A month and a half ago I went to the beach.
I was in my new, bigger body, but I hadn’t fully inhabited her yet.
I felt like I was letting go of the girl – really she was slowly being pulled away from me – but I wasn’t yet fully in my woman.
I saw the way I had been filled with the loss of my past self but not celebrating her.
I walked down, through the rainforest, down to the cove where few people go.
And there was a big rock, out in the ocean a ways, and I knew that’s where I would sit.
I waded through, hopped up onto her.
The seaweed like hair, draped and swimming all around.
The waves lapping at the rock, occasionally splashing me.
And I looked at the ocean all around me and I said, I want to tell you a story.
And I began to share with her the story of my life.
I said, there once was a girl.
She was born in Pennsylvania.
She was a happy girl. Or, everyone thought she was happy. Her karate teacher and her boyfriend called her Sunshine.
She was happy and also her emotions were hidden.
When she was little she was anxious.
I told the ocean, slowly, piece by piece. Every tender piece.
My siblings. My parents. My teenage life. My brother’s accident. My parent’s divorce. The death of my grandfather and my grandmother and my friend and my first panic attack.
My first and only acid trip. My determination to only follow what was true.
The layers of pain I unwound, over and over again.
The versions of myself and partners I was willing to let go of, over and over again.
The ocean responded, crashing harder at more intense parts of my story, lapping gently at others.
And finally I got to the past few months.
And I sobbed as I told the ocean about this past version of me.
The one that knew it was true to eat more.
That it was a big deal but she didn’t know how big.
And I told the ocean, she ate her way through.
She ate her way into a whole new body.
She ate her way into a whole new timeline, a whole new existence.
And I said I am so proud of her.
And I am willing to let her die.
Actually she is already dead.
I told the ocean, she no longer exists anymore.
And I love her so much.
Her life was beautiful.
And she still lives in me, her memory lives in me.
The memory of her cells lives in me.
But she is gone.
And the ocean listened, patiently. Gently splashing my legs, my feet.
And I could feel the connection, of this rock, this seaweed, the little barnacles, the attention of the whole ocean.
Their witness to this story, how beautifully they listened.
And I left the rock and I left the beach and I walked up back through the trees and there I was, in myself again.
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