I get really overwhelmed by good memories. But I'm going to ATTEMPT to process and record at least a bit. This post will be long and basically just a journal entry for me because typing is so much faster than handwriting. I'll probably share it anyway, but I'll include headings in case you're not interested in reading a pure journal entry XD
In this essay I will...
- Explain what the beach trip was
- Record (or at least suggest to myself) some specific memories I want to remember
- Talk about how weird it is being back to normal life
- Remind myself of an important truth that occurred
What was this trip?
Yesterday, we got back from my 30th Birthday Beach Trip, a dream that has been in the works for about eighteen months. I have been blessed with some DYNAMITE, SOUL-CONNECTION friends, however...a lot of them live super far away. Like, Florida, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia*. Summer of 2022, I had the idea of getting all my far-flung best friends together for a week at the beach. I threw out the idea and started texting everyone every few months being like, "And don't forget, February of 2024 if you're available..."
Well, we did it, with the tragic exceptions of Original Fire Faery Ellie from Florida (thanks, Covid) and First Blogger Best Friend Jordan (thanks, being an adult and having responsibilities). I know this trip would have been even more incredible with y'all on it, so we're gonna have to do it again. Love and missed y'all so much!
Some Memories and Moments
The majority of the trip was just chilling. We watched TV shows (Jury Duty, Modern Family, Raising Hope) and movies (Disney's Robin Hood [adorable], Behind the Curve [hilarious], Horrible Bosses [classic], Airplane [educational...?], Tangled [nostalgic], Prince of Egypt [epic]). We read (I finished a book that Cassidy had let me borrow and started another one that she brought for me), did crossword puzzles (well, I leaned over Gabe's shoulder and offered limited but accurate help), did daily games like Connections, Wordle, Quordle, and Octordle. We also played games like The Voting Game (among other things, I was voted most likely to win the lottery but lose the ticket, and most likely to have had "No" as her first word), Hot Seat, Love Letter, Star Wars Imperial Assault**, Wavelength (Star Wars is fantasy, not Sci-Fi?), and Fishbowl.
We also talked, a LOT. These people know the way to my heart is asking dumb crap like, "Would you still love me if I were a lamp?" and seeing what happens. In that particular case, what happened was a discussion of if you had to turned into a sentient but immobile object for ten years, what object would you want to be (some answers were a stuffed animal [Cassidy], a blanket [Aaron], or something useful like a computer [Ryan])? Which led to would YOU rather be a sentient but immobile object for ten years or would you rather your PARTNER be the object?
Such random games of Would You Rather persisted throughout the week whenever there was a lull, and occasionally they wandered instead into How Much Would It Take, where we asked each other how much money we'd require to do ridiculous things, like let a stranger touch your bellybutton (complete with a noodling sound effect, to which Stephen would always reply, "What was that?"), French kiss a dromedary (you need to Google "dromedary tongue" right now), only be allowed to poop outside for two weeks, eat a live cockroach, give up the internet, put a pigeon in your mouth, etc. All of these questions required lots of debate and qualifications (Is the pigeon alive? Yes, but gently sedated. Is it diseased? No, it is healthy; you will not contract any illnesses from the pigeon. Are you picturing putting it in your mouth head first, butt first, or wing first?)
At one point (late at night, only me, Alicia, Cassidy, and Aaron were still up), the questions led to the fact that I think baths are gross because I don't like the idea of putting my bare skin against basically a wet floor. Cassidy pointed out that that's what we'd been doing in the hot tub the night before, albeit it with bathing suits on. That led to a brief silence, which led to me sharing a bucket list item of mine, which led to us braving a spider-guarded electrical box to heat up the hot tub at 1am, which led to said bucket list item being checked off. (Aaron tastefully remained upstairs until we returned a suspicious hour later.)
As silly as it was, the adrenaline-spiked fun of doing something even slightly risky with two of your best girl friends in the wee hours of the morning is a special kind of elation. These girls are genuinely my soul-mates. Cassidy has been a source of love and support*** through all of the worst times of my life, sticking by me when I was a version of myself that I personally would never forgive. Alicia and I share the unique bond of two strangers who were thrust together in a Spanish-only-speaking home in Spain for three days, and subsequently cried in front of each other and braided hair and wandered Europe relatively unsupervised.
Post hot tub event at the beach, I was grinning like an idiot and my skin tingled like it was carbonated as I tried to go to sleep. One of the top ten happiest times of my life. I was unreasonably happy, deep down in my soul.
At one point during the trip, I texted Cassidy, "I literally feel like I can breathe easier with all y'all around. Like this trip is contributing to my physical health."
I also sent a text that said, "Me in this car with the bass = Joey about to watch the movie that has Ursula instead of Phoebe in it: 'I'm so happy,'" which will only make sense if you're a huge Friends fan, and leads me to another top moment of the trip: riding in Bumblebee with Aaron.
For the fifteen or so years I've known Aaron, his dream car has been a Camaro. I used to take pictures of Camaros with my crappy slide-keyboard cellphone and send them to him. Well, last summer, Aaron finally got his Camaro, and not just any Camaro, but the *doesn't remember any specifics about the year etc. but it's apparently the exact one that is Bumblebee from Transformers? If you know, you know, and if you don't, you now know enough*.
But it's, like, not just the fact that I was riding in a car that we used to dream about. It's that I was in the car with the OLDER BROTHER I adopted over the internet when I was fifteen, who has shaped who I am today, whom I trust to drive me places in a sick car, and also: the car's bass was amazing, which...I'm pretty sure me with bass music is a lot of people on actual drugs. The combination of "wait, I feel so safe and loved?!" + "holy sh*t this car is cool" + "I can feel the bass vibrating my organs" = I don't even have words. An unreal time. (In exchange, he got a thoroughly authentic little sister experience because not only was I like, "Hey can you drive somewhere?" but I also brought no money for the boba tea I wanted, then I spilled it in his car, right before I realized I had lost my phone and had to go back into the tea shop to look for it, but it wasn't there, it was actually under my car seat. So. Really just a winning experience for everyone.)
It's also always a good day when I don't have to be the first person to ask a group, "So, did anyone have weird dreams last night?" Alicia had that covered for me.
Weird Being Back
I'm doing my best, but I don't know if it's possible to explain how incredibly good the trip was for me. *sits and stares at the computer* Yeah, I don't know what else I can say. It was one long dream come true. It was transformative.
Or was it?
I'm sure most people have experienced this feeling at some point. You go on an amazing trip or have a really meaningful night with someone or...I don't know, something BIG and AWESOME happens, but then...
You go home. The night ends. The moment passes.
It affected your soul, so you feel like everything should be different afterward, but your house still looks the same and your job still exists and you're alone again and...it's like the Amazing Experience happened on a separate plane of existence and now you're back in the real world and everything is...kind of the same? How can that be? How can it be over and in the past and life picks up as it was?
I don't know what to do with myself now. I don't know how to live regular life after being THAT happy and fulfilled. The trip has convinced me that there's another quality of life out there, life with more love and more people and more happiness and more kindness and more fun, but...how do I make a change? What do I need to do to live in deeper and more incarnate community? How can I love people better and be around them more? What do I need to DO?
I don't feel like I can go back to living so shallow and unfulfilled after a trip like that, but I'm also afraid that my depression is gonna kneecap me and keep me from making the changes necessary to live better. Or if not my depression my...allergy to vulnerability. Living in deep community takes courage because you have to be vulnerable. For the beach trip, I basically invited all the people with whom I'm already comfortable being vulnerable, but—as I've said—they are the people I DON'T get to do life with. Some of them live half and whole countries away from me. If I want to live deeper and better in my everyday life, I'm gonna have to learn how to be vulnerable with new people, and that thought makes me a little nauseous. But clearly, based on the beach trip, it can be so worth it. But I have to be so brave first.
An Important Truth
While riding in Bumblebee with Aaron, grinning like an IDIOT while my hand vibrated against the armrest, knowing that Gabe and Cass and Alicia would be home when we returned, I had a thought:
These are some of the best days of my entire life, and I would've missed them if I had let my depression win.
I've heard the quote that says something to the effect of, "When you're sad, remember that some of the best days of your life are still to come." But trying to believe that and EXPERIENCING it are two completely different things.
The fact that if I had given up when I was afraid I would never be happy again, I would have missed Hot Tub Bucket List At 1am and Bass Music With My Older Brother was a sobering and deeply joyful realization. Not gonna lie, I teared up in the car.
And then to think that maybe there are STILL some best days to come is a hope that feels like it might sustain me. When I feel sad and hopeless, I can use the beach trip as empirical evidence that even after pitch darkness, there can be blinding, so-worth-the-wait light. I know there's value in being present and not living for the weekend or for the future, but sometimes, in the midst of depression, living for the future is the way to go. It might suck now, but it'll be worth it again one day. There is real hope that there are more Beach Trip Days in my future, and that is an encouraging thought.
~ Stephanie
* Well, Virginia is only like an hour away, but STILL.
** And by "we" I mean "the four guys played, while the three girls sat in the hot tub and talked about The Last House on Needless Street, ACOTAR, and The Fire Faery Story"
*** And humor, wisdom, devil's advocate, shoulder to cry on, animal knowledge, learning to see multiple sides of an issue, logic, sarcasm, etc.
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