Waves.

She sat staring at the ever expanding ocean in front of her. This spot never seemed to grow weary of her. She bent her legs and brought them into her body, indian-style. From there she chose a pebble that had found it's home next to her right pinky toe.

Turning it over and over in her left palm and then in her right, she contemplated it's shape. It's texture. It's sturdiness. 

Caught in the trance of the pebble, she didn't think of her own shape. Her own texture. Her own sturdiness. 

She was out of shape. Not in the way that someone refuses to exercise or put down the slice of cake. She had spent so long in someone else's shadow, that she never emerged as her own person. Her own being.

As far as texture was concerned, she felt as though the glossy life she had created for herself was marked. Littered with foot prints, and candy wrappers, and unwanted hours spent with people she didn't even like. It wasn't her life, she breathed. It wasn't the life she planned for herself.

And sturdiness? She almost laughed. A full belly laugh that would have consumed the small slice of beach she had wandered upon, and swallowed it whole. 

She lost her sturdiness when she lost him.

Standing up, she felt the pebble slip from her hand.

As though the pebble was her connection to what she had lost, she picked it up once again, kissed it's small, smooth surface and threw it into the waves.

Turning, leaving - she knew this was not the end. 

It was the beginning.