I woke up on Sunday with cheek to pillow, stomach on mattress. My spine sagged inwards like a broken tent. After rolling to my back, I was slowly roped out from my dreams by a buzz in my shoulder and neck.

I lay there, blank and fuzzy as stucco, under black eyelids with a red tint. Then came the first solid thought of the day. It was about my posture. My brain spawned an image of my naked body in front of a toothpaste spotted bathroom mirror, shoulders slumped, neck tipped forwards, two man boobs on top of one fat belly. I opened my eyes so the image would disappear.

My douvet was crumpled at my feet. On my bedside table was an empty bag of chips shaped like sea animals, an empty 2L water bottle, a Kindle, and a wooden bracelet from a Serbian monastery. There were also two inverted socks on the floor. An urge for my phone pulled my legs out of the sheet cacoon.

With no contacts or glasses, I squinted around for a blue pile on the living room floor. I found yesterday’s jeans puddled up next to the couch. The glass square of my phone was in the left pocket; the leather square of my wallet was at the back. I pressed the home button on my phone and stood in my boxers, watching one Snapchat of Yashar staring in the gym mirror and another Snapchat of Isaac stressed about finishing 600 more words in his law essay. Next I turned on my bluetooth speaker, skipped three songs on shuffle, and settled on Travis Scott’s “Astrothunder”. He repeated, “Seems like the life I need/ Seems like the life I need’s a little distant, yeah”. The music stirred nothing inside of me, so I turned it off. I decided to go outside. After pulling on some clothes and pulling my shoulders back in the elevator mirror, I walked past the Sunday bustle until the buildings were behind me.

Even though I’d been to the beach plenty of times, I expected it to be empty for some reason. I wished to hear only the wind and rotate my gaze across the rippling sand, watch the birds jumble over the shore, and stare at the ocean. However, the beach was not empty. It was packed. Packed with couples.

They were everywhere. Hordes of handholders poured down the walkway. Older couples were lounging on the grassy slope to the right. Younger couples were scattered on the mats to the left. Sandals in hand, I plodded towards the water to escape them all. But there were couples there as well, giggling whenever waves tickled their feet, holding out selfie sticks to capture the horizon slicing the background to their smiling faces.

I started walking along the beach, first on the loose sand, then on the sand that sticks to your feet. I looked at every person who passed me, but my focus was mainly on the black figures in the distance. They were near the water and they appeared at 100 meter intervals. Was it a washed up suitcase? No, it was a seaweed clump. Was it dead body? No, it was a seaweed clump. Was it a drenched suit jacket? No, it was a seaweed clump. Eventually, I trusted that all the black figures were seaweed clumps. I looked at the couples to see if they were looking at the clumps, trying to figure out what they were. They weren’t. They were holding hands and looking at each other.

Eventually, I reached a spill of rocks. I sat down, cupped my head in my hands, and stared at the waves. I hoped to have an uplifting realization. I’d been living close to the beach for over a year, so, visually, the sky and the water no longer inspired me. I decided to try closing my eyes and listening.

The ocean had a rhythm. My favorite part was the sound of the waves going back to the ocean. The fizzle reminded me of opening a bottle of pop or an amplified head scratch. I wanted this fizzling sound for longer but there was always a loud, crashing wave that spoiled it. Fizzle, crash, fizzle, crash. My thoughts circled excitedly around a potential epiphany like seagulls around spilled take-out. I concluded that quiet moments of realization and growth could only come after periods of confusion and loss. They could not be separated. This process could not be avoided.

I sat on the rock, enjoying the new depth in my life. The moment ended when I heard a man’s voice. I turned to see him holding out a phone. Noticing my confusion, he repeated his question, “Would you mind taking a picture of me and my girlfriend?” I felt a twinge of annoyance. Who bothers someone who’s sitting on a rock, staring out at the sea? But I was resolved to embrace everything in the world.

I said, OK, stepped down from the rock then got the phone from his outstretched hand. I took a couple steps back while his girlfriend told him to go on her other side. He smiled shyly at me. I smiled back. The thought of running away with his phone sparked in my head but I quickly extinguished it. Over the wind and waves, I counted them into the first picture, “3, 2, 1!” The man’s arm was around the woman’s shoulder. His smile looked like a rectangle. After the first picture, I stopped counting down and just kept pressing the shoot button while moving their bodies around the frame. I stopped when they started walking over to me. I handed back his phone and they both said thank you.

Before they could walk away, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and asked them to take a picture of me. The man gave me a quizzical look. “I just want a picture in front of the rocks,” I said with a tiny laugh. It was his girlfriend that answered, “Sure. No problem.”

I decided on a pose as I walked over to the rock. I wanted to do a serious, meditative look but, at the last second, I pushed out a rectangle smile. “One more!” the woman said. I turned my body slightly and cranked my neck to stare out to the ocean. “OK! Nice!” the woman said. When I trudged back across the sand to them, I avoided their eyes. The woman handed my phone back. I said thank you to both of them then walked back to the rock.

I tried to listen to the waves once again, but I was curious about the pictures they took. I took out my phone and opened the photos tab. The sun was on top of me, so I had to squint. As I predicted, the rectangle smile one was terrible. I thumbed to the next one, hoping for something Instagram worthy. But the ocean had none of its magic, the rocks looked dirty, and I had bad posture. I deleted both of them and turned to look at the couple. They were holding hands, resuming their romantic walk on the beach. And, as Sunday rolled on, I continued finding myself while they got lost in each other.