I am convinced there are few things on this Earth that feel better than an incredible yoga class after two hours of balls-to-the-wall cardio & strength training. All of that followed with an almost-scalding hot shower and slipping into a pair of comfy pajamas.  

 Even better? When those comfy pajamas happen to be pink striped with Eiffel Towers all over them. (At $6.90 from Forever21, I'd say they were a pretty solid purchase.)

Another feel-good moment from my day was receiving this!

 

I was on the phone with my mommy when I heard the door bell ring. Of course, my logical assumption was that it was a killer trying to break in. So I whisper to her, "hold on" and hit the floor, belly-crawling through the living room to peek out the window without the killer spotting me. (Really wish I was kidding.) Anyway, it obviously was not a maniac waiting to rip my guts open and end my life. It was the UPS man delivering a package from Jamie. It was the most adorable (and delicious) cookie bouquet I had ever seen, and it absolutely made my day. Jamie is the greatest, period. 

Yesterday I suffered what I like to refer to as one of my "ranch attacks." I am included in the portion of the population that believes ranch dressing can, and should, go on just about anything edible. I don't allow myself to indulge in it as much as I would prefer (3 meals a day, every day) but sometimes I get a craving that knows no bounds and I have to have ranch immediately.

 Popcorn dipped in ranch is pretty bomb; however, white wine is not. (But it was the only fermented thing in the house, so it was sufficient in getting me through Paranormal Activity 3.)

And that was my day.

wack/wonderful Wednesdays

 

wack

1. It's safe to say it is impossible to find lady fingers in the Triad of North Carolina. Four different grocery stores, and I am still tiramisu-less.  (A very deplorable state to be in.)
2. 4.5 liters of water makes for a pretty unproductive day.
3. I succumbed to my laziness and did not get my run in, opting instead to sit on the couch for three hours eating Cadbury Eggs. 

wonderful 

1. Accidental lens flares.
2. Being able to dine al fresco at lunch with Mommy. 61 degrees in mid-January, I can't even hate it. 
3. Making dinner for my family. Anniversary chicken, roasted sweet potato wedges, & spinach salad.
4. Wearing a whimsical skirt and getting compliments from strangers. (I had all but forgotten what those feel like. On any given day you can find me going out in public in my uniform. Yoga crops, Uggs--not proud of this, a hoodie, & a top knot. If I'm feeling really sassy, I'll put on some under-eye concealer and braid my hair, maybe a spritz of perfume. But let's be real, that's asking a bit much.) 
5. An incredibly sweet, unexpected note from my baby brother. 

two

To the boy who first made me laugh harder than any boy ever had. The boy with ears too big for his skinny frame, but possessing the kindest (and most mischievous) eyes I had ever seen. The boy who had a smile that, even at 12 years old, made me know I wanted to know him for a very long time. The boy who I grew up alongside with, never really noticing the man he had grown into until graduation night, when he kissed me and I realized that was all I would ever want. The boy who painted my world in shades I never knew existed. The boy who first made me feel emotions so strong I needed to write them down. The boy who broke my heart so badly, I thought it would never heal itself. The boy who pushed me, him, and us to be better, stronger, and more powerful in the years apart. The boy who made me literally lose my breath upon seeing him for the first time in nearly two years. The boy who lit us on fire again, on the beach of Camp Lejune. The boy who slipped a small gold band on my finger in a North Carolina courthouse, and made my heart and eyes swell to the brim with joy. 

To this boy, the boy who is my man, my husband, my OBFF, my lover, my protector, & more than my little-girl mind could have ever dreamed of in a mate: happy two year anniversary. I am so looking forward to forever.

quarter

So far so good 25!

Friday night my daddy made THE most incredible meal for my birthday dinner. Mushroom risotto, grilled shrimp, baked scallops, & grilled asparagus. I am convinced he needs to open a restaurant and make bank. For my birthday cake, my mommy made a lemon cream cheese pound cake (which, according to the scale this morning, did in fact add some pounds.) But oh, was it worth it every bite. 

Saturday night I was invited to a dinner with some of my parent's friends to celebrate another January 21st birthday (turns out, other people share your birthday. Crazy, right?) The dinner was an incredible six-course meal (or maybe it was seven? I lost count somewhere in that hazy food coma) and wine pairing. It was fabulous, and I was so pleased to have been invited. Afterwards, I came home and made a margarita recipe I found on Pinterest. It claimed these were the best margaritas, and the recipe did not disappoint. Deanna (brother Trey's lady) & I both agreed they were unparalleled. 

Birthdays really have a way of making you realize how deeply loved you are.

me: "You want to go to a show while we're in London? Jamie wants to see Wicked."

Zack: "Uh, sure I guess. But, I mean, will we be able to understand them?

me: (...silence)

Zack: "What? I've never seen a musical in another country."

London. London, England. England as in the country from which our current dialect is derived.

He provides so much unintended laughter in my life. 

Also, on a completely unrelated note, I am having real difficulty figuring out the exact color of my coat. It's more orange[ish] than red, but I'm not really comfortable classifying it as "melon." This has given me great internal strife since purchasing the coat.

I lead a very taxing life.

2011 travels

R&R

My left leg wouldn't stop twitching, my hands had gone clammy, and I was having trouble swallowing. I tried to smooth an errant wrinkle out of my polka dot sundress, and forced myself to stop fidgeting. 

 

You could pick us out, the Army wives, from a mile away in that airport. 6am on a Thursday morning, we were dressed to kill and looked as though we could burst into tears or hysterical, nervous laughter at any given moment.

The automatic doors that led from the arrivals gate opened and closed a maddening number of times before I started seeing multi-cam bags and military haircuts. Each couple I saw reunited made my heart and eyes well up. The young mother with three small children who ran full speed into her husband's embrace, the seasoned wife who was on her 6th deployment still squealed and threw her purse to the ground when her husband scooped her up, and the couple who casually walked into each others' arms, yet stood there for what seemed like eternity, refusing to let go.

I began to get panicky, as overdramatic pessimists have a tendency to do, when I saw soldier after soldier come through the gate, and Zack was nowhere to be seen. Pretty soon the arrivals gate emptied out, and I was left standing alone in my high heeled wedges and wringing hands. But just at the perfect moment, the doors swung open and I saw my husband, my husband whom I had not seen in almost seven months. His smile and air about him were as giant as I remembered, and he threw his bags theatrically to the side. He pulled me into him, and lifted me up off the floor, twirling me around and around. And honestly, I'm not sure if my feet ever touched the ground again, in those 15 days of perfection. 

 

the year-long ache

If you think I’ve spent the nights you’ve been gone alone, you are very much mistaken. I have had many visitors in our bedroom. I cannot count the nights I’ve spent with worry, fear, anger, and sadness…but never you. They’ve tucked me into bed and woken me in the morning, but never you. They’ve slipped under the covers and saddled up next to me, stroking my hair and whispering things in the dark, but never you. Worry has inched its way into me, getting comfortable, and making sure I am aware of its all-consuming presence. Anger has passionately burst through the bedroom doors, filling the room with its heat and hatred, while ripping back the sheets. Sadness has quietly scooped me up, holding me until I see the first bits of dawn breaking over our balcony. Loneliness has watched me from your side of the bed, not reaching out to me, just curiously watching me. 

But never you. It’s never you. 

missing

I'm forgetting the in-between moments of life together. Sure I see pictures of him. I hear his sweet voice and his laugh, the laugh I desperately try for because it’s so contagious that I can’t help but return it. And sometimes if I’m really lucky, I even get to see a pixelated, delayed version of his talking face on my computer screen.

But I am forgetting the every-day moments. The moments that slip into the cracks on the large-scale of life, but end up being the stitches that piece together the fabric of a beautiful life.

I don't remember the way his breath felt on my neck or how he smelled in the mornings. I have to squeeze my eyes tight, so tight, to remember if the outsides of his irises are more green than brown or the way his back muscles rippled under his shirt. I've almost forgotten the several different ways his kisses taste, and how my favorite is in the late afternoon, right before dinner. I am not sure what the back of his neck feels like anymore, and what silly games we used to play before going to sleep. I don’t really know if our inside jokes are still funny, and sometimes I have to sit completely still to remember how his whispers sound.

All that's left is a voice many miles away, an old tan undershirt that I never washed because it still has traces of his scent, and the reverberating fact that stares at me everywhere I go..."your husband is deployed." 

2011: the deployment

I was driving home the other evening and it struck me, quite suddenly, "I am doing it. I am really doing it." By 'doing it' I mean, going through a year-long deployment. The feeling that accompanied that thought was a proud one, one that made me grin to myself as I drove through the backwoods of Germany. 

 

If you had asked me back in January, if I thought that I would be anywhere near to the adjective "okay" a few weeks into the deployment, I would have laughed bitterly in your face. The weeks, months even, leading up to the highly-anticipated, much-dreaded goodbye were some of the absolute most dismal and frightening points in the Lizack timeline to date. I'm really not sure that I have ever cried so much in my 24 years of being on this earth than I did in those dark, late days of January. 

 

I remember lying awake at night, trying desperately to memorize the shape of his lips and the curve of his fingers on my waist. I remember fervently praying, pleading, making random deals with God to prevent this deployment from happening. I remember the hot tears that sprung to my eyes when I even thought about not being with my best friend for an entire year. I remember breaking down into heaving sobs outside of the commissary after realizing the food I had just purchased would expire after he left, and I'd have to eat it alone. I remember obsessing over the "last" everything. "Today is our last Monday together, this is the last time we'll eat here together, this is the last time we'll sleep together, this is the last time I'll watch him shave." I could go on & on with how many "lasts" I created for us that final week. I remember the way my heart clinched, stomach flopped, and tears rolled the day he came home wearing his black, infrared flag patch.

The day we said our goodbye was chilly and grey, and my contacts had clouded over by 9 AM. I was leaving that day for a weekend trip to Dublin with some friends, (friends so amazing, they deserve, and will receive, their own post soon) so Zack & I clutched each other outside of Gate A at Frankfurt Hahn, had a hurried kiss, and I choked back sobs as I watched him walk down the hallway.

Something about the goodbye didn't feel right. While obviously there are very few people who would ever feel "good" about saying goodbye for a year, there was this critical feeling of settlement I knew I needed to have, and I just did not. I quickly found out why within minutes of landing back in Germany after our trip. To make a long, annoyingly complicated, and stressful story short: Zack's company did not deploy when originally scheduled, so he actually was home the entire weekend I was gone.

Luckily, we both possess too much zeal for our own good, and arranged it to where we could get a final, "for-real" goodbye. I tried my best to look pretty before seeing him again, but there is only so much you can do with having had little to no sleep, crying fits that have occurred every hour on the hour for four days, and a heart that isn't sure if it's going to, or wants to, keep beating. Still, I got in our car and drove quickly through the inky night to where he was. I hardly dared to breathe as I waited for him to come to the car. I looked down and saw that my heart was pounding so hard it was causing the little charm on my necklace to flit back and forth. Finally he came, and we had our moment. We kissed, we cried (okay, so maybe it was just me crying, but for the sake of the story I shall pretend he was crying too), we laughed, we held on to each other tight until it was time to go. That goodbye felt firm, final, and peaceful. I didn't cry as I drove away, I felt this overwhelming sense of calm rush through me.

This was happening, it really was. My husband was leaving me for 365 days. And I was okay.

I am okay. Far better than I could have ever anticipated. Of course there are days I feel sad, but not that debilitating sorrow I used to feel towards the deployment even when his body was still by my side. It's a moment of sadness in which a few tears might escape when I find an old note he wrote me, or my heart might painfully twinge when I hear his voice in my head, "Jus leeeesten!", but it usually passes quickly and I resume my everyday life, sans Zack.


Yes, we are doing this deployment. And yes we are doing it well, as well as we know how.

 

 

2010: round two

We were sitting in a room full of people, but all I could see was him. Sort of like that ‘Fancy-Focus’ setting you can do on Photoshop that blurs everything except the one thing you want to focus on. He was laughing at something one of his friends had said, and I knew, right at that very moment, that my heart would never belong to anyone else but him. It was an aching realization, one that made my stomach churn and my heart sink to the very bottom of my sand-covered shoes. Because I knew after that bittersweet four hour drive to the airport, I would probably never see him again. And because it was a terribly inconvenient realization, seeing as he was leaving the country in a few months and I was perfectly content in my little bubble of a life as of that freezing December morning.

But if there is one thing I possess, it’s passion. And if you know me in the least, you are aware that once my mind is made up and I have my sights set on something, I will stop at nothing. So I shakily pulled out my cell phone, typed an 11 word message that read: “You know I would move to Germany in 2 seconds flat”, tried to stop my heart that I was just certain the entire room could hear pounding, and pressed Send. 

 

The rest is, well, history. Sometime in mid-April I will pack everything I own into some suitcases and board a flight to Germany. I honestly cannot spend one more day without him by my side. Zack is in the Army, and will be in Germany for 3 years, so for drei years I will be traveling Europe with my very best friend and the boy I have madly loved for an embarrassing number of years. I am so incredibly excited about seeing so many new things, building a beautiful little German home, and perhaps even meeting another Liebscher. But I think what I am most excited about is simply waking up every morning and seeing him. That is all I have ever wanted since that first kiss on the dusty hill at the edge of the woods.

Zack is stationed in Baumholder, but we will be living in a slightly bigger town about 20 minutes north of Baumholder called Idar Oberstein. Neither of them are big enough to warrant a spot on most broad maps of Germany, but Idar Oberstein is located in West Germany. It’s in between Frankfurt & Stuttgart [where my great grandpa was born!], but west of those cities. [And only about 4 hours driving distance from Paris!] 

I know it all might sound slightly crazy, quitting my job, leaving my dearly loved family & friends and the comforts of America, and moving to a foreign country [the extent of my German is ‘guten tag’ and ‘bitte’] with a boy I haven’t actually been in a relationship with in almost 3 years. But isn’t that what life is about? Stepping outside of your comfort zone, chasing dreams, believing in fairy tales? If it isn’t, don’t inform me now.

my 2010

2008: jaded

I stopped believing in romance somewhere between mile marker 121 and 123. It sounds so flippant, I love it. I wish I could be that cool, nonchalant girl who is simply all right with the fact that she doesn't believe in love anymore. But I'm not. I used to be the most hopeless of romantics. The girl who searched through page after page of dumb love quotes or who spent hours creating mushy play lists for her ipod. Oh, and the daydreams. I would rather not even get into those. I had the most lavish, sickeningly sweet dreams possible. Please believe white picket fences were just the tip of the iceberg. So for me to have something that used to be such a fundamental part of my being, simply decide it doesn't want to live in me anymore and just fly away.... was upsetting, to say the least.

I blame it on a little kid in a minivan, to tell you the truth. Speeding down the interstate, I came eye to eye with this tiny boy screaming about something in the backseat of a van. His mother was trying to appease him and looked so tired. Not the kind of tired that you get after pulling an all-nighter or tripping into work with a raging hangover. But the kind of tired that takes years to cultivate. The tired that seeps into your bones, your soul, and makes itself a permanent resident. Is this what I am going to be reduced to? Is this what I have been dreaming my whole life for? To look like a battered soldier with no medals to show for, except a rattling van, whiny children, and a husband who looks at his twenty-something-year-old secretary a little too long? I cannot do that. I will not do that. I am tired of trying to squeeze myself into this impractical mold society has carved out for me. Maybe I don’t want a man to define my other half. I am a whole, thank you, and plan to stay that way. I can’t image telling half of my being to just die, only to replace it with a male who leaves his dirty socks on the floor, gets off without worrying himself about my orgasm, and doesn’t know my favorite flower.

I loathe the fact that because of societal norms I feel guilty for not wanting the life I’m supposed to want.
I want to live in as many countries as possible, hopping borders like a frantic fugitive.
I actually do want a child, two in fact. One of my own, to see if my stubbornness and unruly curls are hereditary, and one that I have adopted.
A husband really isn’t necessary, but I would like a man that shares my dreams, tells me when I’m being a bitch, and lifts me up when my legs forget how to stand.
I want to see things I didn’t know existed, feel things I didn’t think were possible, and grow so rich in knowledge, even the gurus would envy me if they had the ability to envy.
I want so much, more than I think I will ever fully be able to obtain.

So I quickly exited the Interstate. My dreams seemed to be dying with each passing car and jadedness was starting to set up camp in my bones. I wasn’t quite ready for my hopes to start peeling away like the paint on my old car.

The world was, is, still too beautiful to me.

 

2008: crossed my fingers, but didn't beg

For a girl of, what I like to believe to be an above average intelligence quotient, I am depressingly stupid. Stupid to the point it’s almost amusing. Except it’s not, not really at all. How could I have gotten it so wrong? Why did I allow you be an exception to my ironclad rules? My heart is the most guarded of all my internal pieces and Fort Knox has got nothing on my invisible walls. I typically trust no one, and doubt most things that come out of people’s mouths. So for the life of me, I cannot understand why I opened up so quickly and so completely to you. After one meal of smoked salmon and a 4 AM half-asleep kiss, I neatly reached into my chest, scooped my heart out and pinned it onto my sleeve, leaving it loosely hanging by a few threads. I was like a flower who, sensing some warmth and being anxious for spring, bursts open, spreading its colorful blossoms for all to see…only to realize much too late it’s still icy winter. And instead of being careful with everything I had gingerly placed before you with the solemn innocence of a child spreading out her most prized shell collection, you backed away. Muttering a feeble and barely audible, "Sorry" you left to get back to life before my inconvenient arrival. I'm glad I can be the punch-line of a few jokes, the reason you get a high-five from your guys, or an ego boost to ensure yourself, "yep....I'm still hot". Because you weren't just another scratch on the side of my bedpost.

You were a little more.

And I was more than a little stupid.

2008: window pain

My room was beautiful and bright. There was light flooding everywhere and I could dance around in it for hours and hours, wearing the biggest smile my face would permit. I even sang, and I do not sing. But then he came and flipped the light switch. In one swift movement, with the casualty of one starting their car or sneezing, my room was plunged into darkness. Abruptly I stopped singing, dancing, and smiling. Blindly I stood there, letting my eyes adjust to the sudden dark. He was gone, along with the light and I was alone, as normal. For a while I sat there, numb and without sight.

A window.

I remembered I had a window. I stood up slowly and with child-like caution felt my way towards the small square of glass that was hidden behind a curtain. I pushed back the fabric and light came streaming onto my face. It wasn’t as bright as the overhead light, but it was pure and real and there was no one that could turn it off. From that moment on, I decided I was never closing my curtains again. I may not always have the buzzing glow of a fluorescent bulb looking down on me, but I will always have my light. And you can’t take it. Go ahead and come flying into my room with the breeze, I’ll welcome the extra light. But when you leave just as quickly as you came, I’ll still have light.  

And I won’t need yours.

 

2008: a foreshadowing

It was inevitable. He was my best friend for the majority of my formative years. He knew me like the back of his calloused hand and I knew him inside and out, piece by crazybeautiful piece. I could tell you where every mole on his body was, how he smelled sweetest in the morning, and the intricate way in which his green eyes told stories. So that early summer night in the back of his dusty red pickup truck, it was inevitable. From the moment we crossed that terrifying threshold from friends to lovers, I knew this was a defining moment in my life and I would never really be the same. 

The passion and love that was ignited in my veins over the course of the following two years is what epic love stories are made of. It wasn’t the kind of relationship you settle into, slowly putting your feet up and stretching out on the sofa while becoming comfortable. No. It was me teetering on the edge of a jagged cliff, losing my balance, and plunging headfirst into the unknown.

It was the kind of love that keeps you on your toes and out of your mind.

Never before had someone had the power to twist me into a messy rubber band ball of emotions, only to gently straighten me out into flowing musical notes moments later. No mind-altering drug could ever compare to the highs I experienced with him. At times I felt inebriated with giddiness and floated around on puffy, rose-colored clouds, all because of one text message or kiss. I smiled when alone in my room and daydreamed of our curly, golden haired children with moss colored eyes. I melted at his touch, felt sparkles when he broke into his mile-wide grin, and cried when he was hurting.

But Newton wasn't kidding. What goes up must come down. The lows I experienced were the most dismal, dark places I have ever ventured in my life.
It. Was. So. Messed. Up.

But in the most perfect, brilliant, shining way messed up can be. I don’t think I have fully recovered from that burn. It was a white-hot scalding one that reached down into my inner self and seared it all the colors of the rainbow. And you know what? I am glad that burn will never go away. People go their whole lives and never experience that kind of beautiful intensity. I am thankful beyond all reason that I carry such an exquisite battle wound. Sometimes I just want to rip myself open and show it to the world, smiling at people’s horror and jealousy. Maybe one day I will play with that kind of fire again and again I will ride the tidal waves of this boy, this boy who is my mirror image.

I think it’s inevitable.

2008: epiphany

VO (:30)
How in the world am I going to be a journalist? Our job is to condense “just the facts” into cold, impersonal little snippets that even the most simple minded of people can comprehend. Our job is to tell people about the world, without really telling them about the world. Our job is to check our opinions, compassion, and sometimes morals at the door. Just the facts. The cold, hard facts that the public needs. But that is not me. 

No. I am too full of passion, verbose sentences, love, and sprawling adjectives. [I get off on alliterations and pathetic fallacy, for God’s sake.] “The accident on I-40, just west of mile marker 218, resulted in the death of one Greensboro man, James Talbert. Authorities are still determining whether alcohol was a factor in the crash.” 

No. No. 

James Talbert isn’t just a name scrolling across the teleprompter. That wreck isn’t just a 20 second story on the six o’clock news. The viewers will never know that James Talbert had greenish blue eyes that his fiancé adored or that he cooked the best lasagna ever, or that he hated his job at the bank and secretly dreamed of being a pilot. They will never know that those strategic camera angles of a mangled car they just saw on the television forever changed so many lives. That wreck wasn’t just a filler story the producer threw in out of desperation when the new school story didn’t pan out; it was the end of a life. The viewers won’t know a brother sobs himself to sleep every night or that a broken hearted girl is sitting on her bed with a bottle of pills shaking in her hand. 

I cannot be a part of this madness. I cannot paint my face into a mask of camera appropriate makeup and fluff my hair to epic proportions. I cannot take out the faint southern drawl that emerges when I drink or flirt and turn my voice into a non-regional robotic one that reads sentence after sentence of meaningless phrases. I cannot watch as the power hungry higher-ups in the network force me to twist and tweak the truth into stories that our advertisers will be satisfied with. I cannot watch as the world around me is quite literally falling to pieces and all I am doing is telling people about it with a thirty second VO. 

Actually, I can. I can do all of that. And I hate myself for it. 

I hate myself for seeing an ambulance and wanting to follow it in hopes of a juicy wreck. I hate myself for secretly praying the mother whose son just left for Iraq breaks down into sobs in the middle of the interview because that would make an awesome sound-bite in my package. I hate myself for mindlessly reading headline after headline and not really absorbing any of what I’m saying. Oh, the AIDS rate is up in Africa? Should I put my enunciation on ‘epidemic’ or ‘government’? Hmm, an office building collapsed in Russia? Should I say ‘close to 2,000 people were killed’ or ‘more than 1900 people were killed’? 

But that’s what I am supposed to do. Deliver the facts. Just the facts. 

Keep your opinions, compassion, and morals tucked safely away in your pocket. Only let them out in the safety of your home, when you’re watching a foreign version of yourself droning away on the screen.

Only then you’re allowed to feel.
(# # #)

2008 PSA

Attention members of the male species:
Women were not placed on this planet for your boyish amusement. We are not your disposable playthings. We are not a moist pink mouth, a round ass, soft skin, or lavender smelling hair. We are not here at your convenience for when you want to get-off, impress your friends, or talk about something over than video games and sports. We are more than that magical place between our thighs, more than dainty little things in dresses, more than something to do when bored.
What about all of this is so inherently difficult for creatures with two dangling appendages to comprehend?
Whether it’s a whore to screw or a damsel to rescue, women are always an object to men, an activity to pass the time, something to validate their own self worth. Here, in the year 2008, is this really how little progress we’ve made?
Let me stop there. This is not an impassioned commentary of current societal gender roles or a feminist, frenzied man bashing.
This is a plea, a simple plea from one human heart to another.

Prove me wrong. I am begging you.


 

2008

"YOU'RE ON A BEACH," my logic hissed at me through what I just know were clenched teeth. The kind your mother does when you're misbehaving in public and she's embarrassed and doesn't want others to know the real you. I was on a beach. And I was having a panic attack. I don't really know the technical definition of a panic attack and it probably wouldn't even qualify as one. But to me, it was very real and very intense and very much happening at that mostly inappropriate moment.There were little kids to the left of me building stupid sand castles. I don't think I'll ever let my children build sand castles. Or maybe I will, but insist they knock the sand creations over before the waves do. Just because. [Hello control issues, do you want to come out to play as well?] To my right, my family was laughing and chatting away as usual. About what? I have no idea, but that's no real surprise. Also as usual, the conversation was lucidly flowing in one of my ears and out the other as quickly and calmly as the breeze lifting up from the sea. The sun was hot and the lifeguard dutifully watching over all of us was even hotter. And I was having a panic attack. Something about looking at the sea just really does a number on me and my already astoundingly absurd imagination. Life, love, what's the point, brevity, love, passion, dreams, love, death, human nature, love blahblahblah, all of those things just came at me like the kind of waves surfers cream themselves about. The book in my lap, The Bell Jar--admittedly not the wisest choice of reading material for a budding Esther Greenwood, fell to the sand as I let my brain explode. I let myself get so worked up into a mental frenzy that I was fairly confident it would take a lot of pills or a quick dive off the end of the pier to silence it. 

That is, until I saw The Couple.

My mind shut off and focused on this young couple walking down the beach. Probably in their late 20's, average in appearance, but that really does not matter. They were laughing and smiling and looked so in love it almost hurt me. But when they reached the point where they were directly in front of me, their demeanor's changed rapidly. Clearly there was some sort of conflict going on that I was unaware of and the nosy journalist in me was just dying to find out. So I sat up, squinted, and basically gawked at them. They stood there arguing for at least five minutes about, what I finally discerned, how far they would walk. She wanted to keep walking, he wanted to turn around. I assumed surely one will compromise, because that's what people in love do, right? No. He promptly turned his back and began walking back. She turned on her heels and began walker further the opposite way. Still, I thought, at least one of them will turn back around to look at the other one. 

No.

They kept walking. Never once did the other stop to turn around. I watched them until my eyes got blurry and the sand swallowed them whole. I had just placed my entire belief in love on this one couple's shoulders and love had let me down yet again. So I picked my book back up and began reading again, because that was the only thing I could think of to do.