For All My Life

For all my life there has been the beach.

For all my life there has been the beach.

It's worth saying twice or a million times. Because for all my life, there has been the beach. When my life is shit, I seek and find refuge in the ocean. It welcomes and embraces me, it scolds me for being away so long, it tells me that I'm radiant. It recognizes me. It remembers me. It takes my pain and makes it float, just for the moment, outside of me. It presses pause and I can breathe. The ocean, it strengthens me. It makes me happy to be alive.

I don't ever feel like dying, but I'm not always happy to be alive. I'm often confused and pulled in multiple directions. I want to be loved and cherished. I want to be happy. I want to be productive. I want to finish writing a novel. I want to make a difference in my students' lives. I want to know that what I give to the world is not for nothing. I want to feel valued.

When I'm in the ocean, as I sit in the shallow water and talk stories with my sisters, when I float on my back and my hair fans out around me (less so now that my hair is always shorter), as I read a book under the hot, unforgiving sun, I feel good. I don't have the stereotypically ideal beach body, yet how rarely do I feel inadequate walking amongst hot, nearly naked bodies. I feel strong. I feel confident. I feel so completely comfortable in my skin in a way that I never do anywhere or anytime else. Nobody can make me feel inferior when I'm on the beach. And yes, these thoughts actually pass through my mind each time I'm there.

It is necessary for me to visit the ocean. I count myself lucky that for all my life there has been the beach. I am lucky that my parents valued time at the beach. We went after school and on the weekends. We camped out on the beach back when we had neither tarp nor table nor the knowledge we have now. When my first boyfriend, Doug, had moved away, leaving me brokenhearted and crying on the sofa for days, my mom shoved me out the door and onto the beach. I think that was the first time that I'd realized where I was supposed to go for healing. I spent a lot of time that summer strapping mismatched fins to my feet and catching waves on a borrowed body board-- not even doing it well, but doing it nonetheless.

I spend a lot of time sitting at my desk these days. Charlie began clearing it off for me, which was no small task, and then Kama and Judah helped me refine. I needed a workspace. Somewhere for me. Somewhere for the work of writing and healing. Like the beach, for all my life, there have been words. For all my life, I have been sitting somewhere, writing things down, trying to make sense of my world. I have been using this space lately for the same healing I seek at the beach.

So often these days, I am in conflict with myself as I strive toward a happiness I have not felt in a long time. I am constantly uncomfortable, which I'm assured is totally normal and necessary if I want to change my bad habits. It sits like a rock in the space between my shoulders-- heavy when I stand, painful if I lie down. Once I am comfortable with these new dance moves, I've been told I should start feeling better. Because the goal of the new moves isn't to get what I want (although, wouldn't that be nice?), it's to find my voice.

I used to go dancing a lot, too. I used to find my joy there. Again, I don't have the stereotypically ideal body for the club scene, and I don't have the moves, either. But no one can make me feel diminished when I dance.

These are sacred spaces. I can dance, I can write, and I can visit the ocean. These are my centers of power. I am strong. In every other place in my life, people find ways to diminish me. Make me feel bad about myself, about what I do, about what I value, about what I want. And I don't understand why because if I stop to consider, I already usually feel shitty enough without any help whatsoever.

I vow, then, to return to these bases of power whenever I feel weak. Whenever I seek sustenance and when I need to be embraced for the wonderful person I sometimes feel like I am. I invite any and all of you to join me to dance, to write, to go beach. Maybe you need the healing, too. Maybe you like try something different.

Anyway, I'll close with this quote I found. Paula D'arcy is someone I discovered in a very old issue of Parabola magazine, and I've often posted that quote about being good to those who are good to us. Then I stumbled across this gem, which I think is especially relevant to the work I'm doing:

"I wish I could understand why I so often change myself, trying to please others, and gain their approval of who I am. Right now, the fear of meeting with someone's disapproval seems so small compared to the fears I've had to face to come here and stick it out. Does the river try to please a tree? Does the bird try to please a stone? In nature, things are simply who or what they are. A tree, trying to please the river, would be ridiculous. I imagine a tree trying to edge itself over so it can place shade in a different spot. The notion is silly. But I wonder . . . isn't that what I do? What if I put all my energy and power into being me, instead of someone else's version of me?"