The Beach Doesn't Remember

Last week I sat in my truck looking down at the beach. It was early enough that there was almost nobody around. Miles of sand stretched out in front of me, marked only by shorebirds and the tire tracks I had left getting there. The beach looked enormous when there was no one on it. Empty places have a way of making themselves larger.

I have been coming to this beach for almost twenty years, though never quite for the same reason. This was where I fell deeply in love with a hobby that was new to me. Where I met the person I thought was the one. Where we celebrated thirteen anniversaries. Where I met people I called friends. I thought I had found a community here, and over time I helped build one around myself. It seemed permanent in the way things seem permanent when you are standing in the middle of them.

It was also where Rally and I spent our first weekend together last year, figuring out his name and, in a way, figuring out who we were going to be to each other.

This was also the beach where I stood at three in the morning crying after finding out, yet again, the depth of the emotional betrayal. The beach where I walked at sunrise after feeling completely abandoned by the person I loved. The beach I ran to when I was desperate to repair the empire collapsing around me. The beach where I sat alone after being told from a distance that I was not worthy of love, and, more painfully, that I was not worthy of having children.

Now I was sitting in the same place watching new love bloom from the ashes of my old relationship. Friendships appeared stronger than ever. People who had once been part of my life were gathered somewhere down the beach, and none of it involved me.

The beach had lost its magic.

Or maybe I had.

When the Place Becomes Foreign

There was a time when this slightly dumpy beach town delighted me. I knew where to get snacks, where to get the best beer, which businesses had opened recently, which places were still secrets, and who to call if you got stuck in the sand. I had been in the process of buying a piece of property here for myself and my then-partner, a place where we could retreat to. I had imagined myself coming here for years.

It is strange how quickly a place can become foreign.

Now I watched Rally run along the sand, chasing a feather blowing in the wind. He seemed happy, which made me smile. But I could feel the weariness underneath it. If someone had been sitting beside me, they might have seen something in my face. I wasn't sure what they would have called it.

Resignation, sadness, grief, relief, acceptance.

Maybe all of them.

I thought about my Subaru. I imagine my face looked much the same the day I donated it to a car demolition and resale program. I had loved that car. She had taken me across the American West and carried me through countless trips, camping nights, bad weather, cheap motels, and long stretches of highway where I had no particular destination beyond the next one. But she had begun to fall apart.

I had already replaced the engine once after a significant head gasket leak. Less than 50,000 miles later, the second engine developed another big head gasket leak. The radiator kept blowing itself apart. Oil leaked from various places. The windshield gasket had blown out and needed to be glued down several times. The suspension was beginning to go.

I kept driving her anyway.

The problem with sentimental objects is that they don't care how much you love them. They still break. They still leak oil. They still leave you wondering whether you are going to make it home. I kept holding on because of what the car had been, even though what it had become was a disaster waiting to happen.

I held on too long.

By the time I finally donated it, the car had almost no cash value left. Metal and parts were worth more than the vehicle itself. I stood there watching the scrapper load it onto the truck, sad to see it go and frustrated with myself for having kept it as long as I did.

When it disappeared around the bend in the driveway, I felt as though I were saying goodbye to Rose riding with me across the American West, to all the nights I had slept in the back while camping or traveling, to the particular comfort of knowing I could throw a sleeping bag into the car and leave.

But I was also saying goodbye to the oil stains.

To the gallon of oil rolling around in the back.

To checking the oil before every long drive.

To smelling burning oil whenever I climbed a mountain pass.

There is a point when remembering what something was becomes an obstacle to seeing what it is.

Broken Pieces Don't go Back to What They Were

I held on to my relationship with my ex for too long, too. It broke me in a way that shifted the landscape of my heart. There is no recovering from it in the sense that I once imagined recovery. I am not going to return to the person I was before it all went to shit. That has been one of the harder lessons of the past few years.

Healing, I have learned, is not restoration.

It is not putting the old parts back where they were and pretending nothing happened. Healing has meant accepting that it happened, that it changed me, and that it altered the course of my life.

I can be angry about that. I am angry that I am not where I thought I would be. I am angry about the life I imagined and didn't get.

But I can't be entirely angry that it changed me. Simply accept that it did.

That was the price.

I was the one who held on too long. I should have left after the first signs, but I didn't. I stayed for another decade.

Now I sat on the beach watching the life I had built here for almost two decades pass behind my truck. The people were there for an event that had once been deeply important to my life. I could see them gathered together. Then I caught a glimpse in my rearview mirror of my ex and his girlfriend walking together, holding hands.

It was such an ordinary thing to see.

That was what made it strange.

The people who had once been my friends were gathered around them.

Smiling.

Laughing.

Talking.

It looked like nothing had happened.

I had been replaced by another woman, and somehow the rest of the group seemed to have remained exactly where they were. I had been edited out of the picture. The strange part was that I was the aggrieved one, not the transgressor, yet I was the one standing outside the circle.

I no longer fit into their pretty little picture.

Maybe that was what hurt most.

It made me wonder whether they had ever really been my friends or whether I had simply been useful while I belonged to that world. Once I was no longer useful, there was no reason to keep me around. So they didn't. They carried on.

The whole weekend I was there, only one person from that group came over to say hello.

That settled something in me.

It also made me glad I had brought the motorcycle.

Where the sand was the most compact, it still was soft.

Shifting Gears

I had been thinking about riding in the sand for a while. I had some bigger trips coming up, and nearly seven miles of beach stretched out in front of the hood of my truck. Until that moment, I had been looking at the beach as a place where something had ended. Now I began to wonder if it could also be a place where something started.

Maybe I didn't need to make the beach what it had been.

Maybe I just needed to give it another memory.

I unloaded the bike, put on my gear, and loaded Rally into the back of the truck with his dog bed. I hit the ignition, adjusted the choke, and let the engine warm. The little mechanical rituals were comforting. There was nothing complicated about them. The bike didn't care about the history of the beach. It didn't know who I had loved here or who had stopped loving me. It didn't know which people had once been my friends.

It only needed me to ride it.

I glanced over at the group. A few people looked my way, then went back to what they were doing. Fifteen-plus years of friendship with some of these people, and my presence barely registered. For once, I didn't feel the need to make it register. I adjusted the choke, threw my leg over the seat, kicked up the stand, dropped it into gear, and started down the beach. Slowly at first.

In my head I was thinking, If I crash here, they will all see it, and I will be ashamed. But would any of them come to help?

The sand was loose and soft. The motorcycle moved beneath me in ways I didn't entirely trust. Every rut wanted to take the front wheel somewhere I didn't intend to go.

I stopped.

For a moment I let my hands wander over my gear and the bike. The grips. The controls. The tank. The familiar pieces of a machine that required my attention.

I reminded myself why I was there.

I was here to ride.

Not to be seen.

Not to be accepted.

Not to prove anything.

Just to ride.

“Fuck this. I am here to ride,” I said out loud to no one.

And then I rode.

Speed and weight shifting were going to be my allies in the soft sand. I pushed my weight back toward the rear wheel, adjusted my feet on the pegs, dropped it into gear, and opened the throttle. The motorcycle surged forward.

Mid ride down the beach the sea mist was sticking to my goggles I stopped to wipe it clear and take a few photos.

The sand immediately demanded my attention. The bike wandered beneath me, and I learned to let it move without fighting every little movement. I shifted up and found a line between the deep ruts left by trucks. The front wheel danced. The rear kicked sideways. More than once I was certain I was about to eat shit.

But I didn't.

I kept going.

The farther I rode, the less I thought about the people behind me. There was only the motorcycle, the sand, the wind, the dog waiting back at the truck, and the long empty stretch of beach ahead. For the first time that weekend, I wasn't thinking about what I had lost.

I was thinking about where I could go.

A mile up the beach and then back.

When I came around toward the truck, I saw the group standing there exactly as I had left them. For a moment I watched them. They looked the same. Not just physically. Something about the arrangement of them, the way they stood together, the way they interacted, made me realize that nothing had really changed. They still had their arguments. Their dramas. Their alliances and betrayals. The same little patterns were still playing themselves out.

And suddenly, being cast out no longer felt like evidence that I was the defective one.

I had changed.

I didn't want to play that game anymore.

So they removed my piece from the board.

That was okay.

I had a motorcycle.

I had a dog waiting for me.

I had seven miles of beach.

And, for the first time in a long time, I had somewhere else to go.

I shut off the motorcycle.

Maybe the beach doesn't have the magic it once had.

That's fine.

Maybe it doesn't need to.

It is going to take time to build a new life with this place. Maybe I will come back here. Maybe I won't. For the first time, either possibility feels okay.

I am holding my only game piece now, trying to figure out where it belongs.

Or maybe I don't need to know yet.

Maybe it is enough to keep moving.

I am done holding on too long to the rules of a game I don't want to play.

I am done holding on too long, hoping for something that will never come.

I am done holding on too long to the idea that I had something special and unique that was worth fighting for.

I am done holding on too long.

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BOOK: Free Ride - Noraly Schoenmaker  The author is better known as Itchy Boots on youtube, and has become a sensation in the last few years. Her first book is about how heartbreak and betrayal launched her into getting the motorcycle and changing her course in life. There are a lot of parallels in thinking that I felt when reading the book.

SONG: Waiting for my Real Life to Begin - Colin Hay

This song came on right after I found out about the final betrayal in late 2024. I sat on the beach at 3 am crying, wondering when things would start to change. Shortly there after the relationship came to an end, and I was sent on a chaotic whirlwind untangling the mess. I kept coming back to this song, and it grew to feel like 'hope' when I listened to it.

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Thank you for reading my post. This post/essay, like many of the ones I write, is a blend of my personal experiences, travel, memories, stories, and shared conversations. These solely represent myself and my opinions and thoughts. When it involves personal friends I have given them nicknames unless they have given explicit permission to use their given name. There are times that I am able to pull from what I wrote down in my journals at the time an event happened, others I am trying to recall memories that have been altered by brain injuries and a lifetime of simply living. I may not always get it right, so please forgive me for some unintentional variations.

I always welcome feedback and thoughts on my posts. Please feel free to send me an email or comment below.

Love from the road,

Nic & Rally