Lost and Found
Originally published at kelliowen.com. Please leave any comments there.
Not until we are lost
do we begin to understand ourselves.
-Henry David Thoreau
Did you miss me? I did…
I went on an adventure last month. And by adventure, I mean I ran away from home-with no idea where I was going. I drove toward the ocean, found a nice, quiet small town, and set up camp on the beach for 36 hours. Siri was confused (see image). I wasn’t really in the middle of the ocean, but I was as close to that as I could get. And that’s what I wanted.
You see, the water is a happy zen for me. I don’t just play in the puddles for fun, I seek solace in the ripples, waves, and eddies of any and all bodies of water, big or small. It brings me peace. It clears my mind. And my mind was a hot mess. So I dropped down onto the sand and stared at the ocean. I expected to find peace. I expected my insides to calm down. I did not expect to get bitch-slapped by the very water I love so much.
I had a plan. Go to beach, talk to water, fix my state of mind. Instead, it went more like this: go to beach, open mouth to talk to water, have water grow a psychic arm, reach out, smack the crap out of me, and leave me dazed for a bit on the sand wondering what just happened. No, I wasn’t overpowered by a wave. I was overpowered by every moment in my entire life when I’d sought solace at the water. I was knocked around the psychic surf of years worth of falling victim to the circumstances when the spirit isn’t strong enough to hold up against the weight of it all.
I was reminded who I am and how I got here. I remembered and worked through the details of everything that either tried to change me or succeeded along the way-and acknowledged change is sometimes good. I was reminded of both my insignificance and greatness. I was slapped with the knowledge and reality of my own strengths and weaknesses. And I was forced to accept my good and bad qualities for what they are, who they make me, and what that means.
When I got there, the cacophony in my head covered the ocean sounds I love so much. When I left, I heard only the surf and birds and wind. I remembered my plan, put my feet back on path, and spent the next several weeks just trying to clear my head of the crap and cobwebs. Just like I’m going to clean the cobwebs out of this blog, my to-do list, my WIP folder, and my life. Time may heal all wounds, but water is my magical Neosporin and helps the healing. I’m not healed. Not by a longshot. But I’m clearer. I’m stronger. I’m even a little more (ok, a lot more) inked, with meaning and purpose, than I was before. I may have lost myself for a while in the mire of an imaginative mind and damaged soul, but I found myself at the ocean. And I’m back.
Now then, I have a novelette to finish…