swimming

[my thoughts and/or interpretation]

this was another text i wrote for the same online magazine submission. so still ocean-related, but a bit more on-brand i guess.

Content Notes: abstract discussions of trauma, unreality, flashbacks and dissociation and short mention of self-harm

I'm swimming. The horizon is endless and gray, there is nothing other than the movement of my limbs keeping me afloat and the waves trying to pull me under.

No goal. No direction. No land.

I’ve been swimming for so long (How long? Always?) that I sometimes forget.

I'm at work. I take orders, make coffee, try to smile as I hand a cup to a waiting customer. She scowls at me, then takes a sip, bursts out coughing and lets go of the cup. It explodes on the floor - liquid and glass fly everywhere. Everyone is looking. I feel their eyes. I’m babbling excuses, rushing to clean up. My ears are filled with a rushing sound, like wind (or waves). I start picking up the shards, but now there is red mixing with the light brown. My hands, gripping the shards way too tightly, dripping blood.

I don't feel pain, only a creeping cold, numbness.

Someone is shouting (at me?) but I can't hear it.

Everything is muted. Swaying. Heavy.

I sink.

I’m underwater, tossed around, up and down now meaningless. Water everywhere, around me, inside me (is there a difference?).

I can't breathe. Everything in me is cramping, tightening, begging me to fight. Or give up. I try to keep still, stay calm, even as my heart is pounding faster and faster, distributing what little oxygen is left into panicking muscles. I desperately keep my eyes open, looking for the shimmers of light, black starts to seep into my field of vision. Then I see it and start swimming - arms burning, legs heavy - until I breach the surface and breathe in.

The world is in two layers. I’m still in the ocean, but I'm also sitting in the staff room. (How did I get here?) My boss stands over me, face caught between worry and annoyance. He tells me to go home. I can't answer. There are no words in my mouth, only seawater.

I don't remember the way home, it takes all my concentration to stay afloat. There are short flashes (getting in the bus, unlocking my door) but they feel unreal compared to the boiling sea. I’m so exhausted. I just want to rest. I fall onto my bed.

The cushions are soft, cold and swallow me.

Just

like

water.

I don't know whether I'm diving or drowning.

I'm deeper this time. I squint, trying to locate the surface, but all around me is twilight. Or wait- Is there something moving? A shape, uniformly dark and unbelievably big. I can't see the edges, it stretches in every direction, completely taking up the space under (above? next to?) me. Is it coming closer? How can I tell when I can't see the edges? Can’t see the surface? It could already be close enough to touch and I wouldn’t even know.

Can it?

I reach out.

My hand disappears into something dark and yielding.

I'm a small child. Maybe four or five. There are noises downstairs. Voices. Screaming. Shattering. I slowly make my way down the stairs. I see broken plates, angry faces, and liquid red. I'm plunged into water. (It was still shallow back then.) My tiny feet can almost touch the ground and there is land, a few meters away. I make it out, even though I don't know how to swim (yet), escape the water, run to my parents. Safe and dry.

It happened again, in different situations and every time it got deeper and wider. Until there was no more land - only the ocean. I had to learn to swim, to fight, to keep myself afloat, to keep myself from drowning.

The darkness around me dissipates and I see the house I grew up in. Standing on the seafloor, buried under tons of water, half decayed and rotted through with veins of something dark. The door is open, it invites me in, but I recoil. I no longer live there, now it's the home of whatever the shape is made out of and I don't want to see how it transformed the place.

I start swimming in the opposite direction - I just need to get away: from the house, the thing, the memories. I struggle upwards, the pressure threatening to crush me, the surface just a distant memory.

After what feels like an eternity, I reach it. Breathing gets easier, the pressure lifts, but it takes a while until I can no longer hear the waves or feel the dark shapes moving underneath me.