The warm night breeze caresses my skin and stirs the sand about feet, salty and sweet with a hint of coconut still lingering in the air from the baking bodies that embrace the sun. The moon casts its white glow over the ocean, capping the waves shimmering foam with glints like silver glitter. The night sky and the horizon have no other light and blend together into one on the background, making the horizon line impossible to find. There is nothing but spacious sky and the encroaching sea. I sink to the cold sand and dig my fingers into the thousands of tiny rocks that surround me and expand my mind. My thoughts roll in on each wave untouched and fresh for just my own ears to hear. I am alone and completely at ease with myself. My own sanctuary where I am absolutely free of people's derogatory judgments and there is nothing but serenity of the beach's musical sounds. ....Ill.... at ease I breathe in a lung full of the salty moist air and absorb the night. Only having just left another course in my life would I have found such peace in this simple and complex beauty. Earlier in this night, I was amongst friends in a crowd of strangers, which is something I usually take comfort in. It is much easier to enjoy an outing where there are many strangers if you have a few close-knit friends on your arm. In comparison to where I am now; dissolving into the cool sand, I would say there is a sense of relief as if I had been holding my breath all night and only now realized it. I suck in another deep breath. When I am out with my friends I usually enjoy myself but there are the worries, the insecurities that being with unknown people brings. A strangling feeling of forgetting your words while on stage in front of a thousand expectant eyes.  The nagging feeling that there is something on your face that no body wants to be rude and point out, or the feeling that you just know there is something stuck to you butt when you stand up that everyone will see before you get a chance to inconspicuously wipe off. Sure you can laugh along and try to tell a few good jokes that very few will get at all but in the back of your mind you will constantly be picking out things that are wrong with the picture. The way some one is looking at you so you squirm in your seat uncomfortably, the way your shirt is scrunched so you quickly readjust it, or your hair has gone astray so you hurry to straighten it. There is always some insecurity you can't brush off making you tense the whole time. Then there is the lack of holding your own mind. It's so hard not to get lost in what other people think and stay an individual. How could you disagree when the entire group is agreeing? Because then you would have all eyes on you expecting an explanation that you would fumble through because your nerves are all now spiked by the new attention. So you can barely think clearly for yourself when in such a situation. There is a sense of being trapped in a glass box that is dangling from the ceiling in a crowded room while completely in the nude. How the hell are you going to get yourself out of this one? Overall there is just know way to be completely relaxed when in an environment that holds people you have never met before in your life, whether there be people there you have known for a while, or not. Sure having your friends there will ease the pain a little bit but not enough to let you breath evenly. So I arrive here, at the beach in the middle of the night, my sanctuary, completely released of all my anxieties with all the space in the world to think and be myself.  Call me a hippy; all one with nature or not, but this is my own special place.