Witness
Today the sunshine feels like a warm hug. The cold ocean feels like a reset. The quiet alone feels like an old friend.
Today, all things that I’ve needed.
Today, sadness and grief and loneliness are palpable and I’m really not quite sure of why. And I hate not knowing why. Even after 2.5 years of almost weekly therapy and digging in to do my own work and reading and podcasts and conversations and…lots of things, I struggle with the reality that some things just are and it’s often best to let them be.
No reason. No meaning. Just being.
I don’t like when my heart hurts. I don’t think anyone does, truthfully, but I really really don’t. I also don’t like unexpected tears. Or anxiety. Or pain—most specifically pain that is naturally a part of being alive.
Some people numb to avoid addressing pain. I escape and fantasize and create an alternative reality that shields me from the vulnerability of actually experiencing the pain.
And then I rationalize that behavior for even further avoidance.
Honestly, it’s a pretty great way to cope. Everything is just fun and a good time? Sweet. Come hang out and we can all just play the pain away.
Nothing ever lasts though. That’s true of coping. That’s also true of pain.
Today, as I’ve been sitting on the beach at San Onofre, a dog almost peed on me.
No joke. Right next to me, leg up, poised to aim right at my arm. I didn’t notice because I was too busy eating a burrito. Luckily the group to my left whom the dog belonged, saw it and asked Rocky to stop just in time. Nobody came over to get Rocky however, and their apologies were minimal. Instead I made an awkward joke about my burrito being spared and they all half smiled and stared. Their lack of care about the situation didn’t exactly surprise me. From the moment they showed up, they surrounded me like bees to a hive, throwing a football over my head, posting up within a foot of me, and talking loud enough that the whole beach knew about Justin’s impressive high school football days and that he was winning his fantasy football league.
That’s then when I moved.
There’s no reminder of having a not so great day quite like almost getting peed on by a dog.
On the bright side, it didn’t actually happen. So I guess…thank you Rocky?
Whenever I feel the heavy cloud of sadness enveloping me and I’m not sure what to do, I hastily throw my surfboard and half of my room in my car and head an hour south to San Onofre. It’s become my safe harbor. A home. A sanctuary. A sacred space that has offered an abundance of healing in ways that I didn’t know I needed, in ways that can’t be expressed, only experienced.
Rituals and release have happened here. Celebrations and surprises. Creating, quieting, crying. Countless tears have merged with this salty sea, like a home going, a part of me returning to itself as it is embraced by its whole. The water, the ocean, is a remarkably powerful source of brutal honesty and grace. As waves crash over me or I persist above them or, on a good day, I ride the waves, I feel witnessed. Held. Humbled.
Never will I fully know or understand this place. Every time I arrive, it’s changed. Tides, moon, sun, sand, waves, moving and shifting, at the mercy of the other, communicating and cooperating. A call and response to its unpredictable, synergistic energy. Yet in its inability to be understood, there is understanding. In its uncertainty, I find things to be certain.
What I am most certain about is that there are cycles, that it is all a process. That everything is in process. That I am in process, and today, with all of its unwanted feelings and sadness, I recognize that those too are a necessary part of that process. Birth, blooming, growth, unfolding, shedding, death, sowing. And so it begins again. For you cannot have one without the other.
Everything has begun to settle. The sun has softly dipped behind the horizon leaving only its whispers of glorious light falling parallel to the edge of the ocean in the distance. The moon is rising bright and bold above the palm trees demanding attention, a spotlight on itself declaring its own majesty. Though few and far between, the brightest and boldest stars dot the darkening sky as a constant rhythm of waves crashing on shore are echoed in the rocks being pulled back upon themselves with the ebb and flow of the tide. Almost everyone has left and the hush of night lays itself down upon the cool sand.
Although still hurting, my heart is filled with gratitude, for once more this sacred place graciously offered a gift that I was broken open enough to receive.
To witness and be witnessed. I think that is just what I needed today.