the edge of the ocean

sometimes just testing the waters is enough

One day I stood at the ocean’s edge. It was winter, I was the only one on the beach. I wore a thick, long Green Bay Packers jacket over a sweatshirt and jeans. I had no gloves, no boots, no hat. The day was frigid, there were thin layers of ice where water had settled on the shore. A fierce wind whipped around me. My face went numb, my hands stiff with cold. I stood. I watched angry waves push in and pull out, layers of them, flattening out and curling back up again.

I wanted to die. I wanted to walk into that ocean and see if I would first freeze to death or drown. I wanted to be under the water — something I always feared — engulfed in it’s dark, foamy essence. What was there to stop me? Not another human. Not the seagulls, looking for food, ignorant of my despair. What if I just took off my bulky coat and walked straight ahead, feeling the frigid water first grasp onto my feet, then my legs. I’d shiver, I’d shake a little, I’d keep walking until I was up to my waist, my chest. Maybe a wave would knock me down and I’d go under but I wanted to do it of my own volition, keep walking down the sandy staircase until I couldn’t feel the bottom anymore and then drown.

They’d never find me, I thought. I’d just disappear. No one knew I drove to the beach on a February day. Ok, they’d find my car eventually. Search for me. But it was supposed to snow that night, a heavy storm, and searching for me in the morning would be fruitless. My body would sink. Or would it float? I didn’t know the physics of it. I imagined if my lifeless body floated to the top the seagulls would swoop in and have their way with me.

I stood inches from where the water met land. I thought about the relief I’d feel as I went under. Everything would be gone. All of it. All the worry, all the anxiety, all the bad decisions and aftermath, all the pain would just disappear. It was exhilarating to imagine that, to envision my last moments when I knew it would all be over soon and wouldn’t have to spend days and weeks and years in a state of constant depression, in the throes of constant anxiety, feeling like a constant failure.

I walked forward, covered those icy inches, stepped into the wet sand and let the remnants of a small wave wash over my sneakers. The water was cold, so cold, I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything that cold before. I took off my jacket, gently placed it on the sand. I walked until my jeans were soaked to the knees. My teeth chattered. I couldn’t imagine being colder than I was at that moment. It will all be over soon, I told myself. Soon you will drown, if you don’t die of hypothermia first.

I wished I had brought my portable stereo. It just seemed like a moment that called for music, something sweeping and grand to play me out as I walked into the ocean forever. I hummed to myself, Spacehog’s “In the Meantime,” because it was the first song that came to mind.

A few seagulls landed behind me. I turned to look at them and they stared back at me as if to ask me what I was doing there, alone on the beach, halfway into freezing water in the middle of February.

I had no answer for them. I didn’t know. What was I doing?

I went back to my Green Bay Packers coat on the sand, shivering, sure I was going to freeze do death right there and then. I dug into a pocket and pulled out a picture of my kids. It was one of those posed Christmas photos, the ones you put on a card and send out to relatives who will ooh and ahh over the picture then throw it out come December 26th. My daughter was five, my son two. I stared at the picture, I wondered if they would be better off without me, better off if I did walk into the ocean and left them to better people to care for them, feed them, nurture them.

One of the seagulls, brazen and bold, walked over. It snatched the photo out of my hand and took off into the sky with it. I watched it fly away, my kids in its beak, and my heart broke in half. I gave a half hearted chase, scaring the other seagulls away. And then I was alone on the beach, wet, cold, full of sorrow and remorse.

Of course I wouldn’t walk into the water. Of course not. As much as I wanted to drown in the murk, to never have to feel anything again, to never do anything again, I didn’t have the nerve to actually do it. Not then. Not at that moment. I’d gone in, I’d taken the first steps toward the relief of death and somehow that seemed like enough.

It would always be enough.