It started when the sand between my toes would not go away. The beach was packed as it always was during the summer, even though rain was expected later that afternoon. We all wanted to soak up some last crumbs of sunlight I guess, go home with sea-soaked hair and cozy up in a blanket and a cup of tea with the storm roaring outside. I got her one of those seashell bracelets, though she lost it after an hour or so of walking around. We went our separate ways afterwards, her saying something about her city feet, me wondering if I should talk to her again and never having the guts to do so.

Every morning, I’d slip into my velcro Sketchers–a new day meant a new kid at camp exclaiming over my sparkly, dirt-dusted shoes and about a dozen judgemental stares from adolescent boys. By the time I got to the end of the driveway, the grains of sand would have invaded the crevices between my toes. For the sake of professionalism, I’d wait until break to scurry behind the nearest plant, braving darting insects and dense, dry grass to get it out, but by the time I reached my front door again, too hurried to fish out my keys instead of just forcing the door open, it’d be there again. It was like I never left the beach. There would invariably be a mound of sand dumped on the floor, though I soaked those shoes so many times they were bright pink again.

Perhaps I should have noticed something was off when my shoe size went from 6 to 5. My skin began to chafe, leaving behind this thin layer of grime wherever I sat. But I figured it was only the wear and tear of days spent leading children through gravelly roads, the steady stream of sunlight making all the bows and bikes hot to the touch.

I noticed as I was bouldering for the first time all year. I swung several times before taking the leap. As my fingers clenched around the shallow indent of the next rock, I felt myself leaning backwards and held on tighter–but my grasp didn’t just slip away. It was like the rock wasn’t solid plastic, but the loose dirt of a cliff face. I lay there staring up at the problem that eluded me, and I realised with a startle: The sand that just showered the floor was me. The surface of my hand was completely smooth, like that of a 50s Disney princess. The rock was sandpaper, and it just scraped off the fate line and love line my grandmother used to trace, telling me my future in her gravelly voice. I bent my hand, and there they were again.

I couldn’t stop scratching at my arms. I’d let my computer screen go dark, carving landscapes of dents and valleys into my skin, trying to scrape it all away until I was left with bloody grains under my nails.

When August began to take its final bows, I knew I couldn’t go back to school. Somewhere in the storm, my PhD thesis eroded from me–I couldn’t bring myself to care anymore, or maybe I just no longer understood. My phone went untouched on the floor I hadn’t vacuumed in months, but maybe there was nothing to see on it anyway, I’ll never know. The last time I showered, I felt the water batter me, spraying me all over the mint tiled walls. I looked in the mirror and saw an abandoned structure at the exhibition, having long been neglected by a sculptor’s touch and sitting there at the mercy of the elements and crowded chaos. I would have been horrified and afraid, but at some point I lost that too.

Nothing was working. With my ear canals having long since collapsed, the world was mercifully quiet as I donned the only clothing I could find that fit and floated outside–nerveless limbs and face half gone–to the place I knew I needed to be. Halfway there, I lost my right shoe and hobbled along on my dwindling stub of a leg instead. By the time I made it to the point where the sandpipers question your presence, I’d been crawling for several metres.

Exhausted, I let my now stick of a figure lay there, the ocean gently nudging me every few seconds. I let the waves come and pilfer particles of quartz and feldspar. I lay there, and let myself rest.