American Beach

I didn’t come to the beach to heal.

I came to get away — from everything, from everyone, especially myself. Florida wasn’t the plan. It just happened to be far enough to feel unfamiliar and quiet enough not to ask questions. The flight was cheap, the motel was cheaper, and the ocean? That part was free.

The first morning, I walked down to the shore before sunrise. No tourists. No vendors. No loud music or neon swimsuits. Just gray skies, tired waves, and a stretch of soft, untouched sand that didn’t care who I was or why I was there.

I didn’t plan to stay long. Just five minutes. A quick breath before retreating to a diner or the corner of my motel bed. But something about the way the water moved that morning — soft, steady, like it had all the time in the world — made me stop.

So I sat.

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No towel. No sunscreen. No purpose. Just me, in jeans and old sneakers, cross-legged in the sand like a misplaced puzzle piece.

I thought about nothing and everything at once. About mistakes I’d made. People I’d lost. Things I wasn’t ready to say out loud yet. The ocean didn’t answer. It didn’t judge. It just kept coming and going, like it had long before me and would long after.

“Mind if I sit?”

I turned. A girl — teenager, maybe early twenties — stood a few feet away. Barefoot, hoodie too big, tangled hair like seaweed. She looked like she belonged to the beach in a way I didn’t.

“Sure,” I said.

She dropped down beside me like we were old friends.

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We didn’t speak for a while. Just watched the tide crawl in, soft and slow. Then she said, casually, “I come here when things suck.”

It wasn’t deep or poetic. But it landed in my chest like a truth I hadn’t spoken yet.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

She didn’t ask what sucked. I didn’t ask her either. That was part of the agreement — the unspoken understanding that we were both hiding and showing up at the same time.

She talked a little. About her brother, who used to bring her here before he left town. About how silence was easier by the water. I told her a few things too. About the job I quit. About how some people leave without ever actually walking away.

It wasn’t therapy. It was something quieter.

A stranger beside you on a quiet beach. No pressure to be fine. No pressure to explain.

---

After a while, she stood, brushing sand off her legs.

“You coming back tomorrow?”

I hadn’t planned on it. But I nodded. “Yeah. Probably.”

She smiled. “Cool. I’ll be here.”

And then she walked away, like the tide — soft, steady, without looking back.

---

I came back the next day. And the next.

Sometimes she was there. Sometimes she wasn’t.

Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we just sat.

Sometimes we laughed. Once, I cried.

We never exchanged names. Never needed to.

There’s something freeing about being known in a moment, not in a biography. Something gentle about not having to explain your whole story to someone who doesn’t expect it.

---

On my last morning, she wasn’t there.

That felt right, somehow. Not every story needs an ending.

I sat in the same spot and let the sun warm my face. I listened to the waves like I always had — not for answers, but for rhythm.

Before I left, I picked up a stick and wrote one word in the sand.

“Still.”

Still trying.

Still here.

Still open to whatever comes next.

And then I walked away.

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💬 Final Thought:

American Beach wasn’t a destination.

It was a pause. A breath.

A place that didn’t ask me to be okay — just to show up.

And that was enough.