollars. Mangroves and palm trees. Emerald water and tropical fish, stripes of gold, blue, pink and green. Growing up, both my parents had saltwater fishtanks in their respective homes, stocked with fish caught on the reefs near home. My father caught them with a small net. My mother with her bare hands. I grew up surrounded by some of nature’s most stunning grandeur. A collection of small islands connected by a single bridge that runs from Key Largo to Key West. I grew up in paradise.
But I grew up sad.
I’ve recently returned from a trip to visit my brother in Idaho. He, too, grew up in the Keys. He is 12 years my junior. We share a mother.
We spoke at length of our very different childhoods. I left home before he was four years old, so I didn’t know much about his youth. His childhood was very different from mine. He fished from bridges, jumped in canals, rode his dirt bike from one end of our town to the other. If he could use only one word to describe his childhood, he said, it would be “fun.”
The experiences of two people, it seems, can be very different from one another, even if defined by the same backdrop.
“What word would you use to describe your childhood?” he asked.
I’ve never been asked this before. I didn’t have a prepared response.
But when I summed everything up in my mind, one word stood out among the others. It seemed to glow in my head, pulsing for attention. So I answered. “Sad.”
When I think of my childhood, I remember feeling vulnerable, like the world was trying to kill me. Like I had to grit my teeth and survive it. Like I was going to be crushed to the ground by the weight of living.
Can you recall your earliest memory of a dream? Here’s mine: I was being chased through a supermarket by the three little bears. As I dreamt, I was sleeping on my side and could hear the rush of my pulse against my eardrum. I’m sure you know the sound. But in my dream, that sound had become their thunderous footsteps. A steady metronome of danger becoming louder and louder as their feet and claws drew closer behind me.
I was three years old. Even as a toddler, I sensed that time was running out. The world was going to get me eventually.
Like anyone, I had my own personal troubles. Issues with my grades and not caring about school. Some issues with home life. A “molestation/inappropriate relationship” by a grown neighbor when I was 13. More inappropriate sexual relationships with grown men when I was a high school freshmen. But these are merely bullet points. Things I might point to if cornered by a therapist. I was a precocious young girl who looked way older than she was, and who was desperate to be an adult since the day she forced a boy to marry her on the playground in kindergarten.
We all have our childhood landmines to either deactivate or bury deep in the earth. None of these particular landmines are active in my brain, nor have they been for a very long time. My issues with depression cannot be traced to a troubled youth, or things that happened to me, though that might’ve been an easier fix. To point to something and say, “That! Let’s fix that and my brain will be normal.”
But as I look back on my “sad” childhood, my “vulnerable” childhood, there’s nothing to point at. It feels as though I was simply born with this sadness. And I’ve carried its weight through adolescence and long into adulthood.
So I like storms.
Maybe it’s the combination of water and chaos that has always captivated me. I still live in Florida. I was born of its waters. Nourished by its waters. Cleansed by its waters. With these waters, there is peace, or at the very least, a fellowship. Its genetic code was woven into my soul the day I was born.
But in my mind, there are storms. Floods. Jarring lightning, bone-rattling thunder. If I close my eyes, I can almost see the bands of rain swirling in my brain, pushed this way and that by the pummeling winds. There is fear, and a persistent doubt that I will survive the hurricane.
It’s fitting that I found myself on the beach that day, watching the storm.
Watching the cormorant.
But this time, it was different. This time I had mushrooms.
When the rain began, I felt each drop coursing through my veins (I was born of the water, remember). It sheeted over my brain as though splashed across a pane of glass. It cooled the fire. Soothed the wounds. It reminded me that I was right there on that beach and nowhere else. And I was still that little girl, snorkeling the reefs and rummaging through sandbars during a low tide. Perhaps a little taller.
So bring on the rain. Hard rain. Torrential rain.
Give me lightning and thunder. Hurricanes and waterspouts.
Pour down on me and wash it all away. I am not sad. I am not vulnerable. The world is not trying to kill me. I will survive it.
There’s nothing like a good storm.
For more information on my books, illustrations+fine art, plus much more, visit www.ShanLeah.com
Or on Instagram: @ ShanLeah