Though it’s pitch black out and it’s been fifteen years since I’ve driven US Highway 158, my body remembers the rhythm of the road. 

Which is why, when I’m behind the wheel of my Mazda CX-5, flying down it one pitch-black October night—unplanned, exhausted, after a massive emotional breakdown earlier that day—I feel no fear.

I lower the windows a crack and breathe in.

I know this smell.

This is the smell of arrival.

—

Just hours earlier, I came undone.
Again.

I’m standing in a small gravel parking lot—a neutral location—watching my now ex-husband move our—my?—dog from his car to mine.

He has told me he’s no longer interested in watching the dog. He’s having trouble accepting the dog isn’t his anymore.

The dog, Toby.

What about me?

Once my dog and his things are in my car, my ex turns and walks back to his. Wordless.

I say, “So… do you want me to, like, call you if he’s sick or… dead?” 

Without stopping or looking at me, my ex throws up his hands.

“I dunno, man. He’s not my dog anymore.”

He’s in his car and driving away before I even make it to my driver’s seat.

I sit.

And sob.

And drive home.

I see my only friend in the neighborhood walking down the street.

I roll down the window.
“Emily! Get in the car.”

We go to my house.

In my living room, I fall apart.

“This isn’t working,” I cry. “I can’t keep doing this—whatever ‘this’ is.”

“It’s not working,” she affirms.

I want to run.

“The flight response is a real thing, Alli,” she says. “It’s trying to protect you from something.”

I schedule an emergency session with my therapist.

“I’m doing all the things,” I tell her. “I’m journaling. I’m working out. I’m talking to you. I’m eating well. I’m focusing on sleep. Breathwork. Sauna. Cold plunge.”

But also—

I’m doing what I do when my own life gets too hard to look at—

I find someone else to obsess about.

And that person is completely unavailable.

Which means they can never leave me.

Because they were never mine to begin with.

But God, it feels good to be wanted.

And God, does it hurt to not be chosen.
Again.

My therapist tells me grief takes time—to trust the process.

“FUCK THE FUCKING PROCESS,” I snap.

We’ve been working on core beliefs.

My assignment for the week was to write down the negative thoughts I carry about myself.

I filled two pages.

In short:

I don’t matter.
I’m easy to leave.

“Do you believe that’s true?” she asks.

“Let’s look at the fucking data,” I say. “My husband left me. The other—”

She cuts in.

“He didn’t leave you, Alli. Your husband did.”

My husband left me.

He just left.

Again.

I freeze.

I hear a whisper—My Unlikely Friend:

The universe is going to keep teaching you the same lesson over and over again. 

What is the lesson?

And then, quieter—

a voice I’ve gotten very good at muting:

Stop abandoning yourself.

“What do I do?” I choke.

“Sometimes you just have to choose,” she says.

“Choose what?!” I snap.

“You choose that you don’t want to do this anymore.”

I don’t want to do this anymore.

The session ends.

What is “this”?

I panic.

The urge to run floods my body.

I hear Emily’s voice:

The flight response is real, Alli. It’s trying to protect you.

I hear my own:

You cannot run from your problems.

But I know—
I can’t stay here.
It is not safe to be here by myself.

I have to go.

But I pause.
I lie down on the floor.

Three minutes, I tell myself.
Like the cold plunge.

Stay.

See if it passes.

See if you’re safe enough to stay.

I wait.

Three minutes pass.

I’m not.

I get up and throw things into a bag.

I grab Toby’s food, leash, bowls, bed.

I toss it all in the trunk, get Toby into the back seat, and get in the car.

I don’t know where we’re going.

But I know I can’t stay here.

It’s not safe.

We head south.

I-95.
A fucking hellscape.

No music.
I just stare straight ahead.

My mind is numb.

We keep going.

An hour in we pass Quantico.

“FUCK YOU,” I yell.

“Where the FUCK are we going, Toby?” I ask my dog.

He glances at me from the back seat.

“I have no fucking idea, mom,” I answer for him.
“What the fuck are we doing?”

“I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.”

We keep going.

Ten minutes outside of Richmond, I decide I’m not going there—where my dad lives.

I don’t want to talk to anyone.
I don’t want to explain.

South Carolina? To my mom?

Too far.

Eventually, I pull off into a shopping center south of Virginia Beach.

I walk Toby in a thin strip of grass—the kind that always feels like it might be hiding broken glass or shards of metal. Not safe.

I pop open the back of my Mazda CX-5 and feed him dinner.

Then I sit on the edge of the trunk.

The sun has almost set.

When he finishes, I put him back in the car and walk into a nearby Starbucks.

I come back with a plastic cup of water and the only food they have left—a breakfast wrap.

I sit in the driver’s seat and unwrap it.

I take a bite.

I hold it in my mouth as tears start to fall down my cheeks.

What am I doing? 

I should just go home.

Home to what?

I am so alone.

I chew.
I swallow.

I take another bite.

It’s too far to go back.

I reach for the water and take a sip.

I finish the wrap.

I pull out my phone.

Airbnb.

I type, seemingly out of nowhere
Corolla, NC.

Three days.

Booked.

I plug in my phone, start the car, turn on some music, and follow the signs I know. 

But I don’t need them.

Growing up, my mom or dad would drive this road every summer—for nearly twenty years.

We’d pass fields of soy and corn, roadside tomato stands. 

We always stopped at one in particular—Tommy’s—for tubs of peaches, pints of tomatoes, and a bathroom break before the final stretch.

I’d settle back into our gray Honda Accord—or, after my brother arrived, our blue Dodge Caravan—and return to whatever book I was devouring at the time.

Not long after, we’d hit the curve—the slight left banking bend that carries you across the only bridge over the Currituck Sound to the barrier islands beyond—the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Our yearly trips included a group of very close family friends—chosen family—and started in the late 1980s. We stayed on the north side, by the end of the road—when there were only six houses within view from the deck and wild horses would wander into your driveway.

We packed coolers to feed ourselves for the week because there were no grocery stores on island. 

We ate orange French toast, cream-cheese swirled brownies, picked crabs on the screened-in porch.

I’d pull all the marshmallows out of the Lucky Charms just to piss off the younger kids.

I’d post up in a beach chair, reading and reading. Then, when I became of “beach drinking age,” I’d lie on my stomach on my raft on the sand, listening to my Discman—Bob Marley, Legend—watching condensation bead and drip down the side of my bottle of Corona, leaving a little trail behind, the waves just beyond.

At night, I mostly hung with the grown-ups—too old to be with the kids, too young, really, to be with them. I was somewhere in between.

I’d help with the puzzle, play cards, or lie on the couch—my sun-kissed skin still warm as it radiated into the living room—listening to our soundtrack drift from cassettes or a six-disc CD changer: Bobby McFerrin, Jimmy Buffett, James Taylor, Hootie and the Blowfish, Van Morrison.

I’d anxiously await the trip every year, laying out shorts, T-shirts, bathing suits, toiletries, the three books I’d undoubtedly finish in a week’s time—and, most importantly, the all-black outfit I’d wear for “Water Balloons.”

“Water Balloons” was an intense annual covert mission orchestrated by my dad, an Army veteran, whose father—my grandfather, an artillery officer and West Point graduate—served in Korea and Vietnam advising on combat tactics, living side by side with Taiwanese artillery units in cave positions and later among Montagnards in Pleiku, working on night-vision and infrared systems before finishing his career with the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Needless to say, we were bred for this op.

Every year, after dinner—once the “kids” had gone to bed—my dad would gather the other dads (all veterans themselves) and me.

We’d change into our all-black gear and head up to the top deck of whatever beach house we were renting—a large, open deck being a non-negotiable in our rental criteria—with a bucket of water balloons and a very large sling.

And then we’d peg the shit out of neighboring houses.

We took our time. I’d be coached by those more senior to me on lefts and rights, height, angle, tension—dialing it in—often perfectly nailing kitchen windows and sliding glass doors.

It was in our DNA, after all.

We never fired from higher than a crouch. After each launch, we’d hit the deck, trying not to laugh as neighbors inevitably unlocked their recently pegged sliding glass doors, stepped outside, and looked around, wondering what had just happened—an excellent opportunity for round two if you could aim while lying belly-down on the top deck of a beach house.

We could.

And we could do it drunk, like any good servicemember.

But in my training years, I was the only sober one in the bunch. I was in middle school, after all. We’re not savages.

One time, a neighbor came to knock on our door.

My dad abandoned his post, darted inside, through the darkened living room, and answered the door himself.

“No, I have no idea!” he said. “Water balloons? Must be some kids in another house.”

He may or may not have returned immediately to his post and launched another balloon directly at the man as he walked away.

I couldn’t tell you.

It was a covert mission, after all.

I don’t have intel on that.

That was before.

Now, we’re grown.
Two of the families divorced—including mine.

One is dead.
My second mom.
Cancer.

—

The Outer Banks of North Carolina sit at a convergence—where the currents of the Currituck Sound meet the Atlantic Ocean, collide, and reshape the coastline again and again.

An area known for shipwrecks and rip currents.
Large, unpredictable waves shaped by shifting sandbars.
Unguarded, exposed coastlines.
Relentless storms.

This is where I learned about water.
This is where I learned about respect.

This is where I learned how to read currents.
How to ride waves.

And above all else—

no matter how much skill, how much strength, how much preparation—

you are not in charge.

Never turn your back on the ocean.

She will always win.

Here, I got really good at water.

But I was never in control of it.

This was the water in which my parents would take me out to where the waves broke. We’d stand facing the oncoming waves. They’d hold my hands, one on either side of me, and ask, “Over or under, Alli? Over or under?”

It was up to me—I was six or seven—to decide: was this a wave we could jump and rise above, or one we needed to duck under or get pummeled?

Over or under?

They never told me which was correct. I had to decide on my own.

If I chose to jump and we got pummeled, we got pummeled—whacked in the face, salt water up the nose, tossed under. Tumbling. No choice at that point—you couldn’t fight it. You had to let the ocean take you until she released you—sometimes slammed onto the ocean floor, scraped up by shells, scrambling to get your footing. By the time you stood up, your hair would be in your eyes, water still up your nose, bathing suit halfway off, coughing.

And you had to do it facing towards her.

Because there was always another wave coming.

In those moments, I understood:

This was a wave I should have gone under.

This was the water where I learned to boogie board.

I was taken out past the first set of breakers, to the place where I couldn’t stand.

Lying on our boards, my dad would coach me.

Look over your shoulder.

Is this a wave to ride or a wave to let pass?

He’d tell me when to start kicking.

Kick, kick—faster, faster.

He’d tell me when to stop and let the wave take you in.

I understood:

Look.
Assess.
Decide.
Work.
Let go.

Once, I rode a wave in and got knocked off my board close to shore.

I tumbled and tumbled, not knowing which way was up.

Something landed on top of me and I gasped—lungs filling with air. Someone and their board had slid onto me, pinning me between them and the ocean floor.

I was stuck.

I couldn’t breathe.

Eventually, they got up. I got up.

Coughing. Hair in my eyes. Board still dangling from my wrist. Shell-sand stuck in my bathing suit, scrapes across my back, a bathing suit strap hanging off. Blinking rapidly until I could see again. 

“Nice ride, kiddo,” my dad said.

This was the water where my dad stood with me on the shore and pointed to the uneven patterns in the waves—a stretch of flatter water pushing outward, with waves breaking inward along its edges.

“A rip current,” he said.

“If you get caught in one, don’t fight it. You’ll get exhausted and you’ll be in danger. Let it take you out. Eventually it will stop. Then swim parallel to the shore and back in. You’ll be okay.”

I understood:

If you fight it, you get pulled under.

If you work with it, you make it back.

The ocean at the Outer Banks is always shifting. Sometimes the ocean floor itself would shift, and sandbars would emerge.

On those days, I had a choice.

I could take my boogie board out past where I could stand, climb up onto the sandbar, and attempt the incredibly difficult task of finding and catching a wave strong enough to carry me through the gentle water and into the next break toward shore—masterful!

Or I could grab my favorite raft and drift in the calmer section, belly down, hands stacked like a pillow, head turned to one side, eyes closed.

Just floating.

Just trusting.

One time I fell asleep on my raft and drifted quite far—taken by what seemed like a gentle current. No one came to stop me. No one came to save me.

I woke up an unknown amount of time later.

I lifted my head, looking around, unsure how far I’d gone.

I had no idea where I was or how long I had been asleep.

But I didn’t panic. 

I just slipped off the raft, grabbed it by the cord, waded ashore, and started walking back to where I came from, knowing eventually I would find my way back.

—

When I met my now ex-husband, I broke my two dating rules: no long-distance, and no military.

He was active-duty Coast Guard, living in Hawaii.
I was in Maryland.

But I remember the exact moment I saw him—and it took less than 36 hours for those rules to disappear.

He had been friends with some of my closest friends for a decade.
His mom raised golden retrievers.

He was safe.

We met at our mutual friend Laura’s rehearsal dinner. 

I asked my friend Katie, “How come no one told me how hot he is???”

The next day, at the reception, he and I sat next to each other at dinner.

We danced.
We laughed.
I wore his tie.

I spent the night with him.

I straddled him in the hotel bed as I pulled endless bobby pins out of my done-up hair.

I’d do the same thing the night of our wedding.

I kept those bobby pins in a small blue Tiffany’s jewelry bag. They moved with us everywhere we went for ten years.

I threw them away six months ago.

But at the beginning, I knew very quickly he was the man I was going to marry.

“Mom,” I told her a week after we met, “he’s the one.”

Too bad he was in the Coast Guard. I’d figure it out. I always did. I was strong. I was capable.

And it was the Coast Guard, after all. He’d never see combat, and we’d always be near the water.

It will be fine.

I remember the first time we went to the beach together—just weeks after we met.

Hawaii. Paradise.

We pulled into an empty parking lot somewhere along the North Shore.

We climbed out of his grey Honda Civic. I slipped off my bathing suit cover-up and handed him a bottle of sunscreen, so self-conscious.

Do I look okay?
Am I pretty enough?
Will he like me enough?

I remember the feeling of his hands on my back as he rubbed in the sunscreen. The heat of the tropical sun on my skin. The sound of waves in the background.

Can you just keep applying sunscreen forever? I thought.

Please don’t stop touching me.

We grabbed our bags and walked out onto the sand.

I did what I had always done.

Set down my towel.
Dropped my stuff.

And walked straight to the water’s edge.

And I kept walking.

“Hey,” he shouted. “Don’t go out. It’s too rough.”

I turned to look at him.

Then back at the waves.

But I know this, I thought.

“It’s different here!” he said.

“OK,” I said, stopping, letting the unfamiliar tropical Pacific waves brush against my shins.

He knows better. He lives here.

He’s in the Coast Guard. His job is emergency management.

He’s trying to keep me safe.

A few tours later, we’d live in Hawaii together.

And as soon as we got there, he left.

Between hurricane responses, trainings, and oil spills, he was gone half of that first year.

“It’s fine, babe,” I chirped. “I mean, if you’re going to leave me, you might as well leave me near an ocean.”

They say the Hawaiian waters are deeply healing. It’s beautiful. It’s paradise.

But those waters weren’t mine.

And my favorite beaches became the ones without waves.

—

I’ve felt this before— the overwhelming urge to flee.

I don’t remember what caused it.

But I remember the feeling.

I’m sitting on our bed in Hawaii.
Head in my hands.

Shaking.

Something’s not right.

This is bad.

I don’t know what this is—
but I can feel it.

And we’re on an island.

Three thousand miles from the closest piece of land.

The most isolated archipelago in the world.

It’s the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is literally impossible to leave.

So I sit.

And I stay.

And I make it work.

I don’t leave.

Because I can’t.

—

And now I’m standing in a grey condo—because everything is grey these days. Like no one can make a fucking decision, so we all just stay in the neutral middle—at 9:30 at night with my dog looking at me with his what the fuck, is this okay? ears.

We are blocks from some of the places that hold the best memories of my life.

And I’m divorced.
Heartbroken.
Unemployed.
Deeply, deeply depressed.

And, as my therapist would want me to say out loud:

I am hurting.
I am scared.

I am so scared.

I fill the condo’s tiny bathtub with water. I pull off my clothes and slide in—contorted, not quite fitting, not quite not.

Toby walks in and curls up on the bathmat.

I wash my face.
I close my eyes.

I have no idea how much time passes before I get out, dry off, slip on my pajamas, and go to sleep.

—

I wake up in the morning with no plan. 

What am I going to do?

Start simple:
Eat.

I can do that. 

I put Toby in the car. I can’t leave him. 

I drive across the street to the bagel place. I walk in and stare at the menu. 

My regular order is an everything bagel with eggs—for protein. 

When I was younger I used to get a blueberry bagel with cream cheese.

I stare at the menu. 

I should get the eggs. 

I let someone cut ahead of me in line. 

I’m still staring.

I order a toasted blueberry bagel with cream cheese and a large coffee. I walk back to the car. 

I drive to a beach access point. I get out of the car. I grab my bagel, coffee, Toby. 

I follow the walkway to the stairs, up to the top of the dunes—

and we both stop. 

Instinctual.

The ocean stretches to our left, to our right, far ahead. 

Its vastness is breathtaking, always. 

The wind whips. 

I close my eyes. 

I take a breath in.

“Yes…” I say out loud.

We had arrived.

—

I had no plans those three days.

I just did what felt right next.

In the mornings, I ate blueberry bagels with cream cheese on the beach.

At night, I sat at the bar, ate local oysters—better, I learned, where the brackish water meets the sea—drank white wine, and talked to strangers.

I met a hot barista who gave Toby his first pup cup.

I drove north to the end of the road and stared out at the sand beyond, where the pavement just… stopped.

I went to an open house—a two-bedroom cottage. Blue. Recently remodeled. If I used every single dollar I had to my name, I could afford the down payment. 

I drove south one afternoon to find a place to watch the football game—my team. 

It was on. Upstairs. Outside.

I could bring my dog.

I love it here.

It was getting late my last night in the Outer Banks, and I hadn’t had dinner yet.

I grabbed my keys and wallet, told Toby I’d be back soon, and headed to the grocery store.

But I didn’t end up at the grocery store.

I ended up in a beachside public parking lot as the light drained from the sky, the sun setting low behind the sound.

All the houses were dark—except one. A big house, cars filling the driveway.

A group, I imagined. Chosen family.

I should look out for water balloons.

I slipped off my shoes and left them in the car.

I followed the walkway to the stairs, up and over the dunes, and down onto the sand.

I walked straight to the water’s edge.

I stood and stared.

Waves forming, rising—white crests curling forward into a crash, then retreating, leaving a thin gloss across the sand like a mirror.

Always moving. Arriving. Retreating.

I looked left.
I looked right.

No one.

Just footprints and tire tracks pressed into the cold sand.

Am I safe here?

I turned and looked back toward the setting sun. The sky had gone deep blue, clouds hanging dark and still.

The one house glowed in the distance.

I turned and started to walk.

One foot in front of the other.

Cold sand under my feet. Cold air on my skin. The sound of the waves.

I followed the tire tracks—perfectly preserved, every groove held in the damp sand—though it was unclear where they came from or where they were going.

I started to cry.

I could taste the salt as tears ran down my cheeks and onto my lips.

I kept walking.

Where am I going?

I am so alone.

Eventually, I turned back.

But when I reached the place where I had to turn toward the stairs, I stopped.

I don’t know why.

I turned and faced the ocean.

I took a deep breath in, the tracks of tears on my cheeks turning cold.

I stood there for a long time.

“Please,” I finally whispered.

“Please help me. I am so alone.”

My throat tightened. My brow furrowed. I pressed my lips together as another wave of tears slipped down my cheeks.

I closed my eyes.

I stood there and let it move through me.

Breathing.
Listening.
Waiting.

And then—

everything went still.

Everything softened.

I opened my eyes.

Looked out at the ocean.

And I heard—

You’re not alone.

I’ve always been here, Alli.

Welcome home.