Against the Wind (ePub)

"Victim" was not a word in Joyce's vocabulary, nor was her self-invented phrase "creep magnet". What's a creep magnet you ask? That would be Joyce. It translates, if there is a "creep" within a five mile radius, they would zero in on her each and every time. Somehow, someway her magnetism attracts them making her life complicated with their unsolicited advances.

A mere twenty years old she fled in the middle of the night with her six month old baby girl, to escape her husband's wrath. Running from haunting nightmares and dark seeded childhood secrets that tormented her very soul, she moves to Nokomis, Florida into a small trailer with her mother. No money, no car, no life at all. Licking her wounds of a broken spirit she closes herself off to the world and those around her, finding solace in being alone. Hoping it will stop the night terrors. Stop the screaming, trembling and waking up drenched in sweat dreaming of hands tightly wrapped around her throat choking the life out of her.

Her only pleasure two or three days a week is Venice Beach on the Gulf of Mexico. It is there where she escapes the pains of her past and drowns out her miserable depressed existence. She swims lap after lap in the clear warm waters of the gulf, as if the devil himself were pursuing her in exchange for penance for her sins. This was her escape, her mental therapy all designed to preserve her sanity.

However, there is an unlikely stranger who wants to get to know her. What he doesn't know is that she is emotionally dead and wants nothing to do with men. She has built a wall around herself and wishes to stay safely within it. But this southern gentleman wants nothing better than to knock it down, piece by piece if he must. He is mesmerized by her curious nature towards him and won't take "no" for an answer. He turns to a long time friend for advice who just happens to work with Joyce.

She is blackmailed into saying, "YES" to a dinner date. From that moment on everything changes. Her new companion, Shane introduces her to a life of serenity and peace. A world she hopes will start the healing process she so desperately needs. However, it does not come easy due to her past and her short comings, trust being one and the other is her absolute refusal of intimacy of any kind. Her fears run deep and she knows that love is not in her future; maybe a compromise would best suit her needs to again walk among the living or perhaps with this man, who can help mend her troubled soul. He opens up and shares his love of sailing with her, bringing on drama and adventure in her new life. But circumstances force her to move back to New Jersey where life is depressed and difficult to navigate daily. Her only saving grace is to return to Venice as often as possible to keep a relationship moving forward with what time she has left. She competes with a lifelong dream of Shane's to one day sail the world. Her destiny will not be as his is. He soon vanishes without a word.

Against the Wind is based on a true story. It tells the real life drama of unforeseen mishaps that befall us all when we make the wrong choices and how we learn to live with them day to day.