Everything was perfect. The cobalt waves gently tapping the shore, the cloudless sky, the booming, distant music carried by the restless breeze through the trees. Serenity filled my heart-broken body as I gazed into his welcoming eyes. I lay there for a while; we said nothing. Then again, nothing really needed to be said. Everything was already known. This was foreign to me, a subliminal knowing; a beautiful, unspoken unity. I could feel it reverberating off the very rock we were sitting on. We were no longer two strangers tossed together, uncertain of what we were searching for or why we were there in that moment sitting together. Both of us did know that we had found something that no one else could understand.

The throbbing in my heart eased as he wrapped his arms around me. I was finally at peace. Although I was dizzy from looking through the kaleidoscope of my emotions, his comforting touch soothed me. I inhaled the sweet lake air and sighed, my body relaxing into his. Chicago’s skyline danced in the distance while boats played in the seemingly endless, but conquerable Lake Michigan. Everything faded while I was with him, like the blurring edges of an old photograph. It was just us together on the rocks. Nothing else mattered. Not the huge crowds of confused college students surrounding us, not the blaring rock music, not the anxious police, not the girls screaming and laughing in the water next to us, not the neighboring couples on rocks, not the birds circling nearby. Nothing.
The whirlwind of life stopped for those few moments, and in those few moments I realized what life is really about. It’s about the unexpected when you can escape and you discover something that you’d never think you’d find. And maybe it’s impossible to describe and fully understand exactly what I felt and found that day on those rocks, but every time I look into his eyes, I return to that moment of serenity and the burdens of life are lifted off my shoulders. It is a pure and raw connection, a rare harmony I found among the tumults of life. In retrospect, I feel fortunate to have experienced such a moment: Ben and me and the rocks. And I hope to have many more.