missing the beach

I’ve been thinking lately about the beach... 

...missing being there. Wanting to go back.

I spent a few months at the beach during the fall/winter a year ago. Also 5 years ago—same beach, about 3 months. It was nice having those long beaches to walk on, pretty sunsets, interesting shells to collect. But that’s not really what I miss.

I was alone there. I didn’t know anyone, and didn’t meet anyone while I was there. Didn’t even try. I didn’t interact with anyone face-to-face, except briefly at the grocery store, etc. The beaches were mostly empty of people.

Well, not empty exactly, but definitely not crowded. If I went walking on the beach for an hour, depending on exactly where and the time of day, I might see anywhere from zero to ten people.

I wasn’t working, wasn’t going out to clubs or any places or activities where people go socialize. I really was completely alone. But, despite that isolation, I felt less lonely there than I do now, living in a city where I actually know some people, and where I occasionally see “friends”.

It’s not that the beach was a good kind of isolation for me. I wasn’t happy to be alone at the beach. The difference is that while I was there, I had absolutely no expectation of not being alone. The fact that I didn’t know anyone there meant I had no hope of spending time with anyone. Here, now, I do have that hope. It’s not based much on experience.

Anyone who knows me likely would not describe me as “optimistic”, yet I sort of am. I have hope that something will change (or that I will change something).

But the fact that there are people I know close by and I don’t see them, that I don’t interact with anyone in person on any remotely regular basis (unless I’m doing a show—and then, it’s pretty-much only in rehearsals), just makes my loneliness worse. I’m technically less alone, but that (paradoxically) makes me feel lonelier.

I’m not going to the beach this winter. I can’t afford it. And I won’t fool myself into thinking I need to get away. I need the opposite. I needed the opposite a year ago. (That’s why I came back here—I thought I’d at least have some people in my live, but it hasn’t much felt that way.) MAYBE 5 years ago I needed to get a way, but honestly, I don’t think it was truly helpful even then.

So, I’m not going back there now. Or probably anywhere else either. I know I’m not “right”, not okay here. But I don’t think there’s anywhere else that’d I’d be any better.