Message In A Bottle

I put a message in a bottle and threw it into the sea. Whoever finds it will know so much more about me than so many close to me...

I told the ocean my secrets on a piece of notebook paper filled with blue ink thoughts. In a glass bottle that I bought when I was out walking and it was too hot. Half sipped the bottle lived inside my car for months on end. It saw things I'm proud of, things I'm not, things I think I would rather if I forgot... I poured out the flat water onto a dry patch of PCH - The fizz long ago lost.

“I feel so lost and yet never more found,” I begin with a shaky hand. “I ripped apart my life, my heart, my part in a play I never meant to start but had to end...” I watched a bird race across the sky for no reason other than because it was designed to, the waves crashed as they always reliably do, I smiled at the sun as I tend to do… I twisted my words up and let them unwind sharing my romantic ideals, a dream nobody else knows, how I never seem to be able to keep track of my clothes - always leaving them behind me like bread crumbs.

“I remember when I fell apart into his arms on this coast line, when I fell in love under the currently hidden stars, when I found freedom here, when I found that I had healed my own heart, when we drove this road under the moon, when I let him go, and her, and him too, when I was honest with myself, where I promised a best friend a million things effortlessly…”

I wrote down the names of everybody who I've raced up this road with, the special souls, the broken ones, the people I hope I never lose, and the ones I already have. “Do we ever really lose people? Or do they just fade in and out of our lives like the tide, the stars, the flowers on the cliffside?” I stared at char marks from a fire the world heard about, new growth sprouting from singed earth. Anybody, anything, always can begin again.

“I think I am beginning to understand why people love the sea, it reminds you that you are alive, wild, free, it puts the world in perspective of how little it matters if you love me… As long as I do.” I let the sand run through my fingertips. “Do we have enough time? Or is that the secret, that by the time it all makes sense we are out of days to live.” The spray from the sea made the ink bleed just a little bit, adding a soft quality to the cursive words that spilled effortlessly onto the wrinkled page.

I kissed the back, leaving a lipstick seal of approval. “Whoever finds this, I hope you have a beautiful tomorrow. Just know, I think I'll be doing fine, and if I'm not, Imagine me by the sea, finding serenity, all over again.” I twisted the metal cap onto my letters temporary tomb - permanent if nobody ever twists it open or if the sea doesn’t smash it into pulp and soon to be sand.

I may never know if another read my relinquished words, but I like to think if they did. Then they understand something from a perspective. Peculiar and from the past of a woman they will never know and yet know better, than those close to me ever did.

Photographer: Mikel Roberts @mikelrob

Model: Weslee Kate @weslee_kate