What Brings Me to You Read Free Page A

of finding my own Mr. Rochester or, God that I’m admitting this: Mr. Darcy. I mean, all girls want that guy , but, at that time especially, I kind of felt like I’d be alone forever. Not because I was insecure, though I’m sure that had something to do with it, but because being alone was so much easier. Every personal relationship I’d ever had had been exploited and twisted, so I just as soon blocked everyone else out than go through the hurt. It was an unhealthy, yet necessary survival tact. If I were a candy they could describe me as a hard, bitter shell with a sweet, mushy center. I hid my emotions especially from the people who were closest to me in a misguided act of self-preservation, but that summer, ninteenth century trash was my guilty pleasure and, on the beach, I could indulge with abandon while listening to the prosaic soundtrack of ocean waves and seagulls and feel sorry for the fact that nobody knew me. Not because they didn’t want to, but because I wouldn’t let them. It was all very melancholy, introspective, emo-tasticness.
                  While the girls were off rolling around in the saw grass with their much older, heavy petting partners I'd sit on a little embankment with a huge rock I could lean against to read. Clearwater beach was anything but clear. The minuscule Gulf waves conducive mostly to watching the dorsal fins of dolphins (and the occasional bull shark) bob to the surface. Florida beaches in the summer double as meat markets, in the physical and in the metaphorical sense, so I had to travel a ways down the shore for any semblance of solitude.
                  While engrossed in Jane Eyre , a Frisbee hit me square in my knuckles and I dropped my book. There was a sharp throbbing in my entire hand and I almost cried it smarted so badly. When I finally got myself together my book was gone. Gone. Rolled down the embankment and was being carried by the wind. It was rolling end over end toward the surf. I went chasing after it like a moron, but I didn't have anything else. Problem was my wardrobe. In an effort to cover up my knobby knees and protruding ribcage I was dressed in what I call the How Can I Show As Little Skin As Possible And Still Be Beach Appropriate look. At the time, I had a huge, and I mean HUGE floppy hat I'd wear that I picked up at a thrift store. I thought it was cute -who knows maybe it was, but it also protected my hair which would fall out in clumps if I was hit with a stiff wind. Added bonus it pretty much hid my face from the world. I wore a jet black one piece which exposed the smallest amount of skin, and a very long navy blue and black sarong around my waist. So imagine: me, running, crouched over into the wind holding my hat on with one hand and my sarong with the other, chasing a book. I bent to get the book and the wind took my hat. I got my hat and then I dropped my sarong, I wrapped my sarong back around my waist and the book went floating out to sea. Soaked. Completely soaked. It was a hardcover but that didn't save it - actually made it look worse. I tried to       resuscitate       it but it was no use. The salt water disintegrated the pages immediately. It was trash and I was       devastated. You know how I am with books, they're precious things, and some douche with a Frisbee just committed literary murder.
                  Full of righteous indignation I marched, literally, like the petulant little girl I was, toward the Frisbee throwing ruffians. (I did       actually call them ruffians.) There were four or five. All shirtless, skin glistening in the mid afternoon sun. "Don't get distracted Charley," I thought. "What would Jane Eyre do?" So I started yelling at them.
                  "Oy! Oy! Which one of you is going to pay for this?" I held the now warped and exposed cardboard cover so it fell open and a number of pages came spilling out in a soggy heap on the sand. None of them