Your Past Follows You

Island of Antiparos, Greece---I had a breakdown today. Marybeth and the boys were happily chatting over breakfast about what a great dog Turbo was and the funny things he has done in his new life in Tallahassee. I was at the table with my headset on but the music had long died due to the limited charge. Big tears started rolling down my cheeks. I can’t understand after almost 4 months why it hit me like it had all just happened recently: I gave away my dog after 14 years, I lost my career investments in rental properties being foreclosed on, I gave up my 26 year business, my Dad died four weeks after I left and I couldn’t go back for the funeral, I left behind my friends, my sister…

I tore through the sailboat’s cabin, climbed up the companion way, grabbed a random pair of goggles, striped and dove in the cool, clear, blue water of the Mediterranean.

And swam.

Beating the water with each stroke like it was some aspect of my past that I could actually punish. It was early morning and I swam to the small beach in the sparsely populated area that we were anchored. Deserted, it had several sets of lounge chairs and tied up umbrellas only a few feet from the water’s edge.

There I flopped myself down on the flattened chair face down and continued a good cry. The tan vinyl netting of the chair let my tears drop through and trickle down to the fine sand below me. “Could God really know how many grains of sand there are?” I randomly thought.

I’m 8000 miles away from what was my life and absolutely nothing has changed inside my head. It still feels like failure. And if so, then am I running? From what, and more importantly, to what?

My pity party and these thoughts were abruptly stopped by the happy family appearing with all the bags that come with a day at the beach, only to find a naked, crying, women wearing only goggles. Face down, I quickly contemplated my options: 1) pick up and wear the beach chair to the water. 2) make a run for it an hope the children aren’t too traumatized. 3) three…let’s see, I didn’t have time to get to three as a truck pulled up, slightly in view behind the hedges, with workers to empty trash bins.

I made a run for it and quickly dove into the water and swimming non-stop the quarter mile back to the boat. All my past trailed me closely…but I think maybe, just a little of it was left on that beach.