It’s 11:30 am, about a million degrees, and I can hear the ocean crashing. It’s busy at this time of year here so the sound is interspersed with dogs barking, kids squealing, muffled conversations. The sea breeze is coming in much stronger than usual for this time of day, photos and magnets and bills fly off the old fridge.
I’m lying on my bed, here alone, just gazing down the driveway at the ocean, thinking and writing. It looks like it’s getting rough, white caps forming. I haven’t been thinking about much more than that, today anyway.
I spent the first sixteen years of my life here. I know this place, and there’s something soothing about being here again. I used to love it here, before everything fell apart and I felt like I’d implode if I didn’t escape. I used to love the beaches, the bush (mostly houses and shops now), the freedom. I’ve walked every inch of these beaches, ridden childhood horses through the surf. I can remember family picnics on warm summer nights, long conversations and first kisses. Sneaking behind the dunes to smoke cigarettes, beach parties, swimming out to the pontoon to sunbathe.
I’m technically on an island…from where I’m lying now, the beach is…I guess 80 metres?…in front of me. The estuary is a couple of kilometres behind me. To get more than five minutes drive north or south I have to take one of three bridges. Everytime I go over ‘the new bridge’ a friend who committed suicide underneath it 10 years ago flashes into my mind, and when I drive over ‘the old bridge’, I think of the toddler who lost her life drowning there a couple of days before Christmas and making eye contact with Bailey in the rearvision mirror, I say a silent prayer of thanks that my child is with me.
The house I’m staying in is co-owned by a few members of my Dad’s family. Even though I’ve never been particularly close to them, I’ve spent a lot of time here and I’m fairly comfortable. It’s an old house, just a fishing shack really. The bottom level is mostly cement, intended for boat parking I think. There’s a long dangerous staircase up to the top level, where the kitchen, dining, lounge and a couple of small bedrooms are. The back verandah is closed in and divided so Bailey and I have our bedrooms set up in there to take advantage of the sea breeze. It’s not flash, not at all, with crazy wallpaper and mismatched carpets and old furniture. Surrounding us now are mostly big new houses, all straining for an ocean view, with only a couple of fibro beach shacks left. It’s expensive to live here now, so I’m grateful to be right on the beach, even with the lack of actual bathroom and air-conditioning in one room only.
It’s haunted, too, but that doesn’t bother either of us.
Sometimes, before I go to sleep, I get a wave of panic, and a frantic thought that screams something like ‘What is wrong with you? You gave up a perfectly normal life, a cute house with the horses in the backyard, what you’d always wanted and worked so hard for, to come back here and what?’
Whatever.
I have to go and grab some stuff from my house up the hill tomorrow and now I’m worried that I’ll be suddenly frozen by emotion when I see other people really truly living there, that I’ll just want to sink into a corner in the bedroom I shared with Craig and cry and cry.
Hopefully not.
On Wednesday I have to go to the hospital to talk about a ‘something’ in my brain the size of a cherry. I feel sick just thinking about it, and even when I’m not thinking about it. I could really use a break with my health, and so could Bailey. His eyes are starting to look so old, and he’s so angry and already knows that life isn’t fair, you don’t ‘get out what you put in’ and there is no ‘karma’ or universal equalizer.
But every night we go to the beach with the dogs, and he squeals and plays in the waves, runs up and down and pretends to surf on his boogie board and I know why we came here.
Happy New Year guys, and thankyou for all the support I’ve received here this year. I needed it desperately.
Much love
xoxox
Hypersensationalism 