There it is.
I close my eyes and inhale deeply. My hair is lifted from my shoulders and stays back courtesy of the steady ocean breeze. It’s not like regular wind. I know that sounds dumb, but it’s true. The wind coming off the water is strong and steady. It doesn’t gust then die down. It prevails from the east and northeast, leading the trees and brush around me in a lilting sort of organic noise. It’s a gentle shushing, a chaste order from Mother Nature, telling me to listen. The sound of the wind passing through the trees and brush doesn’t fight for attention with the sound of the ocean crashing. Instead, they seem to blend together flawlessly.
The water roars as waves crest and topple, racing toward the shore, eager to meet the dry sand waiting there. It’s a marriage of dry and wet, ocean and land, salt and sand. One cannot exist without the other and sometimes I feel the same way about my life. I’m so damn tangled in loss that it seems neither one can survive without the other. My sullen life wouldn’t subsist without me. That goes without saying. Just the same, without my melancholy existence, I’d be lost. I’m so accustomed to my unwelcome reality that I’ve lost sight of what life is without it.
More waves crest and crash, lulling me into a daze. I open my eyes and watch the foam of the whitecaps sloshing on the surface. The sudsy-looking masses of foam ride the waves ashore to be deposited along the line separating wet sand from dry sand.
I’m sure the water’s cold, but it looks so enticing. There’s something about allowing my body to intermingle with something that seems so relatable. The water, wind, and shore are all interweaved into this constant dance. They battle against each other, but they don’t. They work together, one existing because of the other or for the other. It’s all subjective, I suppose.
I’m certain of one thing standing here in this place. The trio right in front of me is symbolic of the dance that I’m stuck in. The dance of death, life, and me feels like an eternal, somber melody playing on an endless loop.
I have the desire, the need, to slip into the water and join my dance with the one in front of me. Wind, water, land, life, death, and me. Six elements jumbled together, me being the weakest of the bunch. Maybe I won’t feel so isolated in this water. Maybe it’s the prospect of weightlessness that has me wiggling my toes, contemplating dipping them into the sea.
Something in me is tired, like my mother said. It’s tired and broken and ready to give up. I’m just so tired and when I say that, I don’t just mean physically. Sure, the lack of sleep takes a toll but that’s not what I mean.
When I say that I’m tired, I’m talking about my mind, and my heart. I feel so heavy. Even just walking around, I feel like there’s this force pushing down, cinched tight to my back. I can’t see that force. I can’t touch that heavy weight and I can’t put the weight down, but it’s there even when I sleep. It’s always there. I carry it day in and day out, feeling closer to the ground and more alone with every step I take.
The idea that maybe getting in that water could ease the constant weight pressing down on me, or that the water could somehow wash away the state that I’m in, or that it could be my silent companion is more than enough incentive.
I glance back at the various buildings behind me. If someone sees me out here, they’re going to think I’m nuts and I just may be, but my white dress means I require some privacy before I dare to slip into the freezing water.
I walk to the end of the boardwalk and step off into the plush sand. I look to my left, then to my right, trying to figure out the best direction to walk in hopes of a sparsely populated area, perfect for wading in frigid water in a white sundress. I’m insane. It’s official.
I decide to make my way north up the beach. It appears more residential than where I began. I can see a few massive beach houses in the distance. I slip off my sandals and walk towards them at a comfortable pace, careful not to step on any sharp-edged seashells that littler the sand.
I follow along the beach, tracing the line in the sand with my eyes, watching where the waves have rolled to a stop then retreated, wet sand and the occasional cloudy dollop of sea foam the only proof that it had been there.
I focus on one wave as it comes crashing down. It races forward, slowing the closer it gets to its destination, then deposits the foam and retreats back into the ocean from which it came, no better or worse for the journey it had just made.