Dancing naked on the beach, I am trying, perhaps just a little too hard, to embrace my new status in life. I am striving to picture myself full of joy and exuberance as I leap towards the future. Studiously ignoring the little voice inside me that points out that I am almost as alone in life as I am in this, my first ever blog-post self-portrait, I take a picture that shows, if nothing else, my determination to thrive.
Then I run full speed across the sand and dive right into the deep clear clean water of the river and swim out out out until my arms are aching and my lungs bursting. I turn over to float on my back and let the serenity of my surroundings slowly seep into my soul. I come to this place often, almost daily, it is a quick ten minute bike ride from where I live. Today the sky is almost but not quite a perfect blue and the water almost but not quite a perfect calm, the hills are just starting to take on a golden hue from the setting sun, and, as always, the sweet scent of fresh water is heavy in the air.
I love this deserted beach, this stretch of open water, the forests on the opposite shore standing uninhabited as far as the eye can see and the sky as free as if hung for my pleasure alone. No one would call this place spectacular, yet there is, to me, a calmness and familiarity about it that brings with it a peacefulness so strong it is almost painful. I lie spread-eagled out on the water beneath the sky and positively ache with the beauty of it all.
This is where I was born, where I grew up, where I returned both to have my children and later to raise them, and yet I am choosing, of my own free will, to leave. Stripped in too fast succession of too many of the identities that defined me - my husband moved out, my employer laid me off, and my youngest child went to college - I am left standing empty-handed. I have lost my way, my path, my direction. I have had, my whole life, a series of goals but now I cannot seem to remember what ought to be next. And so, of course, as would anyone else in my place, I have decided to dance naked on the beach, start up a blog, and go on a trip.
I leave at the end of the month.
I read the first ten chapters of Eat,Love,Pray once and I plan to follow suit; visit three countries, write 108 cathartic chapters, find a word to re-define myself along the way... Part of me thinks I am crazy to go; I have good friends and wonderful co-workers and acquaintances galore in the small town I live in. Even without steady work I have comfortable routines that see me through the week, even though we are on a break my ex is my tether holding me to reality, even though they have grown up and left my kids phone, e-mail, text, skype and visit me. I already live in the most beautiful place in the world. Part of me wonders why I am leaving and, more importantly, what, realistically, I expect to find. I was born in the 60`s, I know that `wherever you go there you are`. But a greater part of me feels the pull to go, the need to take a journey, literal as well as metaphorical, a hero`s quest if you will.
I hope I like it, this trip I am heading out on, If nothing else it ought to keep me from bemoaning the empty nest I leave behind.
