The ship set sail on November 30, 2024. The new lands that the captain and his crew sought to find were guided by an instinct that could pierce through the lens of reality in which they found themselves. But, against all odds, even seeing the lightning and the instability of the waters in the distance, my crew and I set sail that night. The cold began to freeze our bones, and the tropical climates from which we came felt increasingly distant. I thought about the sounds of the birds, the authentic colors of the waters, and the pristine white sands of the beaches. I also remembered the language I used to communicate in those lands and how effortlessly it flowed, almost instinctively, without much thought. But I also remembered when that desire to know myself through the world had first emerged and how that divine promise was something I could not ignore and had to fulfill.

That night, I thought about my past expeditions and everything I had learned so far. I began to study the map and called upon the most skilled members of my crew to join me in my office so that together, we could understand the map of our navigation.

I started with a somewhat discouraging message, telling them that these were waters unlike any I had consciously navigated before, but that I trusted them and my willingness to explore those lands and merge my knowledge of the previously explored ones to, together with those new lands, see the possibility of our world expedition settling there and taking root. I knew my crew was exhausted, but I also trusted that they believed that, for the first time in two years of solitary navigation without seeing land in sight, this was a hunch worth betting on.

The first days of our navigation, the waters, which seemed murky, unstable, and somewhat convincing, began to clear. The sky was no longer a grayish white, and little by little, it turned into a pale blue. I went out to the deck one morning to breathe in the fresh air, tasting of salt and wetness. My crew smiled at me, and it was a calm smile, one with a hope that felt blessed. That afternoon, I began to imagine the depths of the sky and the ocean, and although there was a sense of uncertainty about what lay in its depths and how much external factors could affect it, a sense of beauty flooded my heart. I was able to see beauty united in all its shades. The ocean of my own existence emerged in a spiritual form and sought to embrace this other ocean with a brutal force, so much so that the expansion of this feeling sensed that both oceans, mine and this external one, could decide to belong to each other even before giving time the space for this union to find land, calm, and materialize this feeling.

One night, when everything seemed calm, I went out again to the deck after leaving the ship’s helm in charge of the first mate. That night, the sky was clear and such a deep blue that, for the first time, I felt I was making love to that ocean. I felt the calm of its breath and the agitation of its heart in such a balanced dynamic that every part of its movement within my existence felt so profound and beautiful that, naturally, my waters surrendered to its own. And it was the first time I felt one with that ocean. It was as if I had naturally returned to myself after navigating without the direction of my heart and only with my mind for two years. That night, I went to sleep so deeply embraced by the ocean that any misfortune, hardship, confusion, and uncertainty seemed to vanish. I was able to breathe again in a shared rhythm that began to feel like home.

After almost a month navigating its seas, I desperately began to secure my entire ship to prepare for the anchoring process. I called the crew for a brief meeting and set them to work cleaning the deck, their cabins, and even the smallest details that were pending. I wanted to prepare them for this new reality, and I could see them working so focused and so present that they inspired me more than they could imagine. The ocean and I were preparing to make this union physical and reproduce in the new lands I thought I would find.

I woke up one morning during my navigation and began to notice how a quiet yet worrisome drizzle threatened the stability of the weather. I tried to stay positive and trust that it was something insignificant, but deep down, I couldn’t help but worry. By midday, I thought it was wise to speak with the ocean and the sky, and as a practice, I began talking about the depths of my own ocean, first with the idea that this other ocean could know me from all the past directions up to my present now. I told it about the lands where I was born, about the challenges I faced from my birth, as if I had to prove to life that I deserved to live it from the earliest age of my innocence. I told it about that moment when my desire to navigate the seas of life with brutal honesty was born, and about the courage I had to convince myself I had, even without having it, to leave those lands and discover others. I told it about some dark and deep hurricanes I faced alone and how there were days of such loss and contradiction that my crew had to save me from throwing myself off the deck. I also spoke of some of my insecurities and fears that perhaps the lands I now sought in the movement of its waters might not exist. I told it there were days when I wanted to give up and return to what I had already found by myself because I didn’t trust its limited expression of its depths to be able to understand it and know how it existed. I asked for patience and openness because if it was in its lands where I would stay, I needed to know every corner, every shape, every stone, every tree of its vegetation, every part of its fauna and flora to know how to react with confidence when the imperfection of my constantly evolving existence presented failures and threatened to leave. I needed to tell it who I was so it would know how to handle me in those moments of panic, which would not last forever but might happen occasionally as I got to know its lands. But I preferred to be brutally honest so that the reality we intended to build would be ours, authentic, and true, and I asked the same of it.

That midday, the ocean spoke calmly and pretended to understand what my soul was expressing in words from my human brain. I didn’t know if it was the new language I was speaking that caused confusion in my communication or my little knowledge of this language in its depths, but I decided to trust that perhaps I was communicating with its soul and not the limitation of reason in the place where it chose to exist. The ocean spoke to me and said that in the last 28 years of its time accounting, it had never known a captain who felt like loving it. It said it was convinced that our union was something sacred and that it was committed to ensuring that the direction we were navigating together was the right one. And I thought that no matter the hurricanes that might come and the instabilities of the weather, the love it said it felt for me would pass any test. That, just like me, it was being honest, and that, like me, it could also see me without the illusion of nonexistent time. That it could see everything I had to go through from my own ship to reach its lands. We talked until sunset and embraced so tightly that the drizzle turned into a radiant sun full of possibilities.

Under the constant threat of the ocean sinking my ship along with my entire crew and travel logs, I began to focus on the faces the ocean showed me. One morning, during those three months, before the crew awoke, I started to see the whitest sands I had ever seen. I began to see a green color I had never encountered before. I started to see an innocent and playful smile. I began to feel deep embraces and kisses that perfectly aligned with my thick lips. I felt a longing from the ocean to surrender to me, ensuring that we became one. For a moment, I thought of shouting, «Land in sight!» That morning, the waters rose high, shaking the entire ship, flooding it with joy as the sea traveled to one of the places where, for the first time, I could see the existence of my soul. I thought: the ocean also wants to know my ocean, and I ran, almost at midnight, to witness its physical form traveling to that moment with me. The ocean said it felt unsure whether what was happening was real because it felt surreal. And I thought: welcome to my waters; this is how I naturally feel life, and that’s why I’m living it to the extreme, as an apprentice of order and structure in my mind, trying to create a natural synchronization with this world where I exist. Perhaps I didn’t communicate this to you in words, but I tried to tell it to your soul.

After that journey we embarked on together, escaping from norms, the accounting of time, and everything that tried to rationalize what we were feeling, we returned together to breathe life again. You wanted to start showing me a little of your depths—or at least that’s what I thought. There was so much confusion in what you wanted to show me. To me, it was as if the words you used to describe it didn’t align with what was happening. Even in key moments where honesty was essential, you began to rearrange things and express them with details and explanations that made no sense. That started to insult my intuition, and that’s when all the darkness you claimed to have begun to transform and control, under the influence of tools you said you found helpful, started to sound like the song of sirens you couldn’t pretend to resist for much longer. Because those voices seemed to come from deceptive and malevolent creatures. It fell apart during that journey where the representation of dishonesty emerged, and I had to live with one of your lies. I had to conceal my wisdom and all my intuition during those days so as not to expose everything you couldn’t hide.

I said goodbye with a “see you soon” before you returned to the movement of your own waves, and in those moments, I began to question and review the entire map I had come to know of your lands thus far. I thought about the escape routes I had tried to take even before navigating your lands and the uncertainty of those first sightings where I had to trust. I questioned whether you understood the meaning of the verb “to love” and wondered about the patience and openness you could bring to sound my ship once it reached your shores and finally completed that first stage of our relationship.

I wanted to communicate my concerns. I asked the same questions in different ways to get you to answer truthfully, about what your true intentions had always been. But at first, it was like knocking on an infinite door that wouldn’t open. I knocked, I knocked, I knocked, and there were no answers, just babbling words you didn’t understand. I ran out, shouting at the top of my lungs to the crew that something was coming and that we had to be ready to survive. Your ocean, where I thought I could navigate calmly because you would be willing to teach me with patience, my insecurities, and my urge to give up, began to stir, and my ship swayed from side to side. Desperation and uncertainty began to lash at my soul. The fear of having made a mistake by giving myself the chance to navigate your seas started to pierce every hole in my skin, which had become so dry at that moment. You returned in your physical form with a harshness that was as if the door remained closed, but you shouted from within. You said you didn’t want to continue this navigation that I thought we had agreed to face together. You even said it was better for me to find another ocean and another sun. You told me not to give up, and as you said all this, my heart burned in flames of pain. The sun of that sunset hid, and I could see it in the distance through the window that carried our communication, afraid to come closer.

I remembered when I told you I loved you for the first time. Even with all the bitterness, anger, despair, and uncertainty, I offered you this: that no matter how many attempts it would take us to reach your lands and for you to join mine, I wanted to do it. Because as I felt my heart burn with pain, I knew it was also a reaction from my body communicating to me that I truly wanted to love you. That I wanted to keep navigating, even if it meant seeing the darkest parts of your ocean, because I knew all of it was also part of what, in my eyes, made you so beautiful.

There was no response from you, none at all. How could you say you felt love for my ship and the existence that drives my life when you could leave in such a way? How could you have said all those words that I never asked you to say, but at least hoped you would prove true? How could you have closed the door to someone willing to love you and become one with you, despite insecurities and human imperfection? The love, the true love I know, is one that surrenders, that takes the risk, that gives itself fully. But it seems I do not know the kind of love you said you had for me.

Not even all the treasures you jealously begin to hoard in your ocean could ever compare to the wealth of someone’s willingness to see you beyond the very limits of human existence, to surrender themselves to being one with you beyond death and its uncertainty. Because when I said I loved you, I said it from that place.

When you left that afternoon from our shared vessel, from the ocean we had begun to share, my soul began to disassociate from my human body. In those early hours, all the substance that materializes my life started to refuse to be accepted. I didn’t eat for the first 48 hours, and my body began searching for fat and glucose reserves just to keep functioning until my will to live returned. I couldn’t concentrate; I felt dizzy, weak, and drained. My body entered survival mode, my lips showed signs of dehydration, and serotonin ran wildly through me, unable to provide the necessary doses for me to even know if I would make it.

In the distance, I spotted a fleet of ships coming to my aid, vessels from the Middle East, Canada, Mexico, Honduras, Spain, and even some unfamiliar ones. They lifted me with their words, reminded me of who I am, where I come from, and all I have navigated so far. My crew and I moved to their ships while we began the process of restoring our own. Those first nights, my body trembled in bed, and my soul roamed restlessly through the universe. I didn’t know that opening my heart to the unknown would hurt so deeply, but it was also a reminder of all the beauty in my ocean, of all the contrasts I’ve learned from so far, and the truths still unfolding.

It was a reminder of all the love that I am and of how my surrender to that land I thought I glimpsed, despite the harshness of uncertainty, was something true—it was true on my part.

And as my ship and my crew recover, my eyes continue to look with hope toward the sky, toward those lands and those dreams, from that true place where I come from, the place that gave me physical form to be born here on Earth.

I know you enjoy reading fantasy, but this is not fantasy. Life and its true meaning are always trying to knock on the door, hoping that one day you’ll open it and let in all the life I know you truly want to feel and live.

I love you.