I
could taste the salt in the air. The breeze it floated on getting stronger by
the second. The tide slowly creeping up around the rocks I sat on. My
classmates and new found friends surrounded me, all of us silent, our minds in
our own thoughts.
We
were sitting amongst the thousands of natural octagonal stones that rest in
Northern Ireland making up what is known as The Giant’s Causeway. Easily one of
the most beautiful sights I’ve seen. But, being there it can become
overwhelming. As I crawled over the stones and put my hands in the water I
began to wonder how many hands have done the same thing. How many people had
sat in this same spot and taken in the beauty? Surely a place this old has seen
more action than a hundred college kids that happened to be assaulting it
today. This was a place that fights erosion every day. To it we were just mere
pimples on a non-important day.
Sitting as far out as the peninsula would
allow I turned to look back at the causeway and suddenly I was a speck. I was
an insignificant being made of water, blood, and organs disguised as a
fashionable twenty-year old girl sent here to bring her ego back down to size.
How many people, just like me, had questioned there existence in this world?
As
I sat on those rocks that were at least two thousand years old, and would
certainly be there long after me I wondered about my life and how I had made it
here to this whole other country with people I’d never met and my life began
playing back like a home movie.
When
I was five I said my first cuss word. In the second grade I made my first
“real” friend. Then when I was nine my sister moved away to college and left me
by myself at night upstairs for the first time. I lost a best friend when I was
ten because I refused to grow up too fast. In the seventh grade I was the only
girl in my class without boobs, and in the ninth grade I belonged to my first
mean girl group.
These
pieces of my life swirled around my mind like leaves picked up by the wind.
Memories that I had tucked away suddenly brought back by the magnificence of
the causeway.
This
trip came at a great time. What I needed was 2 ½ weeks in a different country
six hours ahead of anyone who would want to talk to me. I needed a break. After
several failed attempts at relationships trying to forget one I couldn’t, I
needed time alone. My friends, no matter how much I love them, were drinking
every night and I couldn’t take it anymore. Life had to offer something else
besides beer.
Somewhere
between the drinking every night and terrible break up I had gained 30 pounds,
an issue I had no idea how to reverse. I was the biggest I had ever been and I
never wanted to leave my house. I wasn’t fit for the human eye. Looking in the
mirror I saw Pooh Bear with his honey jar.
Suddenly,
this rock held all the answers. I am Abbi-Storm, and I would work hard and have
the life I wanted. If this rock out here in the middle of nowhere Ireland could
survive all these years then I could survive my life.
I
could handle the countless rejections. I could handle the constant drinking,
and dammit I could handle my weight. This rock had given me a strength that no
one else in my life had been able to do.
Maybe
it wasn’t just that particular rock. Maybe it was the causeway or maybe it was
all of Ireland, but I was empowered. My life was going to change and I was
going to be the one who made it.
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