There Is No Ferry In A World Without Oceans

There it lay upon the nightstand, glistening wetly as if freshly plucked from the sea, and she knew if she were to touch her tongue to its porous surface that she would taste that salty brine even though the nearest ocean was hours away.

It always returned, this volcanic chunk of basalt. Always. Like some twisted lodestone unerringly driven to come home. Each time it was discarded or sold off (no longer done as it was too hard to explain how it eventually disappeared from a collectors collection only to reappear in her possession again) or destroyed it would play with her, staying away for days or weeks or months. Never a year though. It was always kept locked away, but that didn't stop it from turning up in random places.

It was the wetness that disturbed her. She had been sure this time it would not have returned, having dropped it herself and watching it sink into the fathoms. One would think so far from shore it would struggle to free itself from the muck of the sea floor and finding it's way past sea slugs, fishing nets and territorial borders to her very room. Even if it had surely it would not still be wrapped in that sheen of briny water.

She had no idea of how to break the hold it had on her, a Faustian bargain not of her making. She could feel the years of her life stretched thin like the skin above her thin wrist, so pale it was nearly transluecent. She would have cursed that ancient ancestor who had sealed her to this fate, but knew that they were damned enough already. She had read the journals, matriarch after matriarch, doomed to live out her hundred years of perfect health while the stone claimed it's due. Every seven years it claimed a life, a male of the line. They never knew who would be taken, be it son, nephew, cousin or uncle, the male line of the family were fair game and ripe for the taking.

She was determined to be the final victim of this damning cycle. It was years still she would be forced to endure before her time on came to a close, but she knew she could no longer wait for time to release its hold upon her. So she made a plan and set it into motion. She left the day and the time up to those hands she had given her token thirty pieces of silver, now all she could do is wait. Waiting was easy when one knew her days of suffering had almost reached their end.

And then it came. She did not resist as she and the stone were shoved into a box, the lid nailed shut and the sound of chains dragged across the surface. She endured the bruises as she and the rock slid into one another as the box tilted first one way and then the other as it was lifted carelessly and carried away. She had no idea and was not concerned about where they would end up, only rejoicing that her demise was one of her choosing and that she was nearly free.

The sensation of falling and the jarring thud as the box was thrown into the waiting pit knocked the air out of her, and she could hear wet sounds pouring down. A thin seam of wet concrete forming above her where the box and its lid met. What bliss, she thought. There is no way out of here for you now, she told the stone, and could almost feel it hunkering down and sulking, while loose dirt was shovelled in. When it finally went quiet she could imagine that there would be no trace left above to indicate where they lay.

So she lay quietly, ignoring the bruises and the urging of her bladder and waited for the air to go stale and send her drifting into oblivion. She had no idea of how much time had passed when she first felt movement at her feet and a soft scraping noise as the stone rubbed against the roughness of the wood.

There is no getting out, she told it, a strange and disturbing laughter coming from her chest, muffled in the close confines. Its just you and me now and always.

But the soft noises continued, and the scent of fresh sawdust tinged the staling air. Oh stop already, she told the stone. You'll wear yourself away to nothing digging through, that's concrete around us, there is no getting through it.

The box was too small for her to wiggle around and grab the rock, so she would just have to endure the noise until she passed beyond caring. She should have specified someting larger, and as she shifted her hips she couldn't help but think how she should have also mentioned padding or at least a pillow for her head. Still, a little discomfort was a willing trade for her early release from daily life.

The air grew stale and still she lay, fully conscious and growing annoyed at how long this was taking. Shouldn't she be at least growing tired or dizzy before the suffocating end came, but still she lay there, eyes open though she couldn't see anything anyway, and that persistent rubbing motion next to her right foot.

Not much time left, she told it, though a panic was slowly growing in her chest and she tried to clamp it down. There wasn't enough room in the box for her to fall to hysterics now. And still the steady scrape of stone to wood, and she realized she could now smell damp earth. The rough scrach softened to what she imagined an earthworm heard as they tunneled past one another in the garden.

Its gotten out of the box, she realized. It went underneath the concrete and was making its slow progression through the disturbed earth. She wasn't so bothered that it was making an escape as surely she hadn't much time left to her, trapped as she was. to worry. Let the rock become someone else's burden, she told herself, and make ready for your soul's release. It wasn't as if she was going to be trapped here with the damned thing for eternity anyway. Surely she had minutes only left to suffer with it.

The stone paused, turning as if to look back the way it had come. You have misjudged this, it said, no anger or malice in its tone. I may free myself and come and go as I please, you have no such luxury open to you. But you, had you but known the parameters of the bargain, shall remain. The bargain holds that you live, and live you shall until the hundred year mark is reached. Be content in your new home, for it shall be yours for many more a year still. And it turned back to its slow forward progression, inching towards the surface and the sunlight beaming down upon this spot of earth, a sign nearby proudly announcing the opening of a park opening in the fall.

But she had no way of knowing where she was, only the cold realization that she would spend decades in this cramped box with only the stone dropping by from time to time. She filled her lungs with what air was left around her and screamed and screamed until the air was gone and she was left alone and silent, hands fluttering around the tiny space around her as the years wore on around her. She could faintly sense the passing of time overhead in the soft thumps of children's feet overhead, their screams of delight muffled and unintelligible.

The stone came and went as it pleased, the men of the family still dying every seven years as agreed so long before, and she waited, knowing one day the end would finally arrive, it had to. The bargain had been made and would one day bring her release. But then the stone disappeared. She had no idea how long it had been since its last visit to her, but it didn't come. It must be close, she told herself comfortingly, it must be close to my soul's release, it can't keep me here forever, but without any sort of marker she had no way to count down how long she had left.

Time moved on around this tired little plot of land. The thump of footfalls changing over the years as the world above moved from cultivated playground to a derelict neighborhood where street thugs now loitered. One day even those were gone and she was left truly alone, the silence broken only by the persistent beating of her heart. Surely soon, she thought over and over again, it could not have forgotten me. Surely it won't be long now, not realizing that she had already done so for millenia now.

The world overhead strangely silent, a thick red dust constantly churning in the stiff breeze across a landscape erased through time. the sun only a faint glow that penetrated the atmosphere of a dry and empty planet.

The heart is the one organ you can break and yet it keeps on beating....

I admit I don't often preface my writings, but I feel I need to do so in this case. What you are about to read was written 10 years ago, at the lowest point in my life. Even now I still struggle with stress issues and what I will politely call melancholy, though it really has a rather unromantic sounding and very real medical name.
At this moment which you are about to read, I truly and completely was broken and had lost pieces of myself I wasn't sure I would ever regain. It rambles, yes, but this was truly me, sitting in front of a screen and trying vainly to make sense of the mess I was inside.
I never published this, as it is a very real look into a dark and bleak time. In my life I have always tried to present myself with just the sunny bits showing, leaving the ugliness inside and covered up. But we cannot live like that for always. Life is full of both the good parts and the bad. It's a balancing act that sometimes feels like it is tipped for the worst and will never recover, but that is just how depressive conditions tend to see things.
This one is going to be a two-parter. Part one, which you are about to read, is the bleakness. Part two, which will come in a day or so, will be how I am today, a decade later. This week's theme, surprising, given the subject matter, is ALIVE. It is my hope that by the time this week's theme is drawn again sometime in the future, that I can revisit this. With a lot of work and some good kharma on my side, I have high hopes (and fingers crossed) that maybe next time I will truly be as sunny as I like people to believe I always am.



Not all wounds are visible. Sometimes I wish they were… if someone were to see me walking around with the gaping hole where my heart once was, they could not possibly fail to acknowledge my pain was real… that my grief, was a blackness that overwhelmed me, often without warning.

I feel as if I was stumbling through my days in a fog. I can't remember what I ate (or if I ate), I double and triple check myself to be sure that I have not somehow forgotten to put on a shirt or socks or some other necessary garment, because I can't stop recognizing that a large part of me is now missing. I wander into stores in a daze and wander out again with a cartload of groceries, not even certain what I just purchased or if I even remembered to buy the necessities (cat food, deodorant)… I have no idea of how long I had been in there, just wandering the aisles. I couldn't even remember when the last time was that I eaten a piece of fruit or something that was more healthy than bad.

It seems like its been years that I have been like this… This has been a very lousy year for me, and I, for one, am more than happy to see 2012 go and never rear its ugly head again. I have always considered myself fairly even-keeled, but this year really kicked me in the teeth.

I guess it really started just over a year ago. I got married; something that is supposed to be the happiest day of a girl’s life… and it was. But I had a lot of s

tress planning things out, and my load at work was increasing as well. I was in the ER the day before the wedding, and went back in the following weekend for stress-related issues. By the time Christmas rolled around I was a mess…. I was working insane hours and got to a point where I was crying from exhaustion and flying off the handle over any little thing because I JUST COULD NOT HANDLE ONE MORE THING ON ME RIGHT THEN.

We hired a co-worker and things eased up, but my stress levels were still a mess… so much so that my doctor put me on medications to help take the load off as my body was incapable, at that time, of regulating itself. I started easing up, stopped being so much of a witch, and, by summer I began to feel as if I was finally regaining some control over my life again….

….and then my brother died. The person who has known me the longest and, up to this point, best in this life. The one person who fills nearly every childhood memory I have..... and who I had grown to consider my best friend now that we were adults.

I admit I held it together for as long as I had to - and when I finally allowed myself to fall to pieces, all these months later, I did so with pretty spectacular results. I ended a friendship that had gone on for the majority of my life. I finally put my foot down to the people making so many demands on me and said “enough” (though I feel hideous for both actions). I spend my days feeling like I was falling to pieces all over again… and that’s probably not even close to being an accurate description of my state of mind.

I am a walking war zone…. there are days spent without bombs thrown by either side; I can look past the ruins and see the beauty that still exists around me. Other days the bombardment starts again and the world is nothing but loud noises, smoke and devastation. Steam rises from craters where once green meadows lay.

Maybe I am made up of glass.... so clear that you can see the fractures that run right through me. If you were to tap me would I ring hollowly, like a bell? Am I so delicate that the slightest wind would fracture me into a thousand pieces? Like Humpty Dumpty, there would be no putting my life together again into what it was before, because that girl is gone... just as the person who had always been there in my life is gone. Gone to a place that I am unable to follow at this time. I know that I will be with him again, but that does not make this broken thing that was my heart beat any easier.

I wonder some days if I should go into counseling…. But then, what would they tell me that I don’t already know?

I wonder if I should speak to my doctor about going back on the stress meds…. I sigh, and realize that I probably should. Anything is better than the wreck and ruin that I am now. I hate medications, but I have to admit that I am foundering a lot right now, and need something to help clear my head. I am sure that the holiday season isn't helping, since this was our favorite time of the year.... and I know that time will help heal the pains that I feel, but there will always be a scar where that missing piece once fit.

What a mess life can become when you least expect it. I should be happy, thrilling to the marriage that should still be in its honeymoon stage. Instead I find myself constantly in the dumps; crying hysterically in the car on my way home (I wonder what must go through the minds of the drivers around me who probably can’t help but notice the girl falling to pieces in the car alongside of them). The girl who freaks out with the least provocation. Who can’t seem to handle the least of tasks without feeling defeated… who can’t help but wonder if everyone around her is sick of watching her not regaining control and let all this go… the girl who wonders why the whole world isn't flooded by all the tears that she's shed.

I try to be kind to myself right now.... to allow myself the comfort that I don't want to trouble others for. I know that life will go on, and that while I am going to be in pain for a long time, that I will one day build a bridge over the hole that will remain. It still doesn't help me to stop missing you.... and missing the girl that I was when you were here.

I don't think I ever told you thank you enough for all you did for me... for all the times you listened... for all the times you cared. I miss you so much... even all the little things that used to annoy me I would gladly put up with again. But wishing isn't going to change things. Wishing will not bring back our weekly dinners.... or your "surprise" birthday parties for me where you would fill the house with all of your friends.... or the even less of a surprise parties where you'd give me a list of who all to invite for your own birthday. It would not bring back long talks... or the new closeness we started right before you went away. It will not bring back any of the countless things we shared over the course of our lives.