I was never afraid of the sea. Not until my mother told me I nearly drowned as a child.

She told me it happened in just a one-meter pool, and that my cousin saved me. Some-

how, that single memory—borrowed from her and stitched into my mind—changed

everything. Now, I can’t look at water the same way. The sea, once vast and inviting,

feels like a silent threat, a shadow just under the surface.

One meter? It doesn’t look that big to me now, but back then, I must have felt it differ-

ently. Could I have thought I was dead, or at least, sensed what it meant to disappear?

Maybe I was already familiar with that final, breathless concept—just without the words

to define it. Now, though, I know one thing: I keep the sea at arm’s length. I’ll dig my

feet into the water, just enough to feel the coolness, but as soon as I step a meter in,

panic stirs up like sediment in my chest.

Is one meter my reference point? A strange, invisible line I rarely cross.

When I look back at my photos of the sea, there’s always something in between—some-

one, a boat, a shadow—something that lets me forget, for a moment, its vastness,

its silence. As if, by framing it this way,

I’m giving myself a version of the sea I can control,

one that doesn’t remember me as vividly as I remember it.