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.