She rose to her feet once again, stumbling as dark blood fell down her body and covered her feet in red streaks. How did she get here? She couldn’t remember. Did it matter? She looked at her surroundings. She was stranded on the smallest of islands, a mere rock. All she saw was water. A deep sapphire blue that threatened to swallow her whole. Her eyes caught movement in the distance, yet she couldn’t quite discern what it was. Then, she saw it. A wave of water larger than anything she’d ever seen or felt was approaching. The entire ocean seemed to be coming towards her, and though it was far away, she could tell, slowly but surely, this would be the end of her.
She had, in several instances of her life, felt suicide to be a simple way out of the darkness, an escape from the endless tunnel that was living. She never truly meant it like she did today. Her bones creaked under the weight of her blood and muscle, her spirit wept for all that was lost, and her rationale told her this was not what she asked for. Yes, she had made no choice to be born, but most things in life she could bear. She could not bear this. Her body sighed without relief as the tides approached ever closer with no thought or empathy for a girl at sea. They would not stop for her. Not that they could, but even with the choice, they did not care. Her corpse wavered, and she sank into the ground.
Collapsing onto her knees, she felt sharp pain as the rocks dug into her skin. She wailed. She spat blood as far as she could muster. How did she get here? Why did it have to hurt so much? Teardrops fell from her pruned body, not in the flowing stream she knew all too well, but as tiny fragments of her soul, each droplet a piece of herself. She saw her father when she was a child, and as she stirred the pot of boiling pasta, a never-ending smile seemed to erupt from her father’s face. A tear fell onto the stones below.
A photo with her mother and a baby in the bathtub surfaced in her head. She saw the baby playing without thought or reason as her mother looked at her daughter, overjoyed. A tear fell.
She was back at her old house, years away from the water and rocks, pouring the contents of a soda can into someone’s lawn.
“Don’t waste ur pop, I’ll drink it.” Her neighbor told her with disappointment in his voice.
Embarassed and ashamed, she looked up to hand the now half-empty soda can to her friend. Yet when she did, all she saw was her brother and friend beaming and laughing; pure glee radiating from their faces. A tear fell.
A rumbling broke her trance as her eyes begged to open once more. The wave looked larger now, and she watched and listened in awe, fear, and defeat as a hundred different rhythms cascaded and rolled off one another. The tide would wait for no one. Unable to look away, she stared into the abyss. The abyss stared back.
She was Eighteen again, sitting on a park bench at her old elementary school.
“It’s okay, I forgive you,” she said to the boy sitting next to her.
Tears fell down his cheeks as he tried his best to hold back emotions he was not allowed to show. Later that night, as she lay alone against her bed of false warmth, she shed quiet tears. She cried for herself and what he did to her, but mostly she cried for the boy she knew who would never forgive himself. She hoped one day he might. A tear fell.
The water was much closer now, a torrent of noise and chaos that would stop for nothing.
She was nine again. Her mother had cancer, she was told. It didn’t quite matter to her; cancer wasn’t interesting. Naruto was though, and video games. God she loved video games. People didn’t die in video games. Or they did, but it didn’t really matter; you could always just restart. Tears fell down her face.
Mist poured onto the rock, and for a split second, the tide seemed almost merciful.
She was there again. There was no time. There was no laughter. She didn’t remember what it looked like, just that she wasn’t truly there. Whenever she thought about the hospital bed, she was above herself, looking at a child who could not hold anything. There was a body, but she could feel nothing from it. There was a heart that did not beat. There was a soul that was not there. Her tears flowed into the rock, falling back into their place and time.
The tide was now moments away. Screams from oblivion came from the water; it felt as if all those who had drowned were warning her to flee. “She was so loved, so needed,” they said. They tried to reach her, but their words were lost in her tears and blood. Her life, despite all the pain and feelings, was suddenly so very insignificant. Her head pounded, but it had never felt clearer. “Perhaps it’s for the best”, she thought. “Maybe now I can understand where you went.”
The tide engulfed her.