Coming to Bali, I think I secretly wanted my Eat Pray Love moment. The big post-divorce aha, the big love, the big moment that rearranges my life (in the best possible way) forever.

I’m sitting at an outdoor cafe called Alchemy as I write this and I feel the tears burning behind my eyes – yes, that’s what I wanted – Alchemy. Straw into gold. Maybe that wave that crashed into me at the white sands beach did it, tubmbled me so hard I didn’t know which way was up. Tiny seashells and sand poured down my throat and I was spitting them out like a character in one of those cartoons. You remember those? Where they sputter and spit out an entire fish? Or maybe it was more like those dreams where all your teeth are loose and you start spitting them out in mouthfuls.

I wanted to be tumbled, polished.

The sadness swells like those waves and my eyes fill.

I turn to Susan. We admit to each other that we both had this desire. We wanted to be purified.

Maybe the waves will do it.
Maybe the diarrhea will do it.
We went to the holy water temple AND saw the High Priestess of Bali. Surely that did it.
Maybe I will come back looking thinner or more beautiful or more wise.

But alas, I’m sitting in a cafe all stirred up in a kind of emotional chaos, far from tied up in a bow.