and daylight speaks to me

When I lived in Bunbury, I had a particular spot at the beach where I used to go and just be. I would spend hours and hours sitting there, day or night, reading or thinking or sleeping or chatting to friends on the phone, but when I would leave, I would feel like a better version of myself. I don't know what it was exactly, the sun or the fresh air, the seclusion or the ocean itself, but it was something that I valued more than most other things in my life.

Now that I live two and a half hours away from there, I had this idea of trying to find a new place to go. All the extra stresses of peak hour and trains and horrid people and full time work and lack of money and time were catching up to me, and I couldn't find peace in the city, or at Kings Park, or near the Bell Tower. I tried the coffee shop in Angus and Robertson, Cino-To-Go near the Esplanade, I was constantly on the hunt for somewhere where I didn't have to be anything in particular. It was hard enough finding a niche at work, I was a surfer girl, but I had piercings and tattoos and long dark hair, not the typical wholesome healthy fresh white blonde look of some of the other girls I work with.

I think my main issue was that I wasn't near the ocean, which is one of my true loves in life. When I was a little kid, I asked Charlie where I came from and he told me this story about how he was walking along the beach one day, and I washed up in a wave and rolled all the way up to him. Naturally, he picked me up and put me in his pocket and took me home and there I've been ever since.

I believed this story for a good four years until my mother found out, and set me straight with the graphic details of how I really came about.

Consequently I was disappointed with the truth, as nine months of floating in amniotic fluid did not give me any hints as to why I was such a water nymph.

Anyway, I couldn't sleep one night, so at roughly 2a.m., I got out of bed, drove the few minutes down the road to Cottesloe, and swam out to the crumbling old pylon where I sat for almost an hour. The next day on the train, although I was still salty and my hair was in massive salt water tangles down my back and I resembled more of a beached mermaid than a working girl, I was a thousand percent happier. I was smiling at people on the train, I didn't mind the drunk man asleep on the floor in front of the doors, I was skipping down Murray Street to work, I was more myself than I've been since I moved.

I guess that I'm lucky that I know roughly what makes me happy, when millions of people the world over sleep-walk through life, not knowing that this kind of bliss even exists.

Maybe I should give them a hug.