I stood on the soft white sand of the beach and tried to find the horizon, but the perfect blue of the sea matched the perfect blue of the sky so perfectly that there was no seam. In that moment I understood what it was to stand on the edge of great desert, or some vast Arctic waste, or some limitless plain filled with wheat where not a single scrap of human evidence had ever made itself known.
I stood there and knew that touching that loneliness was what I needed to vacate my mind of the doldrums of my existence, after punching time-clocks in cardboard cut-out offices and drinking, dancing, and drugging myself back into some semblance of sanity to do it all over again, after being trapped in that cycle that many of us in the developed world are prepared for from birth.
I was as close as a person could come to complete nothingness without leaving the planet, because that's what it was, in the end. It wasn't the breathtaking view, or the feeling that there were humans down there, somewhere, so small. No, it was the coming to grips with the total emptiness and loneliness of being alive. At the brink, there are only three choices: push forward into the void, retreat back into the known, or stand there, lost in the blinding purgatory of knowing.
First draft: 140516
Published: 230121