'The still hour of the sea's withdrawal'

'So beautiful is the still hour of the sea's withdrawal, as beautiful as the sea's return when encroaching waves pound up the beach, pressing to reach those dark rumpled chains of seaweed whichc mark the last high tide. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. we leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanence, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. The only real security is in not owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping even...

'Security in a relationship

lies neither in looking back

to what it was in nostalgia,

nor forward to what it might be

in dread or anticipation,

but living in the present relationship

and accepting it as it is now.'

By Anne Morrow Lindbergh, A Gift From the Sea

The above was given to Coppelia by a dear friend, and she meditated on these words almost daily. She knew the truth of them, believed them, but could not feel 'stillness'. Rather, a maelstrom - tossed and turned as the weeks passed. With him, without him, with him, without him. Alone, together. Lonely. Lonely. Lonely. Coppelia missed him dreadfully. Was this wanting to own someone? Or the human need for closeness, sharing, contact.

'Accepting it as it is now' ... how could she find a way to do this?