Prompt: Clearly a song, ‘Into the ocean’ by Blue October which I was listening to on the train home.
Characters: Unnamed.
Word count: 2, 262
Author’s comments: Well, like I said, I was listening to this song on the train and felt like writing something around it. It’s been happening a lot lately. Maybe it’s a little emo. I don’t know. You’ll have to forgive me. I watch a lot of that sort of thing. I just wanted to write something purely for the sake of writing and not have to
think, you know? Cause uni just stresses me out and I have this damned essay on Proust to write (yes, yes, I know, shut up already) and so much work I just keep putting off. And yes, this is just adding to putting it off, but this at least feels vaguely productive. It’s good to exercise those creative muscles every now and then. Also, sorry, I realise it’s quite long. If I had an LJ, I’d put it under a cut, but I don’t. So deal.
***
The tips of my ears had gone numb. Logically, I knew that I must be shivering, but I didn’t notice. Noticing would require feeling, and feeling would require energy I didn’t have. I
definitely didn’t have the energy to pretend. I didn’t know how long I had been there, whether it had been minutes or hours. Time had lost all meaning. Well, traditional meaning. Now it would simply be measured in long agonizing seconds since I lost the only thing that meant anything to me. Regardless of my personal feelings on the matter, the world continued to turn, paying little heed to the Greek tragedy of my own making. Before long, the sun was putting in its first appearance of the day, soft yellow challenging the dark blue for dominance. If I was inclined to make up shitty metaphors, I’d say it was a sign for new beginning, for chasing the darkness away, but I’m not that type.
Not that type. Jesus.
I'm just a normal boy
That sank when I fell overboard
My ship would leave the country
But I'd rather swim ashore
At some point in your life you realise you really don’t know yourself at all. You look in the mirror and you don’t recognise the person staring back at you. That’s fair enough, that’s growth and development and whatever other bullshit psychobabble they’ve come up with. I’m
too young to have to deal with shit like that. When I looked in the mirror four nights ago, I saw only desperation. I saw a pathetic vision of someone who would do anything for a loved one, regardless of consequence. I had absolute faith that my absolute faith would be enough. I didn’t know who that person was, or how that person had gotten there. It was nothing like the person I saw at six, sulking over my brother eating my ice cream; or at twelve, crying over a dead dog; or at sixteen, giddy on teenage romance. It was definitely nothing like the person I saw at twenty, cocky and smart-arsed, so sure that I had
found myself. Two years later I had a job, a relationship, a life. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t exceptional, but it was comfortable and hey, I was happy. I’d found my place. I didn’t know what I had looked like then. I never looked in the mirror; I had better things to do.
Without a life vest I'd be stuck again
Wish I was much more masculine
Maybe then I could learn to swim
Like 'fourteen miles away'
The guilt is worse than anything. It’s inescapable and dual. There’s the whole trying to talk yourself in and out of things, constantly see-sawing so often, you don’t know whether you’re coming or going anymore. I lost count of how many times I thought that it must be what it feels like to be mad. To have two distinct personalities demanding attention, fighting for dominance and each of them had damn good points. Then there are old fashioned concepts like duty and honour, dedication and trust. Things the twenty year old me would have scoffed at, but now seemed to be the very centre of my world. I gravitated around them, around responsibility, because somehow in the last few years they had become my life. It had come to define me.
Now floating up and down
I spin, colliding into sound
Like whales beneath me diving down
I'm sinking to the bottom of my
Everything that freaks me out
The lighthouse beam has just run out
I'm cold as cold as cold can be
I had been cut loose. I was a boat without an anchor. No wait, I said I wasn’t the type for shitty metaphors. But what type am I? The very things that defined me, everything that I had built myself on, was gone. There was no way of getting any of it back, and it had so taken over my life that I had nowhere else to turn. There was only me, and I barely gave myself any consideration. I felt invisible. I had failed. I was in no fit state to look after myself. If I was in said fit state, I would probably have appreciated the irony. I had gotten myself into a situation where I thought I had meaning but inevitably the situation led to the meaning being ripped out from under my feet, without even so much as a warning. And I know I brought it upon myself.
I know. The chances were there, chances to make a change, chances to move on, and chances to run and never look back.
I want to swim away but don't know how
Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean
Let the waves up, take me down
Let the hurricane set in motion, yeah
Let the rain of what I feel right now come down
Let the rain come down
Running was still an option. If anything, it would probably have been the best time for it. I had no guilt to grind my conscious, no honour to bind me. In a click of fingers, those responsibilities had disappeared. I could get in touch with that twenty year old me again…was it really only
four years ago? It seems impossible. Thinking about that time, my childhood even, feels like watching someone else’s home movies. I can see myself standing there, watching it all unfold, but emotionally I don’t feel it. I smile and nod and make the appropriate observations in the appropriate places but there’s no real effect on me. The ‘me’ I had become could no longer recognise the ‘me’ that had been. I supposed I could go back home. My parents would no doubt have expected it. Isn’t a traditional place for mourning with one’s family? Then again, I never was big on tradition.
Where is the coastguard?
I keep looking each direction
For a spotlight, give me something
I need something for protection
Maybe flotsam, junk will do just fine
the jetsam sunk, I'm left behind
I'm treading for my life, believe me
How can I keep up this breathing?
I had to have fallen asleep. One minute I was staring at the horizon, the next I was in the water. The current surprised me, it pushed and pulled and disorientated me. I vaguely registered the impulse to swim, my limbs put in a token effort and I managed to grab a lungful of air. It hurt. The thought struck me as funny, and I laughed even as I floated further from land. I was a liar. At the heart of the matter, that was the truth. Lies had gotten me where I was, and I was still suffering from little lie aftershocks. I was still feeling guilty. Of course I was. It had just mutated into a different guilt, a warped sort of survivors guilt. There was also a healthy dose of shame that came with it. It had moved right into the vacuum left by ‘hope’ and ‘desperation’. All I was left with was guilt, and shame, and fear, and anger. Although the latter had dissipated within minutes of its first appearance, merely transforming into the vague shadow of a feeling I thought that I should perhaps feel. I had no real claim on it and that rendered it powerless. Fear, on the other hand. Fear was the key to all of this.
Not knowing how to think
I scream aloud, begin to sink
My legs and arms are broken down
With envy for the solid ground
I'm reaching for the life within me
How can one man stop his ending
I thought of just your face
Relaxed, and floated into space
The flight-or-fight response forms the first stage of general adaptation syndrome that regulates stress responses, namely the consequences of the failure to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats, whether actual or imagined. The initial threat was most definitely emotional, and it was certainly not imaginary. I hated to admit it, but the response was flight. Flight, then fight as it were. I didn’t think I’d ever know whether that was due to my personality or simply necessity. The threat followed me, the flight failed, and the fight…well, it was the fight of a lifetime. It raged over a year that seemed to last forever, a war of attrition that ended in the blazing wreckage of all I had built. I lost the battle
and I lost the war. Yet, here it was again, fight-or-flight. Consequences stacked up ten feet high on either of side of me, a single word would bury me and rightfully so. Why bother though? Why am I so torn up about losing something that was forced upon me? This life, the one I was mourning, it was all just consequential.
I want to swim away but don't know how
Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean
Let the waves take me down
Let the hurricane set in motion, yeah
Let the rain of what I feel right now come down
That vague impulse registered with me again – to swim, to get back to shore,
to stop wasting time. The odd texture of wet jeans against my skin struck me as far more pressing. I was too tired. Too tired to appreciate the way the pinkish blue hues of early morning simmered above me. Too tired to pretend everything would be alright. Too tired to remember what I’d lost and what I hadn’t. I was definitely too tired to maintain any sort of control over my body, to keep it from sinking.
Fuck fight-or-flight. Morality, consciousness, rationality, wasn’t that what it meant to be human? My mind was tired. My body was tired. But most of all, my mind couldn’t care less about my body right now, not while lulled by the soft push and pull, the pressing of silence all around. It was a weight that blanketed me and, blissfully, allowed my mind to finally shut up.
Now waking to the sun
I calculate what I had done
Like jumping from the bow, yeah
Just to prove I knew how, yeah
It's midnight's late reminder of
The loss of her, the one I love
My will to quickly end it all
Set front row in my need to fall
Acceleration of lung action as oxygen in blood decreases, and carbon dioxide increases. Slowing of heart rate. Restriction of blood flow to extremities. Shifting of blood to the thoriac cavity. Dilation of pupils. Laryngospasm. Hypoxia. Cardiac arrest.
Into the ocean, end it all
Into the ocean, end it all
Into the ocean, end it all
Into the ocean...end it all
I felt arms wrap around my chest. The quietly insistant push and pull was replaced by a very firm direction. Up. I hadn’t sunk much, and I hadn’t been submerged for long, but the minute my head broke the surface my lungs pulled in air like it had never known the substance before.
“It’s ok, it’s ok, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”
The voice was familiar and cut straight into my heart. If I had any sort of control, I would have resisted, pulled away. Instead I only slumped back into the hold, clinging to the forearm across my chest. My body was a traitor. I threw up the second we crawled back onto dry land. He kept his hand on my back the entire time, soothingly rubbing small circles. The heat of his skin seeped through my sodden clothes and I found comfort in his presence. I had no right to feel that comfort, or to expect it, but he was there and I was too tired to feel the guilt I knew usually accompanied this. I rolled away and collapsed onto my back. Morning had settled in, life was slowly returning to the bay. Somewhere off to my left a seagull squawked and to my right he sat, looking down at me intently. Confusion was etched across his face. Confusion and fear. My mind railed against it. I shifted my gaze to the sky.
“I don’t want to die.”
My voice was hoarse and I became aware of my throat burning. How long had that been going on? Was it because of what had just happened or because of all the crying I had done during the night?
“I know,” he replied softly.
“I was just tired,” I mumbled, pulling myself into a sitting position and hugging my knees. I became viciously aware that I was shaking. “I’m so tired.”
Arms wrapped around me and pulled me to him. I didn’t resist. He was shaking too, the wind playing havoc with our wet clothing. I pressed closer, trying to make the most of what little warmth our bodies and the weak sun could offer us. He pressed a soft kiss to my temple and I breathed out a shaky breath.
“I don’t want to die.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, pulling me even closer, “I’ve got you.”
I pressed my face to his chest and let him hold me. Maybe I would regret it later. Maybe it would all blow up in my face. But in that moment, I felt the warmth for the first time in months. Hell, I
felt. And yeah, I was still hurting and things weren’t even remotely close to being ok, but maybe it would be. He had come for me, I had a clean slate, and more importantly, I wasn’t going anywhere.
Into the ocean, goodbye, end it all, goodbye...
Music: Starving your friends - Envy on the Coast
Mood: Lethargic
