I learned to love my life again on a balmy Monday afternoon.
The sun is warm in the sand, with waves crashing against the shore. An embrace of light that enfolds my pale body, lying prone on a beach blanket, sunglasses on, book in hand. Around me, movement. Laughter. Children chasing waves, elderly couples walking along the shore in their windbreakers and joggers. Young women in bikinis giggle and take selfies with their friends under beach umbrellas. My son and nephews building sand castles, calling to each other logistics for wetter sand and deeper moats to stem the tide.
I breathe in deeply, timing my breaths with the crash and pull of waves against the sand. Breathing with the earth. Regulating my vagus nerve to the energy of the ocean. Willing myself to relax, to be present. To ground myself with my feet sunk into the cool, soft sand and my shoulders aimed up to the sky where the sun brushes them gently.
I am here.
I am alive.
This moment matters.
Worries creep in – are the dogs at home missing me? Did the house sitter refill their water? Did I remember to pay that bill before we left? My phone buzzes with email notifications from work. Someone sent a Teams message. Someone liked the last selfie I posted of me smiling up at the camera through sunglasses. Distractions. A false world inside a tiny electric box.
I tuck the phone under my towel and turn back to the ocean. She is sighing at me, her waves licking up toward us. I look down at my thighs, my brow furrows slightly seeing how pale I am. I look around and see tanned, toned bodies. I look down at my thighs again and hold my breath. From this angle I don’t see the cellulite I know is there. I don’t see the wrinkles around my glutes, the joyous byproduct of the weight loss and body recomposition I am undergoing. The mole on my shin that looks like it doesn’t belong. The stretch marks.
Suddenly I am sitting in paradise picking apart every imperfection on my body, not paying attention to my son’s joy as he chases waves back into the ocean, or how deliciously warm the sun feels on my shoulders, or how my mom hasn’t stopped smiling since we got there, or how relaxed my sisters finally are stretched out on their beach towels.
After every breakup since my divorce, I’ve done the same thing. Stood in the mirror and mentally tallied up every imperfection that might have been the last straw for a man who never intended to stay. Absolutely roasting my body, searching for ways I could improve it so that the next man wouldn’t see me as a person who would be easy to discard. And I miss the wild heart inside that loved them all anyway. I miss the strong mind that has built a life that does not need a man to thrive, to flourish. I overlook the depth of my soul and the intensity of my feeling that repels men who have not healed themselves.
I can’t be alone. Every woman on the beach today probably looked at her bathing suited body in the mirror and picked apart her flaws. Clenched her jaw and furrowed her brow at how her body might appear to the word. And we are probably all sitting on the beach, regardless of age, size, physical activity, education level, ethncity, and family status, worrying how we look under a sun that just wants to kiss our skin and wrap us up in its warmth. Next to an ocean that is pulled in and pushed out by a neighboring celestial body close enough to use that its gravity can dictate the shape of our water. On ancient sand that was there millennia before us and will continue to ground whoever stands upon it for millennia to come.
The ocean is a timeless equalizer. The shore belongs to her. She carves away at it ceaselessly. And for a brief moment, we pause our lives to visit her, play in her, sleep in the sun next to her, fall asleep to her crashing, hissing, sighing while the moon passes overhead.
I lay back on my towel and close my eyes. I push off the worry about work. I breath out my own body shaming thoughts. I breath into every muscle, fiber, bone, and vein in my body and tell her I love her. For living the kind of life that affords a family beach vacation. For enduring heartbreak. For being alive. Right now. In this moment. With my toes in the sand and my heart beating up to the sky.
And I tell myself that I woke up today in paradise, so it doesn’t really matter what my body looks like. It doesn’t really matter who loves me and who walked away. It doesn’t matter if I disappear into the grid of faces on a Teams call. All that matters is that I possess the kind of fighting spirit that rises up and begins again after every bad day I have ever had to create the kind of life where I can take family beach vacations once a year. My younger self, who had never left that small hometown, never experienced a real vacation, never dreamed any of this would be possible without a husband – she would be in awe of this life.
What matters is my son is running on the sand next to the Pacific ocean, and my body is prone on a beach towel drinking up the sun on a balmy Monday afternoon. So let’s just be here for a while and forget about the rest, because right now, this is more than enough. It is everything I have ever wanted, and I worked so hard to get here. So let that be enough.
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