Can you see me through all this dust? Poor blog, it’s been sitting around since June and has felt no love by its owner. Today, as painful as it may be, I’m going to attempt to write a response to a picture prompt from over on Our Write Side. But, really quickly, I’m going to fill you in on why I haven’t been writing here. I found myself in a job where I write all day. I’m creating SEO content for a digital marketing agency that connects students to schools. Luckily, I absolutely adore it. But, it doesn’t leave much time for me to write creatively, not until I figure out how to balance work writing with creative writing with life in general. I’m a bad balancer.
Welp, that sums it up in a nutshell. So, without any further ado…the image to which I’m responding. It’s been a LONG WHILE since I wrote anything other than SEO stuff so this could be quite uncomfortable.
It was a relief to be alone, no external stimulus from unwanted sources. Just me and the water as I tried to wrap my brain around the news my father threw on me after school. I would’ve preferred the ocean but, instead, I’d settle for the little lake hidden in the woods. My father told me I was always drawn to the water. I guess, when I was young, I would cry inconsolably when we would leave the little Cape Cod cottage we used to own, back before money became scarce and mom left for ‘a better life’.
The makeshift dock my dad had pieced together with recycled garbage had made it through its third rough winter. To an outsider, it might look like a floating garbage dump but, to me, it was my private oasis, a paradise in a sea of turmoil. The dock moaned as I dragged my wet body onto its rough surface. The familiarity of my surroundings bringing with it a sense of peace. I settled myself, cross-legged, in the center and allowed my dad’s recent words the necessary brain space.
He wasn’t really my dad. She wasn’t really my mom. They had found me, a toddler, washed up on an abandoned stretch of beach, half dead and sticky with salt water and seaweed. My real parents were a giant question mark, no one even reported a missing child those 16 years ago. They gave me a name, and their name, and raised me as their own. Not that I’m complaining, I basically had a good life, despite my mom leaving, and the whole falling from riches to rags thing a few years back.
Suddenly I wasn’t really Mila Taylor, 18-year-old community college freshman anymore. I still had the same stick straight, white-blonde hair, and cat-like green eyes. But, my name, even though I wore it proudly for as long as I can remember, it wasn’t really who I was anymore. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it and everything but it wasn’t how I started my life. I was someone else. I had a different birthday. I lived in a different city. Everything about me was probably once very different. I belonged to other people. Even though my real family never seemed to try and find me, they are out there. Maybe they don’t want to be found, but I am thinking I need to find them, to truly understand who I am. Maybe they would be able to explain some of the unusual things that are happening to me the way doctors and therapists haven’t.
The dreams were the most prominent of all the “issues” I had been having since I turned 16. The hypnotherapist my dad recently took me took to was sure I was having memories of my past life because the dreams always take place in the same location. It’s so beautiful there, everything shining and white. And the land, so green and fertile. But the ocean, it always sings to me, lulling me, luring me. The ocean’s cries are getting louder in my dreams, more demanding, more insistent. It’s getting harder to resist.
Then there’s the man. Always there. Searching. Waiting. His gentle, crystal eyes staring out at the horizon. His wavy brown hair blowing in the ocean breeze. Every muscle in his body, taut in anticipation of my arrival, and releasing as disappointment sets in.
Even though it’s all happening my dreams, all my senses and emotions are alert like it’s real.
That island.
The ocean.
Him.
They are my home.
Every fiber of my being senses it, despite what the doctors say.
A past life? Maybe.
But, I’m supposed to be there.
I was supposed to have been there already.
The key to finding that place is finding out who I really am.
And, I have no idea how to begin.
I only know where I want to end up.