There was always that slight fear of the unknown. She always feared the ocean (within a reasonable and respectable amount), but it also made her feel exhilarated at the same time. She loved water and couldn't ever get enough for it. maria was always swimming or fishing. She would talk to the trainers who were doing either. She wasn't old enough to make her pokemon journey but she would be damned if she didn't learn from her elders. She had her favorites and her least favorites, in pokemon and in types. She was so excited to travel the region and see everything and meet everyone. Maria also wanted to be Hoenn's first female champion. She had her priorities yet the future title never really sounded right for her. When she really thought deep about it, as deep as a five year old really could, the only thing that quelled her dark thoughts was the love of her father. He would pick her up and sit her on his lap and give scholarly advice that one would not believe to come from the uneducated man. he would tell her that his little sunshine could accomplish anything, but titles meant nothing if she was not true to herself. She held onto that simple phrase for years into her future even past when her father was no longer a figure in her life.
Maria was really close to her father really devoted to him and making him happy. When she was just a youngling, her favorite pastime was waiting for her father to return from his daily work by the docks each night. Never the same time each day, but seven year old Maria was always there, sitting for sometimes hours persistently wasting the afternoons away; until one day there was no return. That was when the phobia was born. No longer wary of the mysteries of the ocean but outright fearing and avoiding it. Any passerby would not see Maria there swimming or waiting. There was no more happiness held in the deep blue, only fear and panic attacks at the thought.
It certainly did not help with the talk of the town always looming in her wake. She was now a bastard kid with no father and it was not like her mom was doing much to take care of her anymore. The rumors of her fathers disappearance were rapidly spreading. He was a main figure in the small town and his missing spot was a big hole in everyday life. The citizens of Lilycove would say it was a shipwreck; other days pirates or the elusive Davy Jones. Sometimes it was to leave her lazy and whore of a mother. Either way her father and his crew were dead; never to be crossed again.
Instead Maria learned to look to the stars; in hope of some other oceanless land or of some alternate universes where her father lived. She would wish upon those stars, that her father was still there, if not for herself but for her decaying mother; who was withering away with the depression of her loss. The family was falling apart. Her father gone, her sister away to Kalos for college and her mom's inability to pay the incoming bills. Maria and her mother were soon desperate to have a roof over their heads, much less food in her stomach and a caring mother (even though it wasn't her fault at all).