Personal Narrative On The Beach

I watch as buildings turn to ocean, then to hills, then back to buildings. I notice how people wave when the train hurls down the tracks and how perfectly the sun moves from east to west right over the locomotive. Going back and forth from my home where I have sanctuary in my own room to a house where I feel unwelcome was never enjoyable. I have never wished my parents would get back together, I don’t even remember a time when they were together and I would never give up my step dad for anything. But I would dread the trips between both houses and the tensions that build up whenever I get off my train in Oxnard.

Learning to love the long train rides was pure survival. I’ve been put on that train when the sun was rising and watched as the light leaked over hilly terrain and poured onto the brown shrubs of grass that desperately needed water. (Curse southern California's tendency to always be in a drought.) I’ve been on it in the middle of the day and watched teenagers my age stopped in front of the blinking arms, holding beach chairs and towels, and desperately wishing I could be them. I’ve seen the sunset from that train on a sunday night. Some I’ve missed because my head was buried so deep in a textbook, rushing to finish the homework I put off, that I barely noticed how the light changed.

We would wreak havoc on the conductors, spend our christmas money on candies and chips and bond over a mutual dislike of the long trips we would take constantly. I learned that even though I am not alone in this trip I make, it sure did feel like