Anyone who knows me (or reads this blog) knows that I never pass up an opportunity to get existential.
I can take the smallest thing in life and turn it into a reason for something else.
I'm also going to be incredibly melodramatic in this post - but this is what happens when I am upset. In a few hours I will be embarrassed that this post exists.
This morning I woke up at 7:30, showered, and Skyped with Emmilly and Chris. It was lovely.
Then I went to the eye doctor. I had my pupils dilated, and waited for the doctor, doctor tells me my eyes are perfect and to come back in 3 years or unless something happens.
We stop back at my house, and my mom drives me to Jones Beach to meet up with Amanda and Mary Kate.
On the way, I put on my sunglasses because my eyes are dilated and I didn't want to go blind.
Get to the beach, have a sit, we talk, and Amanda and I go down to the water. I kept my sunglasses on because my eyes were dilated and it was sunny and bright.
Waves were really big, really scary, and there was no one place to stand where a big one would not hit you. So we got out.
Then we sat more. Then got hot. Then the three of us trekked down to the water again.
I had my sunglasses on still.
Listen, I've worn my sunglasses in the ocean plenty of times. Like, at least 20 times.
But for some reason, this time, two huge waves in a row crested and crashed onto my head. In my efforts not to drown or get dragged under and choking up sea water, I didn't even register that my sunglasses had been blown off my face.
At least not until I was like, why is it so bright all of a sudden?
I mean, the 2nd of the two waves dragged me at least 15 feet. I can't tell you if the glasses were blown off after the first wave hit or the second wave hit.
What I can tell you is that my sunglasses, my mirrored aviators, my favorite pair of sunglasses ever, are gone.
Amanda and Mary Kate searched for them in the deeper water for a bit while I checked if they washed up. They went to sit down and I stood there for another 10 minutes waiting for them to wash up and trying to find them in the waves.
I got these sunglasses at a street market in Greenwich Village in NYC in the summer of 2007. Aviators weren't even a popular style of sunglasses yet, and the mirrored lenses were unheard of. I didn't have enough cash so Amy bought them for me as an early birthday present.
The right lens had a big scratch on it from when I was going into Carvin at Hollins and dropped them trying to get my keys. They landed lens front first onto the concrete and scratched permanently.
Emily G gave me the nickname of "The Aviator" for our groups youtube channel.
In my last pottery class at Hollins, when we had to make busts of ourselves, I custom fit pieces of my clay-face and clay-hair so that these particular aviators could be worn by the clay bust of myself. Because these glasses were me.
Those glasses came with me to London, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Budapest, Australia, and New Zealand. I wore them nearly every time I went outside.
They were big enough lenses that when I put them on, everything was dark, no edges and no gradation of color. The frames were wide enough that they NEVER hurt my ears or my skull or my jaw muscles.
I could put those things on and STARE at people and they'd never know.
I played the "where am I looking?" game with pretty much everyone at some point.
Today was the first time I unpacked them from my carry-on after coming back from Australia - having found them in the case after thinking I'd lost them in Indro or something before I left.
Now I lost them in the ocean.
I wonder if anyone will find them. If they do they won't know that those glasses have been to Budapest, or that a lens fully popped out while waiting for the ferry boat to take us to Loch Ness. To them they will just be a sandy, broken pair of cheap aviators with or without lenses or sides or any parts to make them functional again.
I absolutely hate losing things - and I lose things all the time - but it depresses and angers me to the point of puking when I lose things irreplaceable and knowing that they will never turn up.
It's one thing to lose your keys (you'll find them) or phone (just call it), but another thing entirely to lose something in the ocean. They gone. They gone fo real.
It's my own fault too, I shouldn't have been wearing them. But honestly - wearing them they were such a part of me and how I exist that I didn't even think about it. They weren't separate from my face. You wouldn't tell me to leave my face behind with the towels to keep it safe would you?
I know that if Amanda had said, Sarah you should keep your glasses with your stuff, I would've said, no they'll be okay, it was okay earlier when we were in the water.
I wish I had switched to my new heart sunglasses Amanda bought me, because those I could've bought new ones.
These I can never have again.
I don't think I'll ever find a pair that fits my face so well while also being perfect mirrors to block where I'm looking or to have a lovely mirror for a friend to check their hair or makeup or as happened today - Amanda checked to see if her sunscreen was rubbed in on her face - in my mirrored glasses.
Now how does a person make this existential?
I followed my gut when I was looking for them in the water. I was standing there begging for them to wash up or for me to see a piece of them or SOME sign of them. I know I might have found them if I had gone back out to where the waves were forming - but I was too scared of being choked and dragged again - especially if my attention was directed at digging around with my feet in the sand while my shoulders and head were just above the surface.
I knew once I walked away from the water I would be accepting that I'd never see them again.
I'd be accepting that the little piece of stability I always had during all my travels and all of my life experiences since high school were now somewhere in the Atlantic. It kills me.
But maybe this is a test.
I have always been abnormally attached to things. It scares and annoys me some times how I can't just throw or give something away.
Recently I've been faced with losing a whole lot of irreplaceable things, and it's completely out of my control just like these waves today were.
It was in my control to take my glasses off, it was in my control to have grabbed the glasses off my face and risked drowning in exchange for not losing them. It was in my control to stand on that beach and in the water just not being able to walk away until the slim chance they came up with high tide. I could've chosen not to go to the beach after my doctor's appointment.
But I don't have the control of time, I don't have control over my instincts, and I don't have control over when things decide to change.
There is absolutely nothing comparable at all to the death of a person close to you and loss of their future and your future with them. There are just certain moments in life where everything plateaus and then its like, bam. Nothing will be how it was again. ever.
I know that in the not-so-distant future I will be leaving a lot of things irreplaceable to me.
Things that I would only want to leave behind with my death and no sooner are going to be gone.
So I think this is a test.
I have lost objects that have meant this much to me before - but they have turned up somewhere at some point. If they didn't, I've thankfully repressed the memory I guess.
I lost my first iPod, but I still physically own it - it just won't ever turn on again.
That's not the same as an ocean wave crashing on your head and pulling them off and then burying them in sand until they biodegrade (if they ever do).
I can walk away from this - because I allowed myself to leave the beach today without them. How I feel in this moment is pathetic, I wish I was not so attached to these things. I wish I could live the rest of my life being able to give things away, sell things, or have them taken from me without being phased.
As of this moment all I can say is for you all to not wear your sunglasses in the ocean - even if leaving them behind on the towel could damage your eyes and loss of SIGHT would be infinitely worse than a pair of sunglasses.
Re-evaluate your attachments. Realize that everything we have is liquid. Everything we have is relative and fragile and out of control. At any moment something and someone cherished can vanish.
It's best to prepare yourself for that somehow.
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