THE SHARK THEORY

I have always said I wasn’t afraid of anything, or the dark, or ghosts.
But there was one thing I never admitted out loud:
I was terrified of the dark sea. Being middle of that monster soup.

Not the waves, not the depth, the emptiness underneath.

When I was five, my father used to swim far out into the Bodrum bay.
He was a huge man then, 1.97, shoulders like a mountain.
He would lift me onto his back, swim ten or fifteen minutes, stop in the middle of the sea, and let me “float” with my pink inflatables - kolluks - while he swam to a small island.

One day, while I was waiting him alone, something touched my ankle.
I felt it clearly: cold, smooth, and alive.

I didn’t scream.
I just opened my mouth and the next moment, everything went black.

Someone must have pulled me out, because I woke up on the sand with three or four strangers standing around me.
My father was still far away, swimming back. It was the first time in my life I tasted the loneliness. Incredible, i still remember it like an ice under the sun.

I refused to step into the sea for almost a year.
My younger brother started distracting me so I wouldn’t feel ashamed:
he invented games, made obstacle courses inside the house, tried to keep me busy so no one would ask why a Bodrum child wasn’t going to the beach.

Later, I somehow walked back into the sea again.
I don’t remember deciding. I just remember being there.

That moment, being forced to face a fear without anyone holding your hand became a small reference point in my life. After my father left for 10 years, my mom met with me fir the first time at the age of 14 and left me again by 17, I remembered this day all over again.

I didn’t think it mattered until years later tho.


NEW START

After Alessandro and I finally ended, I didn’t want to be alone in Qatar.
So I left.

Thailand wasn’t a plan. I booked a ticket in two minutes. Very me hahah.
When I arrived, everything felt bright in a way that irritated me.
Tourists laughing. Street food smells. The sticky heat.
I didn’t talk much.

One evening, I was my new over-fixation food of Phuket, pad thai, from a plastic container.
A woman at the stall looked at me for a bit and finally asked:

“Where is your husband?”

“I don’t have one,” I said.

“Why you come alone, then?”

I shrugged. “Needed to.”
(* actually looking for a place to kill this miserable pain and put it in acid if I can ma'am, I hate to feel like this, this weakness is gonna be my end)

She nodded, as if she had heard that sentence a thousand times, maybe inside her thoughts.
She didn’t push. That small kindness stayed with me.

Days passed slowly.
I walked a lot.
I slept too little.
I even had a group sex with 4 girls, idk why I did it. They are sweet people, weird moment actually but I have no self control over my curious ADHD obviously.

One morning outside my hostel, a French backpacker said:

“You look like you’re thinking too much. Want to join for snorkeling?”

I almost said no but with my little French, I was finally spoken after 2 weeks, not just communicating.
So something inside me said yes.

That’s how I ended up on a boat heading toward a shark point.

Everyone was excited, loud, joking.
I sat silently in the corner, staring at the water.

When they told us to jump, I hesitated only two seconds.
Then I went in.

A real shark swam under me...a black-tip.
Nothing dramatic happened.
It didn’t care about me. I didn't care about me too. I could die happy even.
I floated.
I breathed.

And I realized something very simple:
It was never about sharks, my biggest fear was to have the realization that I was alone when I was born, and I will be as long as my fate keep running. Shark was less scary next to an idea that when you die you at that single moment, you have no one to call, its not metaphor. The deep dark sea of loneliness, çok acı.

Lets swim with it, i hope that ocean is as beautiful as the one in Phi Phi Island.

After Thailand, I didn’t want to return to Qatar yet.

So I flew to Seoul for another two months.

Korea was colder, cleaner, quieter.
I liked blending into a city where no one knew me.

At a café in Hongdae, the barista always wrote a smiley face on my cup.
One day she said:

“You come every morning. You’re traveling alone?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated, then said:
“You look like someone who can fuck up someones life with her words”

I laughed. “Yeah, that person is myself, my life”

In the subway, an old woman touched my arm and told me I looked tired.
Another night, a group of students invited me to sit with them because they thought I looked “interesting.”

Small things.
People who had no role in my life but still made it a little easier.

But even on the happiest days, I knew Qatar was waiting at the end.

And so was the depression I left behind.

The moment I landed, the air felt heavier.
The buildings felt smaller.
Everything smelled like boring life in my 20's that I didn’t want.

I unpacked in silence.
The apartment felt like a museum to a life I didn’t want anymore. My Marcel was the most and only beautiful thing in that apartment, my window to the sky in his eyes.

I stared at the ADHD pills for ten minutes before taking one.
I knew what this meant: the battle was starting again. Last time I took them I was 18. First time I took them, I was 5...

In the evening, I went to the kitchen and caught myself remembering the night I left the love of my life in a belief that I deserve better..He cannot be the one that i spend a lifetime with, I refuse this fate. I will not obey this ideology of bullshit.

I sat down, took a deep breath, and reminded myself a quote from Dostoyevsky, out loud:

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth. To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”

Maybe it sounded dramatic.
But it worked. I realized something that day:

I had swum with sharks alone in the middle of an ocean.
I will find an island to rest on it in this life, he is there somewhere.