Catch You Later
I called myself confrontational recently, and my best friend of a decade burst out laughing. An ex-boyfriend always used to call me avoidant. I hate that they’re both probably right. Anyone who knows me well has seen me through so many avoidance strategies that it’s gotten old by now. I’m trying to work on it. I'd love to one day tackle life head-on, it’s just that I love an escape plan.
Like recently, after months of the same drama, stuck in the same apartment hunt, and being increasingly devastated at the lack of snow in New York, I headed to Cancún with some friends. I spent the week by the open bar, meeting all the strangers I could, giving out a fake name just for fun, reading fiction that was entirely different from my own life, and most importantly, keeping close to the ocean.
The water took me out of myself every time I looked at it. I had expected flat turquoise, but instead I was looking at royal blues, navies, ceruleans, and seafoams striating together as the waves crashed. The ocean pulled me to deeper waters and nudged me back to the shore. I didn’t have to make any decisions. I didn’t have to think about anything, and I felt at peace for the first time in a while. It was fun, and it was a hiatus from reality, and my friends had to convince me to get on the flight back home.
Most of my escapes take place by the ocean. In one particularly depressing winter, I headed up to Acadia National Park. You really can’t do much up there in the winter, and the park service even closes most of the roads, but staring into the whitecaps outside the window was enough for me. It did nothing to make me less depressed, but it was prettier than Brooklyn in January. Or when I was a kid and my parents got divorced, I spent as much time as I could at my grandparent’s house on Cape Cod. Taking refuge there, I pretended that the enmity in my family wasn't happening and all I ever had to do was talk shit with my grandma and watch Judge Judy with my grandpa.
I really couldn’t say what it is about the ocean that pulls me when I want to hide from the real world for a bit. I’ve spent a lot of time in forests too, and dance floors, and flirting with strangers. None of it takes me out of myself like I sometimes need. All those things just make me feel like I’m gathering stories to bring back to my life. Down at the waterfront, it feels like there’s something between me and all those weaving blues and bursts of cold.
I want to get better at facing my issues head-on. Maybe there’s a version of myself that doesn’t draw escape routes when things go bad. But I don’t know. It feels ingrained. My grandmother always used to tell me to keep some money handy; I would never know when I would need to run away. I thought it was the darkest and coolest advice a person could give.
Near the Rockaways, there’s a bar. It’s the perfect place to pretend you have a different life while you play pool and smoke with the old bartender. They have baseball on all the TVs, a slot machine, and so much dust over all the retro Coke merchandise and out of use jukeboxes. It’s great to stop there after a few hours at the beach, covered in sunscreen and salt; it’s more fun if you look like a mess. I go and I forget about all the ways I feel lost, the events that made me more guarded, heartbreaks, and even the goals that I’m stressing myself out trying to accomplish. I go back home glowing from inside jokes and stories about people I barely know, and who barely know me. It’s the best, and it reminds me that my life could be pretty much anything I want it to be, that I could be more than I am. I’d tell you the name, but then I might lose my hiding spot.
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Kate Miano is a writer based in New York. She also works at a nonprofit dedicated to building community and supporting mutual aid. She has previously had poetry published in Overheard Lit, Goat's Milk Magazine, and Fish Barrel Review, among others. She can be found on Instagram: @kate.c0m, Twitter: @_katemiano and by the water.
