“I Borrowed the Ocean’s Heart”

🌊 I Borrowed the Ocean’s Heart

By [Ali rehman]

They say the ocean remembers everything.

Every scream swallowed, every dream drowned, every name whispered into the tide. The ocean keeps them all, quiet and patient, under the surface.

I used to think that was beautiful — that the sea could carry the world’s pain and still move with grace. So one night, when the waves stretched toward the moon and my heart felt too small for what it held, I whispered into the wind:

"Teach me how to carry like you do."

And the ocean answered.

It began as a feeling — a deep pull beneath my ribs, as though something vast had turned inside me. The next morning, I woke with a strange calm, like my heartbeat was echoing from the shore itself.

That day, I walked through the city, and people’s sadness began to follow me. Not in words, not even in looks — but in weight.

The woman at the café smiled while her hands trembled. I felt the ache in her chest where a goodbye still echoed.

The child at the bus stop kicked the dirt, and I felt his hunger, the quiet kind that isn’t just for food.

Even strangers passing by — their pain brushed against me like wind, soft but constant.

And I took it. All of it. I didn’t know how not to.

At first, it felt noble. To carry what others could not. To be their quiet ocean.

When my friends cried, I listened — not just with ears, but with something deeper. I caught every tear like a pearl and kept it safe.

When they laughed again, I felt lighter, believing I’d done something good.

But the truth about pain is this: it doesn’t dissolve. It only changes shape.

The sorrows I gathered began to echo inside me, waves breaking where silence once lived. My dreams turned blue — cold and endless — and every heartbeat sounded like the tide pulling something precious away.

One evening, my reflection didn’t look like me anymore.

The mirror shimmered like a puddle, and I saw waves rising behind my eyes. My voice sounded distant, like it traveled through water before reaching the air.

I went back to the shore where it all began. The sky was bruised purple, the sea restless, whispering secrets I could almost understand.

“Why do I feel like I’m drowning?” I asked.

The ocean only sighed.

Because that’s what the sea does — it listens, it moves, it mourns — but it never explains.

Days blurred like tides.

The people I’d helped didn’t notice the hollow growing inside me. Why would they? I still smiled, still said, “I’m fine.” But the weight beneath that word grew heavier.

I began to understand something I hadn’t before — that even the ocean needs a shore to hold it. Without boundaries, it would devour everything, even itself.

And I had none.

Then came the night I finally broke.

A storm had rolled in — the kind that makes the world feel like it’s being rewritten. Lightning tore open the sky, and I walked into the rain as if it might wash me clean.

I stood at the edge of the sea, waves crashing against my ankles, and whispered, “Take it back.”

The wind howled in answer, wild and merciless.

“I can’t carry it anymore,” I said louder. “I thought I could be like you.”

The sea’s voice thundered, filling my ears with the sound of centuries.

"You borrowed my heart," it said, not in words but in rhythm — each wave a syllable. "But you forgot the cost."

"To carry pain is to know it. To know it is to feel it. To feel it is to drown."

I fell to my knees, water lapping at my chest. For a moment, I thought the ocean might take me entirely — and part of me wanted it to. To let everything I’d held sink into silence.

But then I remembered the people I’d carried — their laughter after the crying, their hope returning like sunrise after storm. And I realized: the ocean doesn’t just hold pain. It transforms it.

The salt that stings also heals. The tides that destroy also renew.

Maybe that was the lesson all along.

When I woke the next morning, the storm had passed. The sand was smooth, washed clean, and the horizon glowed with a quiet gold. My clothes clung to me, heavy with salt and truth.

The weight in my chest was still there — but different. Not drowning me now, just reminding me of depth.

I didn’t return the ocean’s heart completely. It had left a fragment inside me — a rhythm, a knowing.

Now, when I listen to people’s pain, I still feel it. But I let it move through me like water instead of keeping it. I’ve learned that empathy doesn’t mean ownership; love doesn’t mean sacrifice.

The ocean carries lost ships, yes — but it also releases them to the shore when the time is right.

And maybe that’s all any of us can do.

Sometimes, when I walk near the sea, I swear I can hear it whisper my name — soft, forgiving, endless.

It no longer feels like I borrowed its heart.

It feels like it lent me its courage.