Becoming Feral

Waterwynch has my heart. It is a small beach down the road from my house, you have to do a little off road navigation to get there so it's often empty. I love having it to myself.
Something about it remedies me. The sound of the small waves falling onto the pebbles on a high tide like tonight is just delicious - the crinkling and shuffling of all the stones being jangled around by the water's undercurrent, sucking back with the pull of the moon.

When the tide is out I usually walk to the cave on the right, it's tucked into this tiny bay, snuggled up to the cliffs. I love how the sea looks from inside the cave; the mouth of it opening out onto the powerful light of the water. I like to climb here too. Nothing too ambitious, I just like moving up high and scaling the edges of my favourite place, seeing it from every possible angle.

Tonight it is a light evening. The sun is low, creating a syrupy blanket of soft light on the water and cliffs. The waves are kissing the pebbles right up close to the stone path that leads back up to reality. My body absorbs the views and sounds and textures as much as it can, they settle something inside me.

Whilst I am here I can think.
I don't come here very often any more. Mostly because it feels like a sacred place to me. I rarely bring people here. I'm protective of it. Like it is a part of me. Like if someone comes here the sea will whisper my secrets back with each lulling of the waves. It feels personal here, intimate.

I usually come to Waterwynch when I'm feeling a little low. Today I'm feeling a little lost. The months following the end of university have been fun, I've worked hard at a job I adore. But there has been something else. An underlying itch, a niggle, an undercurrent. It's asking "what next?".

Other people are asking that too. My parents, my grandparents, my friends, and I suppose I have been as well.

But I just don't know the answer. I don't want to go to a job that I don't have a passion for and end up turning grey inside. I don't want the money and the pencil skirts and that sinking feeling when my alarm goes off every morning.
I want to explore, to see the world. I want to explore my abilities as a writer, decide what it is exactly that I want to do, I want to get to know new friends, see new opportunities and paths. And I don't want to jump into something just because it is what people would want or what is expected of me.

If I'm completely honest with myself I know what's keeping me here in a tiny town with little job opportunities, gossip and extortionate drink prices. It's the sea.  I want to be in it. All of the time; preferably on a board but happily just swimming.
It's gotten so under my skin this year. I ache when I'm away from it, it frustrates me if  I can't get to it and it has started to bother me when there aren't waves.

And I know I can't flounce around being romantic about the sea forever, getting more and more feral as my money runs out, but I want that for now (not the feral part). I will be a responsible young adult and make big decisions and pay council tax one day, but I have the rest of my life to be a grown up. So I am going to enjoy being excited about nature for a while. It could be a lot worse. I could be into hard drugs and dangerous men.

And at graduation when everyone is talking about internships and jobs and their new lives I will be proud of my pals and their achievments, knowing I will one day have mine.

That's all for now,
Jojo xxx