The Diary Of Emery Taelor

June 1st, 2010

Dear Diary,

Today I decided I want to be a jellyfish.

Mom took me to the ocean again. She tells me that we are lucky to live in such a beautiful place. I wonder if we are?

The sand is always either too hot or too cold. When it is hot, you have to quickly and repeatedly change which foot you are stepping with. When it is cold, you feel your feet mush into it and feel the chill up to your fingertips. I think it's pretty cool.
T

oday it was hot. We quickly made it over the burning hill of sand and drew closer to the distant waves.

She actually let me go near the shore today. Since my mother doesn't willingly speak of the ocean, its waters are a mystery to me. I often wonder what could be in those waves, hiding from my sight. I like to pretend like there are other people, just like us, living there and watching us as we come closer to their side of the shore. I imagine a mother looking like my own, made of sand, warning her daughter not to cross the liquid barrier that divides us.

Maybe she allowed me close to it because it is my 18th birthday. Or is it? I blew out that many candles this morning, but it does not feel like I have been alive that long. I question her number often, perhaps my mother lost count one day and decided I was much older than I actually am.

I got very close today, but she wouldn't let me touch the water. I can't imagine her ever allowing that. She's just not that daring. Told me herself that she had never touched it, but she heard that anyone who has ever dared has faced a horrible end. I don't know what that end is, but I don't plan on facing it.

Today I saw a lump of a gel-like substance near the shore. When I got close, I felt my eyes go wide with curiosity. I knew it could have only come from the ocean.

Mother told me it was a jellyfish, and that the poor thing had probably washed up on shore. I asked why it looked that way just from being on land rather than sea. She told me they are made mostly of water, and that the hot summer's sun had evaporated it.

I cried.
I thought it to be so sad.
I still think so.
But I also think it's pretty cool.

Today I decided I want to be a jellyfish.