I had never had an appetite for being alone. I had never craved loneliness and yet it had always restrained me like a straight jacket. I was never free of it. It followed me into crowds of people, hung on me in relationships, and strangled me at night when I lay in my bed by myself. If I tried to rip free of it, like a Chinese finger trap, it would grip tighter. This disease of loneliness had led me to the small gray sanded beach I stood upon now. Broken shells pricked my bare feet and the hissing wind flipped my hair into a frenzy. The angry sky above me was like a blanket of lead extinguishing the stars above. The rolling sea before me was hypnotic. It held something so tantalizing and foreign to me. It held freedom. It held adventure. Both of which were sparse in my fishbowl world, but courage was what I needed. Why was it that it was so easy to do the things I didn't want to do, but those things I deeply desired were the things that required the most bravery? Fulfilling my desires would require sacrifice, a sacrifice I wasn't sure I could ever make.
The swells before me coincided with the restlessness in my spirit. Sitting down on the wet, sticky, sand I felt furious tears traveling to the crevice of my mouth. Life was not fair. I could say that until I was blue in the face and I would get the same sympathetic smiles, the same ignorant advice and in the end I would remain in the same place I had always been. Alone. There was not a soul that existed who could heal the scars of betrayal on my heart. But they tried. How they tried with their small, insufficient first aid kits and band aids, and their looks of shock and dismay when the wounds would bleed through their flimsy bandages. Rubbing my head I tried to erase the memories that haunted my mind. Anxiety twisted my stomach into agonizing knots and I let the pain consume me. Feeling something, even pain, was better than the numbness that I had become so accustomed to. The thunder above intensified to a point that it began to shake the ground that I sat upon. This was ideal. No one could hear my sobs.
The night had left the beach abandoned and eerie as the fog drifted out of the sea. Through that fog, as if it had been born right from it, emerged a figure of a man. Through my tear blurred eyes I could see him striding toward me. Past experiences and the words of my mother about strange men caused a leeriness toward him. I should have run away. I should have pulled out the pepper spray in my purse. But I didn't.
I observed his easy stride, the way his hands rested in his jean pockets. The way he held his head down in humility, not shame. The way his black hair blew in the wind. There was no fear that held me captive, it was fascination that cemented me. Walking deliberately to me, the man sat beside me and laced his fingers in mine. His hands were unusually warm, probably from being in his pockets. They were smooth and substantially bigger than my own. And as we sat looking at the sea I felt things changing inside of me, rearranging and reorganizing. Neither of us spoke, words would cheapen what was randomly and beautifully happening in my soul. For the first time in my life I could feel my loneliness melting away like candle wax. The breaths that filled my lungs felt as if they were the first ones I had ever taken. The ocean wind blew through me and renewed me. The man tightened his grasp on my hand in an urgency and I could feel his glance turn in the direction of my tear stained face and undone appearance. Turning toward him, suddenly determined and driven to look into his eyes, I found a face that left me in shambles. His eyes seemed to contain every color, here blues, there browns, and faint traces of green. They glimmered and pierced my shattered heart, leaving me with a feeling of utter inadequacy. His free hand rested on my cheek as if to hold my face focused on his gaze and a small smirk danced across his bronze face.
“You have lovely eyes,” were the words that proceeded from his lips. I laughed a nervous laugh. I had never heard the beautiful sound of truth before. It was liberating.
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