Savagely wringing out the last drips of summer

This evening was beautiful, so I met a friend for al fresco smoothies at Liquid Planet in Lakewood.

We were supposed to go to the beach after, but the weight of the day proved too much, so I went alone.

I stopped being the girl who went to the beach alone a long long time ago - like -1989-long-time-ago.
And its not that I'm opposed to being that girl, but the beach seems like the final frontier of alone-i-tude.

Maybe its the lack of trust. A fear that I'll come back to find my things stolen.
Or maybe it's just so much exposure, emotional on top of the physical.

Who knows.

But I went anyway, drawn by the fleet of white from Wed'y race night offshore.
I figured I would walk the loop and sit on rocks.

But as I walked, I became succinctly aware of my bathing suit -
My skin itched to get into the water -
Suddenly my entire body was a dowsing rod and I couldn't NOT be in the water.

So I ran back up to the car... the whole time arguing with myself that if I didn't go into the water, it was a loss for my life and then thinking how much easier it would be to simply go home, defeated.
Somehow, when I was making up my mind to go back to the beach, the decision was on a far grander scale than simply to swim or not to swim.

It was more about trust and confidence and independence and self-indulgence.

That said, I left my clothes and keys in the car, taking only my ignition key and hanging it from my necklace.
I took my beach bag and walked down to the shore and swam for an hour.
I dog-paddled and did the breast-stroke and free-styled and floated and treaded water and swam out past the buoys to watch the spinnakers unfurl on the boats.
Alone.

So now I'm the girl who can swim alone.