James

Today was the first day in a long time–

I felt the sun hot on my skin and let my feet dangle into the ocean. I spoke and ran and laughed again like I haven’t in some time.

It’s days like these that make all of it worth it. All the pain, all the tears, and all the fear. Everything I feel when I am at my lowest point, I know is worth going through when I get to experience joys like today.

The tide rushed over my feet and then back out again. The smell of the sea all around me. The colors. Blue! Green! orange! yellow! Somehow they all melded together on the surface of the water.

I stood there for a long time with my feet sinking into the wet sand. I closed my eyes and breathed the warm air that swept by my cheeks, and I thought in that moment. So this is me. I’m the ocean. I come and go like the tide.

My fear comes and goes like the still water creeping into shore. My sadness comes and goes like the waves breaking over rocks and then pooling high again.

Then maybe I’m the ocean. Maybe I’m the sea.

My thoughts on that stopped when a familiar hand took hold of mine. In a moment my eyes opened. James was in front of me. My smile grew wide and I couldn’t think of that again. Only him, and the way he smiled back at me. Somehow, he smiled like this was worth it. This moment was worth every pain he had witness in me, and every pain it had brought to him. He smiled because he had known this would come again. The happiness. It always came back. He had never doubted.

My feet were in the water, and there was a bit of sand in my long blonde hair.

My cheeks were beginning to grow red from the sun. He raise his hand and touched the freckles on my cheeks.

He smiled. I had come back. I always did.

The sadness had passed and the fears weren’t taking me.

He was holding my hand. He wasn’t letting go. And I knew as he looked at me,

That this was worth it.