She is the Island, and the Island is her.

Five years old, watching the ripples of water in her bath sparkle and shine, like they held the treasure that she couldn't ever quite reach. Heartbreak is not a word understood but a Promise made from the moment she breathed her first. The inevitability of a heart shattered, but unlike glass there will be no fragments of light to cascade across the tiny prisms where her wholeness once existed.

This will be better for her.

In the shine of the Sun, she is nine, basking in it's warmth. Lazy days spent lying in the grass, watching the willow switches dance back and forth with the breeze. The Sun, gazing upon the girl with love of a thousand stars, and the girl laughs as Grandmother Willow tickles her toes with her branches, weaving love as deep rooted as the willow itself.

She will be stronger for this.

In the cold and damp, she is twelve. The Sun, now partially eclipsed by an onerous Moon, and the once protective willow branches are too far to offer the unconditional protection they once promised. Hair plastered to her face, she finds her way home to Giggles, the only non-transactional love she feels. Despite the gift of new beginnings, she finds herself time again in the same dead end of loneliness and self-loathing, never able to escape.

She simply can't see where she fits.

The cold winter night wraps itself around her tears, freezing her heart. The Sun, nowhere to be seen at fifteen, has now been swallowed behind the Moon. Plunking change into a payphone like a wishing well, she gingerly presses each number as if one mistake might reroute her life entirely. The dial tone hums, patient and indifferent, and for a moment she wonders whether hope is louder before it's answered, or after. Her sole light, a lamppost, illuminating the moment where she reaches for new roots, only to be eclipsed by the same obdurate Moon that had taken the Sun.

She learns to disappear without leaving.

Summer nights at twenty-two, she sits by the Ocean, listening to the water. Her feet at the shoreline, she marvels at the gentle waves brushing her ankles, unaware of the strength beneath it - the quiet force that threatens to pull her under. She was conditioned to believe that if she moved with the Ocean, bended to it's will,  it would not consume her; that it would carry her through it's unpredictable waters towards the Island she felt drawn to. When she recognizes that reaching it carries the very real possibility of drowning, she grabs hold of a piece of Driftwood as it passes by, pulling her, by the heart, to a stronger tomorrow that waits for her back on land. For a moment, she is no longer gasping for air. She allows herself, briefly, to imagine a future that does not ask her to force the pieces of her puzzle into spaces that were never meant for them. She glances back at the Island that seems to be calling out in distress, like it needs her or it will be swallowed whole. The Ocean shifts it's tide once more, and, without realizing, she lets go of the Driftwood, following the sound of a faint drum that no one can hear - something unseen, binding her to her tomorrows.

Left with less inside of her, she grieves for something she is never allowed to miss.

She learns how to exist in the in-between. The Ocean settles around her, it's surface a shifting mirror of the sky and shadow. The tides still tug at her direction, unpredictable but never cruel. It provides her a raft to lie upon, and she floats suspended between worlds - not ashore, yet no longer fully lost. Clouds drift past like whispered memories, giving what she cannot grieve the name of responsibility, loyalty, love - anything but loss. Time stretches, thin and liquid, and she beings to feel the quiet shaping of her own heart. 

She closes her eyes and lets the raft carry her, letting the once volatile Ocean cradle her doubts, her grief, her unspoken desires. The rhythm of the waves becomes a pulse beneath her, a reminder that she is moving forward even when she cannot see the shore. She surrenders to the liminal space, discovering who she might be meant to be while flowing with the tides, each moment teaching patience, each swell shaping resilience. 

This is the place where waiting is not empty, but sacred. Here, she is neither fractured nor whole. She is twenty-three, she is twenty-four, she is twenty-five, until one day, she finally sets her feet upon solid ground.

With sweat-drenched skin, she is twenty-six, listening to that same Ocean lap at the shore of the Island. No longer treacherous and unsafe, the Ocean protects her softly and gently, the waves whispering all the promises she once dreamed of hearing, knowing them to be unequivocally true. A new Sun rises fully, the Moon's shadow finally retreating. She holds the echo of her past to her heart, letting sorrow give way to Hope. Every version of herself ceases to exist in that moment, making space for new growth and compassion towards the person she was, and the one she is becoming. Heartbreak will hold no place in this newfound Hope the way it did for her, because she will always be the lamppost. As she digs her toes into the sand, she feels for the new roots she expects to be there, but instead feels only herself and the touch of Hope.

She is the Sun. She is the Roots. She is the Island, and the Island is her.