SCI: What's Missing?
"Why the long face, cutie?" Matthew walked...no...snuck up behind me on that fateful day. I remember staring out as the waves broke gently over shell-less, rock-less, life-less sand, trying not to cry.
I screwed up my face into the most petulant, childish, grumpy-face that I could muster in order to mask the real sadness in my eyes. "There's no salt!" I wailed.
I was sitting on the shore, my toes dug in to the sand, arms wrapped around my knees and shivering. Only minutes before, I had run, laughing, into the icy waters of Lake Michigan and dove under because, let's face it, dipping a toe in, tiptoeing a few inches at a time, "to get used to it" is, frankly, for pussies. I had emerged spluttering and licked my lips, eager to taste the salt of the sea which, of course, wasn't there. (It was habit. I'm not actually daft.)
I stood waist deep in the clear, fresh waters of the lake and looked out to the horizon. No land. I looked back to the shore. No life. I sniffed and tasted the wind. No salt, only the scent of slightly decayed lake Trout. I let homesick tears mingle with the lakewater on my cheeks and plodded back to the blanket.
Which brings me back to the beginning.
"What do you mean, no salt?" Matthew looked annoyed.
"It's not the same," I whispered, dropping the childish petulance and admitting my sadness openly. "It's not my Atlantic."
His face clouded for a moment, apparently torn. His features flickered as he weighed the situation and how he should react, and I could read them like scenes in a movie. 'Please,' I thought...'Please make the right decision by me. Just once. Let me be weak and let it be OK. Just. Once.'
The decision that he made that day on the shores of Lake Michigan, was to be the final death knell in our marriage.
"Oh for FUCK'S SAKE!" he screamed.
'Oops. Wrong decision, Matthew you cocksucking asshole.'
"What?" I snarled.
"It's a fucking huge body of fucking water and it's fine. It's better than the ocean. You better goddamn well get used to it and stop being such a dumbfuck. You live here now. Get. Over it."
I licked my lips again as I sprang to my feet, poised to battle to the death if necessary. I tasted salt then, salt from the tears now pouring down my face, drying in the chilly afternoon sun and leaving their crystalline tracks. "You know what, Matt? Fuck you."
That was the best that I could do. This...place had sapped my will to fight and it took a lot of doing just to live sometimes. I walked away, found a likely spot elsewhere, and resumed my withdrawn pose, staring out at the largest freshwater sea in the world. He couldn't understand, I knew that. This was his home, not mine. These were his people, not mine. He had never been sentimental enough to sit out on a New England beach, all night long, and dream of the lands across the waves. He had never spotted a sand-dollar still in the planktonic phase of development, mixed in with the detritus that the ocean washed ashore. He had never, at least, not that I knew of (or could imagine), showered after a day on the beach and reveled in the tautness of his skin that can only be achieved with sea salt and oceanic winds. He hadn't shed a trillion tears into her waters and let her carry his sadness to the end of the world, away from him. He hadn't stood on a November shore and sought out the nearly impossible to find horizon, slate grey sky meeting slate grey water in perfect, monochromatic beauty. He...
He simply had no soul that could possibly contain the ocean.
Had he reacted with kindness and an attempt to understand my misery at being so far from what I still consider my lifeline to this day, maybe things wouldn't have ended so bitterly less than a year later. Had he put his arm around me and acknowledged my hurt, my loneliness, my square peggishness in the round hole that he called home, maybe things wouldn't have ended at all.
Instead, he sneered. He rolled his eyes when I tried to explain the lifeline, the ability to sit on the shore and know that just over there, that way, is another country, another way of life and living and thinking and being. Living at the edge of America means that there is the option to turn either way - to face in or out. I am never hemmed in. I am free as the gull, the tern, the dolphin. I can scream my rage into a gale or whisper my secrets in the moonlit path to infinity.
But on that day, there was no cleansing salt in the water. Only two smallish, roundish cheeks streaked with a little bit of sodium chloride. The only gale was the roaring of the bull I had married. What could I do in the face of that? I had no choice but to follow the lifeline home.
I screwed up my face into the most petulant, childish, grumpy-face that I could muster in order to mask the real sadness in my eyes. "There's no salt!" I wailed.
I was sitting on the shore, my toes dug in to the sand, arms wrapped around my knees and shivering. Only minutes before, I had run, laughing, into the icy waters of Lake Michigan and dove under because, let's face it, dipping a toe in, tiptoeing a few inches at a time, "to get used to it" is, frankly, for pussies. I had emerged spluttering and licked my lips, eager to taste the salt of the sea which, of course, wasn't there. (It was habit. I'm not actually daft.)
I stood waist deep in the clear, fresh waters of the lake and looked out to the horizon. No land. I looked back to the shore. No life. I sniffed and tasted the wind. No salt, only the scent of slightly decayed lake Trout. I let homesick tears mingle with the lakewater on my cheeks and plodded back to the blanket.
Which brings me back to the beginning.
"What do you mean, no salt?" Matthew looked annoyed.
"It's not the same," I whispered, dropping the childish petulance and admitting my sadness openly. "It's not my Atlantic."
His face clouded for a moment, apparently torn. His features flickered as he weighed the situation and how he should react, and I could read them like scenes in a movie. 'Please,' I thought...'Please make the right decision by me. Just once. Let me be weak and let it be OK. Just. Once.'
The decision that he made that day on the shores of Lake Michigan, was to be the final death knell in our marriage.
"Oh for FUCK'S SAKE!" he screamed.
'Oops. Wrong decision, Matthew you cocksucking asshole.'
"What?" I snarled.
"It's a fucking huge body of fucking water and it's fine. It's better than the ocean. You better goddamn well get used to it and stop being such a dumbfuck. You live here now. Get. Over it."
I licked my lips again as I sprang to my feet, poised to battle to the death if necessary. I tasted salt then, salt from the tears now pouring down my face, drying in the chilly afternoon sun and leaving their crystalline tracks. "You know what, Matt? Fuck you."
That was the best that I could do. This...place had sapped my will to fight and it took a lot of doing just to live sometimes. I walked away, found a likely spot elsewhere, and resumed my withdrawn pose, staring out at the largest freshwater sea in the world. He couldn't understand, I knew that. This was his home, not mine. These were his people, not mine. He had never been sentimental enough to sit out on a New England beach, all night long, and dream of the lands across the waves. He had never spotted a sand-dollar still in the planktonic phase of development, mixed in with the detritus that the ocean washed ashore. He had never, at least, not that I knew of (or could imagine), showered after a day on the beach and reveled in the tautness of his skin that can only be achieved with sea salt and oceanic winds. He hadn't shed a trillion tears into her waters and let her carry his sadness to the end of the world, away from him. He hadn't stood on a November shore and sought out the nearly impossible to find horizon, slate grey sky meeting slate grey water in perfect, monochromatic beauty. He...
He simply had no soul that could possibly contain the ocean.
Had he reacted with kindness and an attempt to understand my misery at being so far from what I still consider my lifeline to this day, maybe things wouldn't have ended so bitterly less than a year later. Had he put his arm around me and acknowledged my hurt, my loneliness, my square peggishness in the round hole that he called home, maybe things wouldn't have ended at all.
Instead, he sneered. He rolled his eyes when I tried to explain the lifeline, the ability to sit on the shore and know that just over there, that way, is another country, another way of life and living and thinking and being. Living at the edge of America means that there is the option to turn either way - to face in or out. I am never hemmed in. I am free as the gull, the tern, the dolphin. I can scream my rage into a gale or whisper my secrets in the moonlit path to infinity.
But on that day, there was no cleansing salt in the water. Only two smallish, roundish cheeks streaked with a little bit of sodium chloride. The only gale was the roaring of the bull I had married. What could I do in the face of that? I had no choice but to follow the lifeline home.