Driving Myself to Sanity- Part 3- New Hampshire and Maine.

If you want to read Part 1, go here.

Part 2, go here.

And so we go. Up the coast and away from all the wonderful things we have seen and the people we have been with, to a calmer, quieter place; the ocean.

There's nothing that can be said that actually defines how I feel about the ocean. It makes me feel centred, calm, whole. The sounds this it makes, the way that it moves. I feel like it is the essence of the world.

I feel such a kinship with the sea. The boundary of its edge is continually trying to merge. It breathes up onto the land, is refuted and returns. It stretches out its tendrils, grasps for things. It pulls things with it, into its depth. It gifts in return what's inside of itself, spitting things back out to be poked at, prodded and taken away. It tries again and again to merge itself with the land. Pushing them together. Only to be pushed back. And try again.

The relationship between sea and land resonates with how I feel about my own body. My constant desire for people, places, objects to pass through this barrier we call skin, for me to be able to truly understand, feel what others feel, merging of beings in this path we call life.

And then suddenly we realize it must be over, this journey. We have commitments, lives to get back to. This adventure, this exploration of the world can't be sustained forever. And so we finally turn for home, changed by what we have seen. 

Driving though the night, the world looks different. We only have one goal now, the return. And yet still we connect, change each others worlds by being together. My friend plays me music as I drive in the dark, telling stories about each track, where it's from, what he was doing, why it's important. We have all learnt more of each other, through the intensity, the journey. The boundaries of our own oceans have crossed a little over. We help make each other's return bearable. 

And then we are back. In familiar spaces, which have not changed while we were gone. Still we cling to each other, not wanting this to be over. It will take a while to relearn our own spaces, trying to place the new pieces of ourselves into our old lives. We were gone such a short time, we were gone such a long time.