shoulder to shoulder with friends and strangers

I have one month left on this island and after that, the story is yet unwritten.

Apr 28, 2023

I untie my espadrilles from around my ankles and tie them to a tree. My feet dig into the sand/soil/pine-needle ground and I let myself sway and roll to the rhythm of the beat that the DJ is enchanting us with.

A man I dated for 5 minutes last summer comes charging at me with determination. He holds my shoulder tenderly and kisses me on both cheeks with an intimate “Que tal?” whispered into my ear before wandering off like a lost soul.

In that moment I catch a flash of a different life, a different story that could have turned into. There is a stretch of unknown rolling between each music track lingering with potential gyrations and side-stepping. Feet grinding into the ground.

I find another barefooted being and touch his toes with mine in camaraderie. We smile at each other and high-five before returning to our dance floor stations shoulder to shoulder with friends and strangers.

I have one month left on this island and after that, the story is yet unwritten. A cacophony of possibilities, undreamt dreams, unseen connections. I can’t think too much of the future because it brings me waves of sadness and uncertainty.

Instead, I hold a steady gaze on the here and now. The only thing that can save me until the next wave of life comes.

Too much has happened in too short a time that has brought me to my knees and I am afraid of my own vulnerability. So ready to falter. I have had to let life break me all the way through these past few years. And from the fragments and shattered parts, I will rebuild a life that holds more of me.

I am still very much in existential crisis mode. I am simply trying to get through each day with as much kindness and care as I can. I really yearn for life to make sense and hold meaning and feel like I belong somewhere or a part of something.

The only thing holding me together in some way in my writing and hope in my heart that one day soon the future will unfold with promises that are more fulfilling and brighter than the past.

I keep dreaming of lands, tropical and lush, swollen with heat and humidity, free from glorified ambitions and Western ideas of gentrification. I don’t know. I don’t know.

There is no perfect one place. I will always be torn by the many parts of me. Am I just trying to escape a world that has become more unfamiliar to me year by year?

It is strange to me to have existed in such a beautiful setting whilst being grief-stricken and under psychological duress for the majority of my time here. The past 18 months have been amongst the small handful of deeply difficult times in my life.

I have always felt life too deeply and had depressive phases and seasons, but none like this. I wonder if this sense of caged heart and mind will stay here when I leave or will accompany me on my journey onward.

I hope the former and fear the latter.

Either way, I have learned to welcome and accept all that is.

One day it will make sense.

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