Bummer

I finally made it out to Pensacola Beach a couple weeks ago for the first time since the oil spill. The closer I got to the beach, the bigger the lump got in my throat and when I got there, all I could do was cry. I cried because of this huge uncontrollable disaster. I cried because I was exhausted and because I'm going through a break up. I cried because I was relieved, in some weird way, that the ocean still exists, and still feels powerful and vast. And the ocean absorbed all of my sorrow and washed it away. Not all of it, but enough. Mostly, I just went to the Gulf of Mexico to wish it well. For a moment early in the spring when the spill began, people were talking about how there was to be "no beach" this summer. But Pensacola is the most amazing beach I've ever been to and I felt like it was stupid to never see it again, even if it's been ruined. It's like, if you had a friend in the hospital who was sick, would you just never go visit them and just figure they're going to die anyway? Of course, not. You go and you wish them well. So as pathetic as a gesture as it seems, that's what I did. And that made me cry some more. Sometimes all you can do is just let all of the grief move through you, just flow through. At the spot where I was at, the water still looked blue and the sand still looked white and we could see clean birds flying over head. Life does go on. I feel irritated by people's apocalyptic anxieties recently. It's not that I don't believe that the world is ending, and it's not that I do believe it, either. The fact is that none of us know what's going to happen. Since none of us knows the future, our choices are to fear for the worst or hope for the best and I choose to hope for the best, even in spite of all the doomy gloomy evidence to the contrary. Once upon a time a wise counselor told me that anxiety is fearing for the worst when the worst hasn't even happened yet, and when yr not even certain that the worst will ever in fact happen. I had a bunch of anxiety during the last half of my 20s and I finally got over it after a lot of hard work. Now, I'm living for today. I'm alive now and I love it, and I'm gonna keep singing and playing music and celebrating my life and life in general until I can't do it anymore.