Clam chowder and salty ocean air

I started reading this book the other day by one of my comfort authors Emily Henry - it's her newest book that came out this summer - Great Big Beautiful Life. I'm only a few chapters in but the writing style soothes me in a way that makes my mind travel to places that once also brought me comfort in real life. Her books are usually set in a small town, most times it's somewhere in Michigan nearby a lake. This time, it's a small island in Georgia.

I don't think about this often but this morning, the thought crept in like both a happy memory and simultaneously, one I like to forget. Four years ago, sometime right around this time, I spent a month worth of summer on the east coast, bouncing between a small town in Rhode Island and Cape Cod. While the company edged on a feeling that I knew wasn't right at my core, I look back at that time with a lens of fondness for what it was. I like to think that everything happens for a reason and a person's presence and the space they take up means something - or that maybe one day, it will mean something.

It's kind of odd, I will say, that when I think of that summer, I don't necessarily think about the company I had, but rather, what being there felt like. I think about strolling the streets of Newport and feeling like that nautical, picturesque city, it could heal so much of me if I gave it enough time. I think about the iced lattes at those small coffee shops, the locals that entered and knew the barista by name, the smell of the ocean with every breeze that picked up a strand of hair, blowing it away from my shoulder and leaving my skin uncovered for the sun to give it a kiss. I loved being there and while at the time I felt like it was all because of the man that I was with and loved, I know now that he played an insignificant role in just how the east coast touched me.

I think that in some sense, these books, they do the same thing to me. They reawaken a past that I have put in the work to heal from and to forget, when really, I just need to go back to it (to the place - not the person - definitely not the person). I would love to go back to Newport and see it again but this time, on my own terms, with my own people, doing my own thing. I hate that the memory of someone could take away from me just how special that place was. It's both endearing and all the same, quite sad - that I have learned to build a life for myself in which I've revelled in the beauty of places, not people, because places can't disappoint you in those same ways that people can. A place can call you back and whisper those sweet nothings in your ear, kiss your forehead, promise to keep you safe, and really really mean it.

When I think back at the fact that it really has been four years since the summer I spent there, I feel a weight sink into my stomach. It feels like no more than a year could have passed. Simultaneously, as someone who craves connection, it's strange to think that this was the last long-term sort of relationship I was in. Everything else has been a couple months, here and there, with people I often forget ever even mattered. To be fair, that relationship probably should have never happened either. I was lonely and bored and put up with way more than I'm willing to admit. That might sting if he ever were to read it, though, I can't say I care. It's been a long time.

I've been doing better this week. I think that one of the coolest parts of my life in the last four years (on my own - mostly single although always talking to someone) has been the community I've built around me and the people I've been able to build a life with that is not at all disappointing romantically. Just today I was thinking that I might soon have to start using the calendar on my phone to set reminders of the social events, hangouts, and fun things I have going on just in my personal life. I've been so incredibly fortunate in that sense. While in some aspects I lack a romantic kind of love, my friends have filled those gaps and poured so much love into me and our friendships that I only very rarely feel alone. I love that about my life. It feels full. It's also kind of fun to have a boyfriend in every country (but alas that's besides the point LOL).

I've been thinking a lot about hopping on a plane to Boston one of these days and making the drive out to Newport. I think I need that. I think I need to be there and see it with a fresh new outlook on what it means to be there. Not at all for anyone else but myself.

I think I need to wake up in a little cottage by the ocean, have clam chowder for lunch and go for a swim at sunset after a day's worth of sun, laughs and fried calamari. I think my soul would enjoy that.

As always, thanks for coming to my Cez talk xo.