Drowning at her side

it finally became real the damage I’ve done to her voice, the lack of attention I’ve paid to her for real, and the responsibilities I’ve shirked, not just “in my madness” but during this process as I’ve been coming along, or she’s been dragging me along. I don’t know anymore.

I didn’t intend to come here to write this, but it’s on my mind, so I’m going to do it. I am reeling in the wake of realizations this past week. I lost my footing badly a few days ago, floundered, came back up. Like a drowning victim refusing to let the concrete around his ankles drag him down, but mindlessly and blindly flailing and grasping at anyone who comes too close.

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She’s the lifeguard here. Damaged and wounded by the drowning man, thrashing needlessly as she tries to save him, hurting her with his bitterness and anger from a pain he can’t see. Her own pain, coupled with what he gives her, and she can barely hold on, struggling to keep herself afloat in the wreckage while also saving this man dragged down by the detritus of a past he refuses to release, no longer needs, and is killing them both. What does she do? She loves him. How much? Why does he test it so often? She is in so much pain herself. Her most sacred gift is used up, destroyed after the shouting to get his attention, to get him off of her, to defend herself, to wake him up. So much yelling and rasping of her voice. She just wanted to sing, perform, be with friends in celebration. Her body is ravaged by time and rapid weight loss, hundreds of pounds she never would have gained without him. Why does she reach for him, still?

And him. His ignorance to his delicate plight, his very life dependent on whether he accepts her gifts, her love, her life-saving grace, or whether he lets his detritus drag him under one last time, her shimmering form darkening in his vision as he sinks below the greenish brine. A drowning victim is lost, gone to their right mind, oblivious to others and himself. Drowning is everything. The only thing. It is what makes life meaningful, this act of sliding beneath the waves at peak exhaustion. Such relief awaits. It’s a terrible but simple equation, so easy in its conception, tragically difficult for him to see. Let go of the weights dragging him down. Accept her grace. Change to live. Or sink to a forever dark and cloying deep, forever lost to her light in any form. Change or oblivion. The scene is paused while he thinks.

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The fact that this is even a question for this man. The idea of oblivion is so welcome in his battered state of mind, the desperate entreaties and life-sacrificing gestures of the love of his life mean nothing to him now, and he becomes lost to the encroaching deep. Her need for him to live, to help her, to move up and away. The weights of his past life decisions and their impact he can see so clearly in her eyes, her form, hear so plainly in her voice now. They beckon his body down and mind away, down, spiraling out of her reach and in one last breath he takes in the salty brine, sputtering, flailing. Too tired to keep his head up, but as her face begins to be obscured by the greening waves, one flash of desperation, and he makes up his mind.

---

The endless ocean muffles the tremendous and dull thud his past life makes as it indents itself into the bottom of the sea. His head above water, sputtering still, tired, he sees her clearly, hears her voice that was only ever inside his head, but is now dancing through a sunlit sky, strained and broken after their ordeal. The gentle cresting of the waves and their sound, the glint of the rising sun on the foam closer to the horizon, create a golden oasis, and he slowly treads water, no longer sinking from his own weight, and able to see.

She needs more love, help, and healing after her ordeal than he can provide. He’s awake and safe, but the cost was so much. She broke the rules and rescued a drowning man while he flailed against her love and help, and now she’s scarred by his fear and flailing, trembling from their exertion, barely holding her hand out to him as a final gesture in the rising sun before she succumbs to exhaustion.

He swims now, stronger in his movement the closer he gets to her. From danger to calm, desire to devotion, fear to curiosity, warfare to friendship.