The ocean holds me like a mother.

Photo: A glorious sunrise in Maldives, taken by me.

P is a consummate water baby. He was conceived on the high seas, the son of a seafaring man, and loves water bodies of any form. He grew up swimming for his school team until a shoulder injury stalled his plans to do it for much longer. He is a strong, confident, happy swimmer, and nothing delights him more than plunging into blue, shadowy depths and witnessing what the ocean has to offer. Naturally, he also dives, and during the early years of our courtship, I was often regaled with stories of the magic and mystery that is the underwater world.

Unsurprisingly, I am the exact opposite. I’m not confident in the water. I can swim—my parents made sure of that, sending me to swimming lesson upon swimming lesson as a kid—but I am not a good swimmer. There is something about being suspended, buoyant, that makes me feel absolutely terrified. I like land. I like having my feet firmly planted on the ground where I can see them, and I like breathing through my nose like a normal land-born creature. It doesn’t help that I have grown up with sinus issues, which also makes anything involving submerging my head in the water for too long tricky. The pressure starts building up in my head, and I often end up in a lot of pain. All of this to say—water and I have a complicated relationship.

Nevertheless, I am drawn to water in the way a moth is drawn to a flame—the mysteries of the blue intrigue me even though I know I probably never will understand or experience it the way people who have an affinity with water and swimming, like P, can. Even though I know it may probably do me more harm than good. Even though, even though.

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For a long time, I never understood the joys of a beach holiday.

My issues with the water and swimming and the sea aside, my body dysmorphia rears its ugly head every time I am at a beach. I have always been ashamed of my body—I grew up being made fun of for my body shape, my big bum and thick thighs—and coupled with the boring adage of woman+modesty, I was forced to internalize a lot of shame about the way I look.

At a beach, sometimes it is nigh impossible to wear too many clothes because it is fucking hot. But to wear swimwear means revealing this body of mine that I am so deeply uncomfortable in, which often feels incomprehensible. To have all my flabbiness, my stretch marks, my irregularly toned skin, my scarred knees, my hunched back, my blackened elbow tips—all to be seen in their full glory? Absolutely not.

I struggle with packing for beach holidays, and I struggle even more with being surrounded by people who all appear to be so comfortable and amazing-looking in their perfect bikinis and glowing skin. When I sit in the sun, my body turns a shade of purple-black that—upon seeing me—my mother crows, Enna ippadi karuppa irrukkae? Indians, we don’t tan. We darken, and there is such beauty in that. Beauty that we are not taught to appreciate, but instead, to scorn, to hide from. To grow up internalizing all of this—the shame of having a body with curves and the alleged pain of having dark skin—it all becomes too much.

So a beach holiday is a lot of things for someone like me, and very little of it actually has anything to do with the fun, relaxation, and lightness that it is supposed to represent. Naturally, it was not my preferred holiday—until, that is, I met P.

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