Beach “Return to the Beach”

“It makes me smile when I remember my first trip to the beach. It was a family gathering, and my cousins and me were building sandcastles and running along the shore. At some point I got separated, or maybe I wandered away.

It felt like a pull, a restlessness in my legs that could only be purged by wandering away.

It was waiting there, further down the beach, partially submerged in water, though the bulk of its form was obvious even when framed against the pounding of the surf.

At first, the sight of such a thing...this thing with eyes and writhing limbs... I remember the feeling of my heart leaping up into my chest, and my jaw tightening with fear. But there was something about it that made me relax. It was something that made me trust it.

I think that you can tell sometimes, like a sixth sense, whether or not what you are seeing is what you are getting.

I get that sort of feeling when I am on the job. Maybe it is just part of the training I received, but there is something about the way somehow moves or talks that gives you a pretty good indication of who they are and what they are doing. There are of course those who are very good liars, but you can usually tell when someone is a bit too friendly...

The moment I saw it, the moment I heard it speak, not in my ears but in my head, I knew that there was something to it that I liked. And the more I talked to it, the more I grew to enjoy its company.

What you see is what you get.

There is something wonderful about that.

I don't remember what we talked about. I try to remember, but I simply can't. I remember saying goodbye to it, and I think that it was looking for a friend too. I never felt right with the other kids, and when I hugged it goodbye it felt like it didn't want to let go.

It has been such a long time since then, and it has become the sort of memory that you remember more as a dream and less like something that really happened. There was a period of time during my teens where I convinced myself that I hadn't seen that thing in the water, that the thing with lines of blood red eyes running over its blackened body, was simply an imaginary friend.

But then one day I came back there, like a calling.

And it was there that I saw it in the water again, lines along its sides flashing with light as the sun dipped in the sky.

It was calling me back to it. It was calling me back home.

“We are legion,” it said, and I knew that when it said that, it was not as a name but instead as a description. To understand what it was is to understand that it is many, that it is a form of many minds gathered over many eons of existence.

It calls to the weak and the vulnerable, or maybe a better way of putting it is that it calls to the injured and the seeking.

Every once in a while I come back this place, this stretch of beach away from prying eyes. Over the years it has become somewhere I can come and decompress, a beach where I can scream out across the water and sit a little lo9nger than I likely should, letting my mind fall away.

And it is a place where I can always find it.

This thing in the water.

Even when I am tired, or maybe especially when I am tried, I can imagine myself there, my feet sinking into the cold, wet sand, the smell of seaweed and algae blooms in the water as satisfying as a solid drink or a good smoke. And when I can, when I am actually able to come back to the place and visit it proper, it feels very much like peace.

Like it is a sanctuary.

This week was hard. Some weeks I do very little that bothers me. A few traffic stops. Maybe a domestic disturbance. Stuff like that. But that isn't most weeks, and that wasn't this week. This week was hard, and I knew as I came to the end of it that I would need to return to this plac3e in order to settle my nerves and regroup.

I know it is out there. It is a good listener, in its own strange way, and I know that even if I can't see it, that it can see me, and somehow that always helps. Like I am being witnessed, like my existence is validated and I can now know that what I am enduring on my harder days is not just some fantasy, distant thing. I can know that my pain and exhaustion is warranted, and that if I never wanted to feel this way again, that there is a way out..

I just need to join it in the water.

I don't have it in me. It knows that as much as I do. There are others that are more willing, that are called to the edges of the surf and are drawn t0o it. It gets what it needs, and I get to fill out a missing persons report.

Not that I know what it does directly, but when you understand what it is and what it wants, it is hard to ignore that and somehow convince yourself it is all just coincid3ence. I've done enough cases to know that those who give in are rarely the type who you can fault for doing it. What it offers is tempting, especially when there is little left to lose.

For some, oblivion in the form of something new is attractive enough.

But for me, I simply like to come to the beach to see my friend. It is a strange relationship, and I know that it is dangerous, but I have known it my entire life My oldest friend, always waiting for me when the days get hard and I wish desperately to simply escape and relax. To join it in the water and dance along the waves.

We do not talk much, though sometimes we do, about existence and death.

But mostly we simply commune, this thing and I.

When the sun is starting to set.

And the surf begins to build and build.”

I received this as an email from the cop who I have been working with the last few months. She grew up around here, though I never interacted with her much as she is a few years older. It is kinda weird that she has the same first name as you and me. Even the same name as my coworker. But the population of Wellington Street it mostly eastern European, so maybe that is the reason.

It is funny that she shared this with me, since I first met her all those months ago when I last visited the beach.

It's still a little eerie? I don't know. Just seems like an odd coincidence.

I am really sorry to hear about your mom. I know that she has been sick off and on, but it is upsetting that she is getting worse. I know you are going everything you can to support her, so try not to be too hard on yourself.

There are limits to what we can do when someone we care about gets sick. I know they don't like you taking time off from your studies to help them, but I get that you feel like you have no choice. I hope it means something when I say that I am really proud of you. It is really hard what you are going through, but you know I am always here for you.

Completely and fully.

Just...try to gather up as much of the good as you can. Life will try to take the joy out of things for you, and the only thing you can do is refuse to play by its rules. Get yourself a haircut, treat yourself, and gather together some family photos or maybe grab your moms favorite food.

It isn't your fault what happened, but maybe reaching out like that will manage to get her to open up a little while there is still time.

I love you, and I know that you are the most amazing woman I know. You are strong and beautiful, and when I finally get to see you we are going to run around like a but a crazy bitches, doing whatever we want whenever we want. The last years has been hard on both of us, and we deserve all the good things we can get our hands on.

You take care.

I hope to hear from you soon.