We had driven eight and a half hours — longer if you count how many times I had to stop and use the bathroom. (If you’re wanting to get somewhere quick, I’m not exactly the most ideal person to road trip with.) We drove from Ontario to Massachusetts, right across the state of New York, and the closer we got to the coast, the more I thought I could smell the salt rise from the sea.
The sea does something to me. It opens up a well inside of me — some deep, cavernous place I had forgotten about, and it brings out realizations and understandings that I hadn’t quite grasped before.
Cape Cod is nothing short of stunning. Despite the fact it was freezing, I slipped my toes out from my shoes and felt the sand beneath me as I walked closer toward the ocean. My sister wrapped her arms tighter around her small son, a fuzzy blanket keeping him warm.
We were small, minuscule in fact, in front of that gaping water.
I have felt small before — the good kind and the bad.
I have felt small in the good way: while standing in front of the sea, sitting under the star speckled sky, looking out at the mountains of Rwanda and Peru. And the bad way: feeling unloved and like a desperate disappointment, all the while convincing myself I needed to do something in order to measure up.