One of my own stray childhood fears had been to wonder what a whale might feel like had it been born and bred in captivity, then released into the wild—into its ancestral sea—its limited world instantly blowing up when cast into the unknowable depths, seeing strange fish and tasting new waters, not even having a concept of depth, not knowing the language of any whale pods it might meet. It was my fear of a world that would expand suddenly, violently, and without rules or laws: bubbles and seaweed and storms and frightening volumes of dark blue that never end. -Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma

sometimes i dream that i’m that whale but my tiny world does not explode. i do. it’s pure horrific chaos at first, but i eventually stop panicking. the bubbles clear and i am still, but no longer whole. i’ve been slowly separated from myself- a billion particles of me suspended in deep ocean waters. it’s an eerie sensation, a sort of gradual explosion. i continue to lose small parts of me to the dark waters but most of me remains in suspension – a loose whale-shaped cluster of speckles absorbing all the light, like an enormous underwater constellation in the middle of the ocean-nowhere. i am and will be eternally homesick but i stop myself from feeling so overwrought. i stop because i realise now that all i can do is move with the current. i just take everything in.