So a Girl Walks Onto a Beach...

That week I spent at my aunt and uncle's place on the beach this spring meant more than I realized at the time. But I guess that's true for everything lately.

I've been staying in Scituate since before I was born. It's where my mother was living when she met my father. It's where I learned I was hopeless at driving a boat. It's where my parents stayed when they were shuttling between PEI and Florida, those few magic years. It's the only place in the world where my brother and I have our heights measured along a wall, inside the closet door of one of the upstairs bedrooms. It's the last place I saw my aunt Clare. 

But this spring was the first time I'd ever stayed there alone. I have a tricky relationship with staying alone as is, even more so in a place infused with family, memories from every year of my life flooding around every corner. Not that I felt completely 'alone'...although 'haunted' is a bad word for what it was. More like someone else was there when I was not, checking in to make sure things were going alright, sitting up, keeping watch downstairs at night when I slept. Not in a creepy way. In a 'smoking cigarettes at the dining room table and contemplating the night' kind of way. I don't know. Irish voodoo. I also don't know why my ghosts smoke cigarettes, or why I find this comforting. Probably more voodoo. 

I didn't plan to be there by myself much. The week before my stay, my mother remembered that there would be no cable, no internet. That part of town would be half-empty, all those dark shuttered houses along the water. And me all by myself. I made contingency plans for sleepovers in Quincy, Boston, Groton; felt lucky to be welcome so many places. 

Though when I got there, the strangest thing happened: I liked it. I didn't want to be gone. I wanted to be there with the memories and the smells and the sounds. I wanted to be an adult in this childhood place, to have to remember to bring keys for doors that had never been locked to me, to come home in the dark to a place that has been lit for me for so long, that first night, I didn't even know where to find the switches. 

I thought I would be scared. I wasn't scared. 

The moon was moving towards full that week, and it rained most days. At night, I would zip myself into a pile of hoodies and walk Bay along the beach, me with my blue plastic Solo cup of boxed wine, feeling like the coolest mom in the world - 'Welcome to the end of the Earth and all its smells! You may have it all to yourself, puppydog'. The moon lit up the water and I could watch Bay run all the way to where the sand meets the rocks, becomes impassable, without losing sight of him. He'd wait for me to meet him out there, then we'd turn and walk back along the packed sand, him trotting a few paces ahead of me, stopping occasionally to root through small piles of rubbery seaweed with his nose. 

On one of our last mornings, the sun finally came out, but it was windy and the beach was still empty. I was wearing a heavy jacket I didn't need, but my leggings were too thin. I was convincing my body to call it a draw on this one, stop being so cold, when I was distracted by something lying in the sand a few feet ahead. (Distracted by Shiny Things, the Katie Neuner Story) It was a rock. Just a rock, sure, somewhat tear-shaped, small enough to fit inside my hand. But it was also a beautiful rock, the most beautiful rock: opaque, purely white, what magic clouds look like when you ride on them, I'm sure. It was, without a doubt, the specialest rock on that beach. It made me remember being a little girl, caring so much about seashells. So I picked it up, and put in my pocket. For good luck. I figured it had to be good luck. 

This was all a few months ago, but I've kept the rock with me, even transferring it from purse to purse, just to have it nearby. Good luck, you know. Every so often I want to show it to someone, but as soon as I'm halfway into it, I realize I'm a crazy lady pulling fucking rocks out of my purse and talking at people about them, and that's not a gun I need to jump. Also, it just never seemed as...special, as it did the moment I picked it up. I swear, when I saw it on that beach - it was like a magnet. 

I came across the rock again this morning, digging through my purse in search of...who knows, I always forget what I'm looking for as soon as I start. But there it was, the rock, and I took it out and turned it over in my hands. It's dingy, now, from being buried in the traumatic chaos of my purse for four months, covered in ink and pencil, gummy with spilled lip gloss, tiny flecks of tobacco rubbed into its sides. And I thought: I probably need to bring this rock back to the beach. 

It's not that this rock has lost its magic. It is not less special than that morning in April when I found it. It just wasn't supposed to leave. It was not intended to live in a dark sac of cloth, banged up against Altoid tins, rolling around and scratching up the ipod. A rock is not designed to conform to your life. It's a fucking rock. And it belongs somewhere. I guess it's our job to figure out how to live amongst the rocks, in between those places where they belong. 

There are lessons in here I haven't quite learned yet. 

On Heartbreak

I've been sitting on this one for a long time. I was actually mostly out of the woods by the time I wrote it - these emotions are so last season - but I didn't have the guts to post it, and then it felt like it had been too long...but the Olympics ended yesterday? And I am like, legitimately sad about it. Sad enough that it reminded me of this. I know - I care way too much about the Olympics. Anyway - people much smarter than me have said that to write well you have to write bravely. Consider this splitting the difference. (Note, DAD: this was a long time ago! I'm totally okay now! Promise! I just left it in the present tense for effect.)
....

For most of my life, I didn't really believe in heartbreak. People get upset when things are over, sure, but let's not blow it out of proportion with hyperbole and vaguely Victorian medicalesque nonsense. You're sad. Deal with it. (I'm sure most of you see where this is going.)

I'll admit now, I did have the tiniest feeling, deep down, that an experience that seemingly universal probably had some foundation in truth. It must have happened to someone, sometime, somewhere. I just thought it had to be huge. You cheated on me with your secretary after I had all your babies! I gave you my bone marrow! And my youth! You know. Like 'Waiting to Exhale'. Or that really sad Dixie Chicks song from their first album. Oh, don't pretend like you don't know the one I'm talking about.

I didn't realize how small it could be: I am not where you are. I love you, but. A dozen tiny truths. I guess it only takes one kind of heartbreak to recognize all the others.

I'm not so great with feelings. I would prefer we not talk about my own. Yours? Are healthy and valid and we can discuss them all day and all night. I want to hear the deepest darkest stuff that you've never told anyone. I want to tell you how beautiful and wonderful and human and okay it all is. Because it is. But me? No, really. You don't want to hear about any of that.

But here I am, with all these feelings, and I don't know where to put any of them. This would probably be better suited to a journal, but I try to be honest here; I might as well tell you what I've learned.

What I've learned: There are good things and bad things about heartbreak.

The Bad Things:

Crying. There is so much crying! Even in the morning, when everything should be fine! The day is fresh, bitches! But I'm randomly crying too hard to make eyeliner work and I NEED TO BRIGHTEN THESE WHITES UP, GODDAMNIT. Or everyone will think that I'm stoned. Which... I'm so sad, okay! No judging.

Insecurity. If I were better, everything else would be, too. Negative self-thought takes on a heightened, vicious intensity that I wish I didn't remember. Those, fun, constant reminders that I will never be pretty, skinny, funny, smart, clever, kind, whatever, whatever, whatever enough, and this is just one more example. Dear kk, you will never be enough, so sorry. Go ahead and cry some more.

Drinking. I was drinking a lot, kids. I like my grapes as it is, right, but this is a lot. As someone with an acute family history of alcoholism, I try to pay attention to the amount I drink, and when I drink, and where I drink, and, most importantly, why I drink. The why is pretty clear here. The good news is that I'm mostly drinking wine, at home, after work. One of the very few times I've appreciated my 9-to-5: I have to hold it together. If I were already living the bohemian writer's life of my dreams, I'd be spending all day in my gothic-monstrous bed, leaving only to replace the box of wine when the bladder's drained, or to stew myself in tears (and more wine) in my giant clawfoot bathtub, or to go outside and throw the fruit of my lemon tree against the wall. Fuck lemonade.

Stress and It's Hormonal By-Products. Look at this stress! Fantasy-Me is down in my garden throwing fucking lemons against a wall! I love lemons, what am I doing! Combine that with a stress-atrophied-appetite (a week of watermelon salad for dinner?), and you get...a period clocking in well over a week late. Oh yeah, THAT was fun.

Anger. I'm angry. And I hate it so much. I'm sure it's not unique to me, and I'm willing to bet it's a pretty common female thing: this deep, soul-core level of discomfort with being angry.  I would turn anger anywhere but out. Self-destruction is eminently appealing. It's actually my default mechanism.Which, brings me to:

The Good Things:

I Am So Much Better Than I Used To Be. I'm not quite wired correctly, and that default set to 'self-destruct' is the trickiest of my electrical misfirings. It goes a little something like this: get handed a disappointment, swallow every feeling, emotion, all the real things, pack those down. Now, go seek validation from people who don't care about you while poisoning yourself as quickly and thoroughly as possible. In the face of every decision, make the one that will, in the end, hurt you the most. Frame it like you're having fun, like you're happy, like this is what you want, because you're a 'free spirit*' who lives on their own terms! Ignore that everyone who knows more than three facts about you can see through that bullshit entirely. In fact, ignore those people, those ones who know you and actually give a shit about you. They're not going to be any help with this.

That didn't happen this time. This time...I talked about it. This time I stayed home and thought about it, about me, about life, about how so often the things we want, immediately, now, are not the things we most need, are not things we'd know how to handle if they were handed to us. This time I didn't run for strangers to tell me things I wanted to hear, I didn't black out to forget the things I didn't. And that may seem like old hat for those of you who've figured out how to process your emotions without wanting to tear your own skin off, but it's huge for me. So how'd I get here? I have no idea, really. But I try to remember the following:

Long Walks and Deep Breaths. I've mentioned this favorite trinket from Pops's Cabinet of Curiosities and Coping Methods. There is nothing you do not feel - if not better, at least more settled - about after a long walk. I rely on this to the point where I don't understand how anyone's able to think if they don't walk around, by themselves, for at least an hour a day. Seriously, get a dog, and just do this. (I suppose you don't need the dog, but it helps, trust me.)

Love...Kinda Fixes Everything. So, so fucking tragically cheesy, but it's true. I don't mean 'Romantic Love' because that noise is bullshit, clearly, but as Virginia Woolf said (oh yeah, I am going to quote V.Woolf in an essay with 'heartbreak' in the title. Vaginal checkmate!) "Love has a thousand shapes." So try them all on. Push aside the anger and the stress and the sad, and you are - I promise you - still capable of tremendous, limitless love. Apply that shit to everything like a balm. Love what you're going through, love what you're learning, love all the people who come into your life, and love them no less when they go away. And don't forget yourself. Even if you don't want to, because maybe part of you even likes wallowing in the shit, because you deserve that! It's your RIGHT to feel like a bag of run-over kiwi fruit: just the happiest, sunniest little treat until BAM, and it's pathetic, squishy guts are splattered all over the road. But if you just love everything instead, you realize...

It's All Going To Be Okay. Also! Cheese City up in here! This one should be printed on the bottom of a poster of a kitten hanging from a tree. Oh, that's 'Hang In There'. Either way, under the tree, the part of the poster you can't always see, is a field of wild flowers where the kitty can drop down and take a nap. Bonus points if they're poppies and the kitten gets a quick opium high for their troubles. That's what I mean, though! Like 'Ahh, fuck I'm falling out of this tree!!!! SHIT. HANG ON. FREAK OUT. Or, wait. Or -- how about I not dislocate my shoulder and just drop down here take a quick snooze in this expanse of brightly colored narcotic flower plants? Awesome.' So - just let go. 

It's all going to be okay, I promise. Somewhere there's a sunny field of sleeping kittens just waiting to give you cool drugs. Give them all hugs for me.

Loves, 
kk

And ps, go eat something. I promise a vague terror about suspected stowaways in your uterus is NOT going to make this shit better.


*I hate - hate hate hate - being called a 'free spirit'. It's dismissive. It's infantilizing. I know, nice person who is trying to give me a compliment, sort-of, that you don't mean insult here, but please, think of the tone of voice you use, what you're trying to convey when you refer to someone as a 'free-spirit' in conversation. Just because I don't care about owning a house or a car and I want to talk about your emotional health does not mean I'm a woodland sprite who lives in a magical forest in a quirked-out glitter dimension. I am a relatively wealth-poor person who lives in a city and thinks we're all just a little too divorced from our actual Selves. Some people probably don't mind at all. Just - avoid it, with me. Please. Thank you.