I dropped to my knees and started to cry.
It was an ordinary bright sunny day in southern California. The perfect blue sky stretched neverending over the just as neverending water in front of me, the soft salty breeze carried the seagulls and their cries past my eyes and to my ears and the waves crashed steady and calm onto the warm and smooth sand, like they have done undisturbed for a million years.
The Pacific.
I had come a freaking long way to see it.
Only a few people know and comprehend my insane fascination with the ocean. And even fewer identify with it. Long before I understood the concept of scenic prettiness or the word ecosystem, I understood the waters ancient language. Cause after all – it is my own. The ocean and I – we are the same: majestic force of nature, dark unexplored abyss underneath a restless surface and immeasurable variety of life. Nothing has ever felt as natural to me as delivering my ankles to the gentle and still forceful grip of those cold and salty fingers. When I am at the ocean – the everpresent agitation of my being is replaced by a serenity I rarely experience in life, not even in art. When the ocean talks to me – I draw a wisdom no human being can ever clarify to me and unspoken truths unfold so crystal clear before my inner eye, there is no denial. My thoughts stop to spin. Bits and pieces of me that have been scrambled up roughly fall gently into place, bit by bit by piece. I become whole. And for the time being one with the water I am infinite.
So I might have had a bunch of reasons to fly to California. But the Pacific – was definitely the most urging and desirable.
I have no words to describe the incredible beauty that unfolded in front of me, nor the mind-blowing experience of a dream coming true. If I ever understood the phrase “there is no sensation to compare at this, suspended animation, state of bliss” from Pink Floyd’s LEARNING TO FLY, it was at that exact moment.
And I dropped to my knees and began to cry. Tears of joy…. – Yah, well, for a millisecond I actually thought so too. That is, until I realized I had come a freaking long way to see the Pacific.
And now that I was there – I wasn’t.
I was miles away, years away, probably half a lifetime away. And I didn’t feel joyful, I felt like an old and beat up cardboard box, full of all the crap life can possibly dump on someone’s plate. I was 16 years of horrible sadness and massive anger, unbearable remorse and hideous embarrassment, unbelievable stupidity, that I could not forgive myself, and a never ending mess of fairytales turned into lies. I was shattered dreams, broken promises, one way love and way too many people that had cheated me, lied to me, and had let me down, while I was unconditionally fighting off their enemies bending in all directions to the last breath.
I was years and years of “suck it up!”. I was raised a fighter, not a lucky survivor. And I was taught to pick myself up. And it seems I have done that a million times. I am extremely good at that.
But I seriously so mega-suck at letting things go.
There is no point of keeping the crap of the past around. I know that! I can’t change what I thought, felt, said and did, what and who I chose the past 16 years. Nor do I believe anything would actually change if I could go back. Since I’d still be the same person: I did not purposely seek the crap to happen! It happened because I am fearless, I am faithful, I am loyal, I love unconditional. Because I believe in multiple chances. Because I believe in the good.
Because that makes me an idiot most of the time.
An idiot that people take advantage of, suck empty and then leave in the ditch to die, while they go on cheery and happy because I only had a meaning to them as long as I offered what they wanted and needed at the time.
So maybe, keeping the crap as close as possible for so long, gave me a feeling of protection. Maybe I believed for such a long time, it would stop me from being an idiot. Maybe I thought, if I keep it as a reminder, I will think, feel, act and chose differently. Wiser. For my own good.
Yah, worked well… didn’t it?!?
I had come a freaking long way to see the Pacific and I wasn’t there at all, because I had managed to stuff myself with crap up to my ears, so that there was absolutely NO SPACE left to feel anything at all. If I ever wondered how much I can stomach – I got my answer then and there.
I.WAS.DONE.
I kneeled on Ocean Beach and cried. For the first time in my life, something was about me: I mourned the loss of myself. Cried salty tears that dropped onto the sand to be washed away by salty water, to which past, present and future have no meaning.
And the Pacific did what I couldn’t do. It soaked the cardboard of the box, broke it down and swallowed piece by piece by bit.
Amazingly I didn’t fight it. I let go.
And I cried and cried and let the water wash the painful past away. Until I consciously felt my hands clasping the moist sand tight, until my nose and my lungs where fully filled with the unique scent and the delicious taste of the Pacific.
Until I was.
When I lifted my face towards the sun – I was there. I was at the most beautiful place I had ever been to and there was the Pacific in front of me and it was the colour of indigo, which is my favourite. I was there.
Two months have passed since that day at Ocean Beach. And though I wasn’t dramatically reborn or magically transformed, I do have indeed changed.
I came across a post on FB the other day that read: “Whether you realize it or not, you are where you are meant to be. You created your reality by the thoughts you think, the emotions you emit and the actions you have taken. Accept it. Know it. Own it. Control it.”
I lay awake quiet long that night, stroking my purring cat between the ears and listening to my own breath.
I will not ever change. I will continue to be fearless, to be faithful, to be loyal, to give multiple chances. And I do not know any other way than to love unconditional.
That is who I am. I believe in the good.
I am aware, that makes me vulnerable. And I also know, because of it, there is no protection from what people and life will do to me eventually in the future.
But I can not deal with poeple expecting them to screw up, to lie, to cheat and do evil intentionally. I can not pursue a project, a dream or a fairy tale judging it in advance to be undoable, unrealistic, without profit or set up for failure. That’s not how life works for me.
That’s NOT who I am. And that is definitely not who I WANT to be. There are plenty of people that feed negativity with great passion, I rather risk being an idiot again by trying to make a difference.
I will get hurt again. I will scream and yell and cry again.
But when I am done – I will move on. I will let go.
I am. Now.
No alibis. And absolutely no regret.
Mackenzie Clarke 