For almost five years, I volunteered at a world-class aquarium. I did everything from explaining why one sea bass has spots and the other one doesn’t to showing someone how to properly hold a hermit crab. I crouched on the floor with toddlers and showed them all the places a baby octopus likes to hide.

I loved, more than anything in the world, explaining the science behind why rockfish look like they’re dead when they’re really just trying to catch food or why giant kelp is coated in a layer of slime. I loved seeing the connections being made behind guests’ eyes, how young and old alike would light up with joy when they learned something new. It was like witnessing them come back to life, or come home from a long journey. It was like they came back to themselves there on the salt-and-dust coated floor.

The thing is, I loved watching the connections being made so much because I wanted the guests to be able to see the aquarium as I did. I wanted them to see how the angry-looking giant sea bass is actually just a grumpy baby that gets upset when it can’t go hide in its favorite corner. I wanted them to see how the sunlight glints off the water, how the sardines sparkle under the surface. I wanted them to see the magic under the surface of the waves as clearly as I did.

But I don’t know how to get someone to to see the aquarium the way I do without taking them there. How do you get someone to understand just how weird cow’s tongue kelp is if they’ve never touched it? How do I explain what it's like to try to feed a decorator crab except by taking your hand and putting it in the freezing water with mine and watching its little claws flail about? How do you explain what it’s like to spend your summers elbow-deep in saltwater to someone who hasn’t even seen the ocean before?

How do you teach without doing? If I’m going to tell someone about the way the sunlight hits the kelp forest at two in the afternoon on a busy Saturday, I’m also going to teach them about the way that a rockfish hunts for food, or how swell sharks hide from predators in rocky crevices. If I am going to show a toddler a tube full of jellyfish, I am also going to teach them what the little clover-shaped thing is in the middle: their four stomachs. If I am going to talk about sea otters, I am also going to talk about conservation and research.

I do not know how to talk about what I love without also trying to get you to love it too. I do not know how to explain why I love something that will one day leave without also explaining its value to me, that it is something beautiful to witness, like a jellyfish life cycle.

I do not know how to find myself again without going to the beach, putting my hands in the frigid water and looking at seashells. I do not know who I am apart from what I have lived and what I love, but I am not entirely sure that is a bad thing.

How do I find myself after being away for so long? Slowly, carefully and preferably as close to the sea as I can get.