"1 - Oceans."
#1 of Short Stories
...
I never got the chance to see the wide ocean seas. I never got to witness the slow, rising and then setting sun through the ocean. They always told me that I would someday, that I would get the experience that I see many, many others achieve. It's a painful feeling to be reminded that they could do something I couldn't. It's a feeling in general that I can't help but have. Feeling envy from others. The way they have succeeded in life, the way they inspire others into achieving just like them; Other than me, in which that inspiration doesn't work in any sort of the way.
Every day, I would dream and dream about where I would go, what I could do, and what I should do, and what would I do. Every time I walk by myself through my apartment neighborhood, I would imagine it as a vast cliff I'd want to freefall from, an ocean that I could touch and feel my wings at, a mountaintop where I can close my eyes to feel the victory in my heart. People around the neighborhood called me weird because I talked to myself, because of my imagination. Some laughed at me because I wasn't like them, on their darn phones listening to nothing but mediocre rap music. I laughed at them because they don't have a dream.
But even then, I'm scared. Scared to tell what I wanted to do and loved to do without being judged or mocked for it. Not in a bullying way, but just in a way that was so doubtful. Is it because they could not see me as something worthwhile? Is it cause I wait until the last minute to do something? Well, who even cares? I don't care about the prodigies, I don't care about the stars, I don't care about any of that. My life is how I'd treat it. My parents shouldn't compare me to others, to prodigies, to anybody. If they tell me not to do it, then they shouldn't either.
Whether when it's someone who has a higher grade than you on their test, whether they got a scholarship earlier or got accepted earlier than you, and whether they got honored for their dedication at school, I wouldn't dare to let that get to me. What calms me to this state is the ocean itself. The ocean comes to me, even if I'm not by it. I can feel it, I can smell it, I can touch it, I can experience it, all without being around it myself. It caresses me gently, wrapping me in a warm, wet, and watery blanket that's telling me, 'It's ok'.
Nature is more than something that came onto the earth. Nature was - no - is something that's a blessing here. It gives me solitude, it gives me peace, it tells me that it's ok to be where you are, that things are meant to be different, that things are no better than the ever. So whether I get the chance or not to view the ocean someday, the true, big oceans, all I can know is that as long as I understand, things are possible.
Anything is possible when you know it's possible, and only you can have that mindset. No one else can give that to you.