I don’t like the beach. I never have; it’s always hot and sticky or cloudy and humid, no in between. I can’t stand the feeling of sand underneath my feet, or seaweed creeping up my leg. And perhaps the most daunting, I’m afraid of the ocean—deeper than my imagination could ever conjure, and farther than I will ever travel. More than any person can conceptualize.
The path I’ve chosen to get to the place that I cannot stand is—at best, unconventional. I’m trampling over bushes and jumping over fallen palm tree leaves. The stickiness begins—my flip flops are plastered to the bottom of my feet,
slick with sweat.
But finally my path proves fruitful, and after what seems like hours of walking, I can finally see the ocean. Funnily enough though, in its vastness, I see nothing. No internal connection, no spiritual awakening, not even the usual surfer or oil rig.
Only water.
There is a steep decline towards the beach—covered in dirt and hidden rocks, but not as hidden as you would think. I see different sized shoeprints carefully trying to make their way down and I find myself following their path. I see Adidas, and Birkenstocks and brandless lines that graze each step. Every breath I take is tainted with salted mist of centuries past.
Exhale, inhale, exhale again.
The sounds of friends chime from down below, high-pitched laughter carrying all the way up to where I stand alone on this hill.
I should’ve carpooled with them. Or not come. Or found a different path. But I’m already half way down. The best way out is through?
With only the thin barrier of vinyl attached to my feet, I can feel every rock and every plant in my sole, and when I finally get closer—close enough to see detailed silhouettes and freckled constellations—the shoeprints turn into footprints. As my decline levels out I see the marks of toes from fellow beach-dwellers gripping into the ground—I imagine them swinging their arms around, panicking that they can’t find their balance—they way I do now. I wonder where they were going.
To meet their friends? To swim in the deep blue sea? To connect with nature?
Do they see something else in the ocean that I don’t?
Wherever they were going, the path they ve laid for me is clear.
Peeling off my flip-flops my feet sink into sand as I move forward. What was once an uncomfortable sensory nightmare becomes tolerable, and what were shadowed beings become my friends. Maybe it’s the intoxicating sound of my friend’s joy, or the sand below finally becoming firm enough for me to walk without tripping, but the vast ocean that I will never understand-that I will never be able to truly conceptualize,
or feel,
or know—
its blue-green scent
is no longer nauseating.▲
