How A Crab Loses Her Shell

People can find you along the way—some of which you’d rather never see again. Perhaps there was a time where they did hold a special place in your life, but their presence unfortunately has run its course like a road that used to be beautiful, but now is worn down with too much debris to be able to walk comfortably through.  But then there are other times when you meet someone, if you are lucky more than a few someones, and you feel like your soul may have found a missing piece.  You finally feel warmed from the inside out and are shocked that it took the universe so long to introduce you in the first place.  But maybe that was the whole point because this version of you only exists now and the other ones, the one that was immature, or had certain lofty ideals, wouldn’t have understood the new friends that you now hope stay in your life for the rest of it.

This has been on my mind ever since we arrived in Mexico two weeks ago, but what is different on this trip is that I feel like I’m actually going home.  And maybe that’s because I’m finally coming out of my shell. Cautiously peaking through the rough exterior to allow my soft underbelly a chance to blossom in this new world.  My sign is a cancer if you don’t already know, so I am a someone who feels things maybe a bit too deeply sometimes, which can cause cuts to sting and burn.  When this happens I sneak back into my shell, preferring the calm confines of my walls than the harsh realities of the world.

I began to think about the why in all of this over sips of tequila with someone whose birthday is only a day after my own.  We are both cancers, we discovered through a smile as the tequila settled itself, warm and rosy, over our minds.

We went to brunch the next day, a bit bleary eyed from the night before, but we both remembered our conversation and recounted it like you do when the alcohol copies and pastes the night’s highlights, but you need the full story and that can only come about with a combined rehashing.  We remembered conversing about our shared signs and the she did something that surprised me, she gave me the necklace she was wearing, I gripped the thin chain in my hand and watched as the gold pendant caught the sunlight.  My eyes instantly teared up when I realized the pendant had a small crab engraved in the metal. The symbol of the cancer sign.

I would have done something so similar, I thought at the time, if I had such a necklace to give.  I’ve talked about how difficult it really is to make friends as an adult, in another country no less, and I finally feel like I have begun to tiptoe outside my comfort zone.  But that does make a kind of sense doesn’t it?  Where else would a crab come out of her shell if it wasn’t by an ocean?   I find that I have become vulnerable as my shell melts itself away and I can’t help but to wonder how long it will all last until I harden again.  Will it be on the plane, flying home, or will it be Monday morning, getting ready for a day where I do a lot of pretending?  I suspect it will slowly happen over that five hour drive from Dallas to Fayetteville when reality really punches me in the head for what the next few months will inevitably entail. But then I will be back in Mexico before I know it, on the beach, and that hard shell will melt away again because this is my home now, not because I permanently live here yet, but because my heart begins to sing a warm, cheerful tune whenever I hear the ocean waves, walk the fifth avenue, share a bottle of wine with new best friends and the buzzing in my head finally quiets down.