April 28, 2025
I didn’t expect to become a beach person. When I was a child, every winter my family drove down to Florida, and I despised the idea of going. I’ve never felt drawn to the idea of lying around in the sun, doing nothing while being sticky with sweat and surrounded by other people. But in Florianópolis, Brazil, that changed.
It was warm, like astoundingly warm, and from the start, I was going to the beach alone. Even though I was there with my best friend, I didn’t care for a towel buddy or even a book. It was just me, the sand, and the ocean as the soundscape. The sun pressed down on me with no forgiveness. My skin would always burn, and my arms would be stuck in the sand. My mouth felt dry, and everything I touched was either gritty or wet. I could feel the salt on my lips, and I tasted it in my teeth for hours after leaving. It was slightly uncomfortable, but not horrible. When my mouth was too dry to ignore, I’d hear the bell of a vendor and get an açaí bowl. It was perfectly cold, purple, and sweet. And I’d eat it slowly, feeling the contrast of the sun still beating down on me while the cold smoothie quenched my every need.
At first, it felt strange. I still didn’t understand the idea of just lying on the ground for hours, and I felt like I was forgetting something. But there just wasn’t anything I had to do. I never really swam in the ocean, took pictures, or chatted with someone. I would just lay there for hours. Sometimes, there was a chance I’d walk into the ocean only when the heat became unbearable, but I would submerse myself for no more than a minute or two before coming back to lie down again. I would let the air dry my skin while the sun baked the water off my back. The rhythm of it was repetitive and quiet, and it transformed into a ritual.
No one was talking to me, and I didn’t speak. I just listened to the crashing waves, the wind moving the palm trees above me, and felt the occasional piles of sand pelting against my ankles when the breeze changed. That stillness did something to my thoughts. Things felt less tangled when I wasn’t trying to make sense of them and the space to just think, and to think without an agenda, felt meditative. There was a kind of peaceful simplicity to those days. My needs were basic and clear: sun, water, rest. It was amazing and it was like remembering who I am when there’s no one to perform for. And I wasn’t lonely, I was just alone.
Solitude gets talked about like it’s a problem to solve, or something to escape. But I didn’t feel the need to escape anything in Florianópolis. I wasn’t overwhelmed or hurt or hiding. I was quiet, but not quiet in a sad way. It was more like I had finally turned the volume down. Like I was making room for thoughts I usually don’t let in, allowing me to interrogate complex theories that need time to be thought about.
What I learned in those hours was that the stillness isn’t passive. I started noticing the texture of the sand, how it felt against my shoulder blades. I noticed how my breathing changed after I swam, how my skin smelled different after being in salt water. I thought about my life back home, but it didn’t weigh me down, and I didn’t long for it either. I didn’t need to fix anything or figure anything out. I just had to stay present long enough to let things settle.
That time didn’t give me any big revelations. But it gave me something slower and probably more useful, a better understanding of what it means to be with myself. Just to sit in the moment and let it be uncomfortable or simple or boring or beautiful. Now, when I think about solitude, I don’t think about silence or sadness. I think about the taste of salt, the sound of wind in trees, and that sharp relief of something cold when you’ve been under the sun too long. I think about what it means to feel so miniscule without feeling lost and to feel alone without feeling disconnected. I think about how much there is to notice when nothing is demanding your attention. And I know I transformed the most from my time in Florianópolis, but it didn’t make me a new person. It just gave me space to notice who I already was.
