I learned to wait with
the ocean.

I didn’t go to Sri Lanka looking for a
life-changing experience.

I went because I needed to get away.

For a long time, I had been carrying too much. Too many responsibilities, too much noise, too many things that always seemed to need my attention. By the time I booked my trip, I think I had simply reached the point where I needed to disappear
for a while.

And then I arrived in Sri Lanka.

I remember the feeling more than any particular moment.

Peace.

Not the kind of peace you get when you finally finish everything on your to-do list. The kind where, for a little while, you don’t feel that you have to fix anything.

Everything felt wider

There was something about the ocean, the enormous sky above it and the distance stretching beyond the horizon.

Everything suddenly felt wider.

And somehow, I felt smaller in the best possible way.

The things that had seemed so loud before I left became quieter.

I could sit and watch the ocean without thinking about what I should be doing next.

I could walk without having somewhere I needed to be.

I could simply be there.

Finding myself again

Somewhere during those days, I realised that I had missed myself.

Not the person I was supposed to be. Not the person responsible for everything.

Just me.

The woman who could wander, sit by the sea, notice little things, talk to strangers, laugh at something unexpected and feel completely present in her own life.

Sri Lanka didn’t solve anything for me.

It didn’t magically change my life.

It simply gave me enough quiet to remember what I felt like when I wasn’t constantly carrying the weight of
everything else.

I hadn’t really disappeared

I think that’s what I mean when I say that I found myself again.

I hadn’t really disappeared.

I had just been buried under everything else for a while.

And somewhere between the ocean, the long walks, the warm air and the feeling of having nowhere I needed to rush to, I started to feel like myself again.

Maybe that’s what the ocean taught me.

Not to stop.

Not to have all the answers.

Just to wait.

To sit with a moment without needing it to become something else.

What I brought home

I came home with the same life
waiting for me.

But something inside me had shifted.

I knew, for the first time in a long time, what it felt like to be at peace with myself.

And perhaps that’s why I still think about Sri Lanka the way I do.

I went there to get away.

Somehow, I came back a little
closer to myself.