I liked the beginning section with the beach encounter and the reveal of the multitude of eyes. I liked the end with the absorption into the collective. The middle really dragged for me, didn't really seem to be much there to hold my interest.
I do like the idea of the character willingly choosing to go into the collective. To me it seemed like a new twist on a metaphor about relationships. Much of who we are is the people in our past. In a sense, we carry a bit of each of them with us. With most, this is a symbiotic relationship; if two people interact, then both carry away something from it. But in this case, she was an unusual person who carries EVERYTHING about you away and leaves nothing for you. I've known people like that, who steal hearts wherever they go without ever trying to, the real life version of the Magical Pixie Dream Girl. So to me, this was a pretty apt metaphor for that.