Someone Else's Ocean

by Kate Stewart

People are selfish with their pain, but not their anger. I got it. I’d lived through it.

“I mean, we are all just extras sipping coffee in the background of someone else’s life. But that could change at any second. If I wanted to, I could put my coffee down and become responsible for you. We are all responsible. We could all choose to take responsibility, couldn’t we? Human compassion. What the hell happened to that?”

THERE’S A NAME FOR HUMAN awareness and it’s called Sonder. The definition: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground. It’s a pocket in time, where you may redefine life by the idea of the struggle of others.

“You told me even if I was mad, or humiliated, or scared to have fun anyway.”

“I have no plans past today, and those are my plans tomorrow.”

“My psychiatrist used to tell me to fold my fears into fourths. To mentally write down what I was afraid of and memorize and recognize it for what it was and then treat it like a piece of paper and fold it in half and then fourths and so on until it was so small I could put it in my pocket and forget about it.”

Instead of continuing to live a life I couldn’t live, I chose me.”

And so, I’m here living someone else’s life, in someone else’s house staring at someone else’s ocean.”

I looked at him skeptically. “Making rounds all over the island?” He gave me a devilish grin. “But I’ll be coming home to you tonight.” My heart skipped an odd beat before he disappeared out the door.

what if there comes a time when I only have twenty minutes left. The answer was so simple.” “And what was it?” “Be simple and do whatever the hell it is you have to do to make yourself happy.” “I think you’re right.” Except I knew she was, I’d been living as a simpleton for months.

I swallowed. “I was thinking we could start our book club?” “Sure,” he said with a smirk, pulling my purse off my shoulder and tossing it on the couch behind me. “After.” “After?” “After,” he whispered, crushing me to his chest before capturing my mouth.

“Everyone is a glass house, it’s up to you to decide who to give the rocks to.”

“You really are the most…” his voice turned hoarse, “what’s inside of you is a heart that is dying to live, and your head is too afraid to let you do it fully, the way you deserve. It’s the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. You’re a prisoner of your own making.”

“The point is—I don’t believe in miracles, but I’m falling for mine.”

I was weeks away from thirty years old and had just found my first love. And my soulmate. But not my forever.

She was my golden shore after the shipwreck that was my life and she’d loved me with her whole heart, only to let me break it.

Love stories aren’t always perfect. They can wreak havoc on the heart and distort the soul. I’d gotten lost in love and found the reality at the end of it where I lived in the truth. Not all love stories come with happy endings.

Sometimes what’s meant to be isn’t written in the stars, instead, it’s a journey on the path less traveled without a map of guidance, without certainty.