Sea of Misery
-work in progress-
[Stage 5]

Dreams are so real that it’s like every flashback takes my very being back in time. These dark memories have me chained at the ankle and night after night they emerge from the dark sea of terror and they unleash their waves of pain upon me, the water dripping away as a mix of blood, sweat, tears and memories. When it finally stops, I’m on the beach in my mind and the pain teases at my toes. The moon gets higher again and the tide picks up. Another night of misery and its just for me.
I’ll call this place in my mind the “Sea of Misery” and I’m chained on the beach where the sand never dries like the pain never stops. As if the more my toes sink into the moist soft sand, the more the blood spills from these cuts and the more vivid these visions turn.  Pulling on this chain of mine only causes me to sink into the sand, like a trap, the more I want to pull away from the past the more is slaps me in the face and digs its claws into my skin. The sand pulls me under as I pull at the chain, first to my ankles, then my waist and now I am up to my neck in the dark sand. The night falls and the Tsunami of memories crashes down upon me in wave after wave of pain. The sand releases me from its grip though the chain remains and I cannot avoid the rest of the waves. Blood mixes into the water as memory after memory invades me, taking over everything and making me re-live everything that has happened. Screaming for help only brings more of these waves crashing down upon me.
I wonder what it will take to break the chain and let me escape this sea of misery. All the will has been drained from my feeble heart and my soul is lost of hope. My eyes are lifeless as my skin is pale of color and warmth. Will I ever feel again? Am I even alive? Will I ever live? This blood drips down from my arm but maybe its only a sign that my heart has not realized that I am dead. Finally the waves stop and I lay there helpless, the dark water dripping down onto the sand from my body as I stare up at nothing. There is no sky here. No stars to gaze at or to seek answers from. I lay here, in the distance the familiar but unknown voices can be heard. They are out there in the distant, screaming at me and blaming me for everything. These voices are their voices, the ones from my past. But I never heard them like this…As if death took those from my heart and turned them against me along with my own will to carry on. I cover my ears to block those horrible screams but only to find the thud of my dying heartbeat. Slowly but surely I can feel it weaken until finally I am so close to death that I can finally feel my soul slipping away, setting me free from this pain.
Then it happens. My soul comes crashing back into my body and my eyes fly open only to see something I cannot make out. I am not on the beach but I am nowhere. I am standing but I don’t hold myself up. I feel warmth but its not from my body but another and as I look around its those eyes looking right into mine. I don’t notice the color but only what’s deeply hidden behind. These eyes I see hold something dear and amazing and now that I seen them I can only want to see more. I break the gaze only for a moment, trying to discover who these eyes belong to but I still don’t know and when I start to gaze back into those eyes to fade away. I am left behind and my dark world comes back to my feet and the spray of the sea of misery teases at my wrists, washing away the blood that never seems to dry. I fall to my knees, the tide crawling up my thighs as my tears crawl down my face. Each tear drops softly on the dark sea and the ripples seem to calm the sea, giving me my moment of peace that I need. The darkness lets up with each new tear but I have no clue why for I have cried many times before but what is different now? Suddenly I hear a new voice, assuring me of things I would never have accepted but this voice is so calm that it leads me gently into safety. The dark sea begins to lighten and as I look down upon its glassy surface I notice my own reflection upon it.
My eyes…Is that life I see?
My skin…No longer is it cold as death but it grows warm as my…
My heart! I can feel its pulse clearly and these wounds have all transformed into just scars or rather, ‘reminders’.  Things seem to clear up a bit but it doesn’t change that I am still full of pain. Nights go by and the sea lets me be but I am still chained to its dark empty beach. My thoughts alone are enough to lead me into these flashbacks but now they aren’t as painful and I merely walk among them to simply…

Accept the past….

The very past I have spent so many nights here on this forsaken beach of darkness trying to run from and being forced to re-live through from its smells and scenes to the very emotions and pains I felt. Now they simply let me see them again in a new light and the pain doesn’t stab as deep. As I walk back in from another of these trips I look out past the sea of misery to where I have never thought to look for my escape. My escape is beyond this sea of misery and its end is where my freedom awaits me. I stand strong, the past few weeks I have learned that I can stand strong because I am not alone anymore. Not only have those voices returned to the souls they belong but this new voice has also given me what I need to stand.

It gave me the strength to care…

Is this what I have needed? What has held me back for so long and left me to suffer? I haven’t truly cared about anything so long…Emotions were something I took pleasure from, twisting and turning them in others. Making them care when I never truly did. It was more like a game or experiment. Watching them feel what I could never feel, seeing them smile and give me their hearts. I took so many hearts only to toss them around in my hand to see how far I could go until I finally broke them into tiny pieces like my own. Now I am the one who actually cares and it scares me. Scared that finally someone has the chance to hurt me once again. I gave up that, pushed away my shield and someone found me here on this beach and took my heart. Why has this happened? What will happen now?

I am lost…

Lost on a new path where I have never thought I would travel again. I have been here before but it has been so long now. It confuses me but makes me happy at the same time. However, no matter how much I think about it this new emotion is something that does not bother me right now. Right now all I can do is stare out past the sea of misery and wonder if I have finally figured out the means of escape. I take the first step towards the water, the chain gives and lets me step. However it is more painful then ever before as I am brought to my knees from the force of the wave. The memory is so painful as it is one of the many I have locked away deep in my mind to where I never even thought about it again. Now it is free and it sucks me in.
This is one of the memories that I have altered. I never thought about the true brutality of it, only the event that it happened. I never thought about the blood pouring down her face, the way her leg was so strangely positioned or how the smile on her face was the only beautiful part of her death. I never thought about how the guy who drove that car that brought her end simply cursed about how she came out of nowhere or how much I wanted to kill him. How he was never even charged with her murder but simply a reckless driving charge that came to a seven hundred and eighty dollar fine. Was that all her life was worth to the world? Seven hundred and eighty dollars for the life of someone who deserved a full life that no one could ever put a price on.

Sam…

When I finally recover I am shocked to find that I have stood my ground, rising from my knees and bracing myself for the next step. I look down at my arms and look at the scars and I bring up a memory of my own. These new scars hold my promise in them. A promise I made to make up for the one I never truly kept. The old promise was the biggest one I had ever made, the one that has hurt me the most and forced me to live out of obligation and not out of my own will. I had made the promise that I would live a full life, I life that he would have wanted me to have and one I would never take for granted. I took that promise and butchered it, forcing myself to believe the only promise I made was to simply stay alive. I wanted to die so bad for so long and every time I would be just a step away from what I wanted I would realize my promise and back down. Sure, I stayed alive but for what? This was not the promise I had made. The promise I made and sealed into these scars is that I would live for myself and no longer see the darkness of my life but search for the light far out of reach, knowing that if I want it enough I can have it.

Looking up from these scars with a new courage I take the next step. The chain doesn’t hold me back and now the water is at my ankles, lashing up my lower leg with its cold touch and sending shivers through my body when the next one hits. Another forbidden memory has slipped through the seal and is now showing me the true power of its pain. This one has brought up something that I had long left behind. It shows me when I was so much younger, before I moved to Hawaii and met the people who changed my life forever. To where I was so scared and weak that I was picked on and treated like dirt. The time where I was pushed around and where I was considered just a problem child at school. The only reason I acted out was so people would think I was stronger then I truly was. All I wanted was the strength to earn the respect I so strongly desired. I have never felt so weak and my mind was so easily destroyed in those days. Back then I didn’t have my mental shields or my bad attitude and ability to not care. Back then I was so easily hurt and with this memory it is like my mind is young all over again with no blocks to protect me.
I stagger, digging my heel into the sand to make sure I don’t get pushed back by this memory and when it is finally over my face is littered with tears. To think I rely so much on blocking people out and protecting my mind by keeping it locked away. So many shields and walls set up that I didn’t feel anything. I had become so numb and cold that I begin to see just how easy it was for me to play with so many people and their emotions. I would never regret it, feel bad, or even care about them. I simply had good acting and even though I told them so many things I never really lied to them. I simply twisted the truth and bent their minds to believe every word I said.

I am such a monster…

I stand there, looking down again at the reflection in the water. I can see the evil face looking back at me. Showing me just what kind of a monster I truly was. Why had I become that? What was it that led to me becoming the person that just corrupted hearts and snuck into so many, only to tear them apart from the inside out. I know what did. It’s actually a little ironic. The best friend who taught me to always care about your friends, watch who you trust and all that…

Frank was the one who made me what I am…
Frank turned me into the same monster that he was…

Frank used my stubborn attitude to get me into dating again, challenging me to get more dates then him or to get a chick to give me her number. It started off with him just trying to help me move on from Carly’s death then turned into a constant game we called “Mind-Fuck”. He was the same way, never really cared about women or half of the friends he had. Dating chicks only to see just how far he could wiggle into their hearts then seeing how much he could do to them before they finally broke apart like glass. Johnny was his left hand man and once I was fit into the equation, it truly became our greatest and yet…most horrible adventure. Frank said he did that just to simply save himself from another heartbreak. Said that he only fell in love since and that he would never go through it again so he simply did what happened to him to everyone else. I never realized but I was doing the same thing without ever truly realizing it. I was breaking all the hearts I could simply because I could never accept what happened to mine.

My heart was broken before it even felt love in return…

I can’t even take the next step before another series of waves comes to push me back to the beach, as if my mind isn’t ready for what I want. The memory that takes over me leaves me back in Hawaii, banging on a door before just walking through it. Two older people sit on a couch watching television while the sound of bathroom water can be heard upstairs. I can hear myself ask, “Where is she?” and one of their hands simply points upstairs. My body leads itself, full stride up the stairs then banging on the bathroom door only to find no answer and water gathering at the bottom and soaking into the tan carpet. I watch my foot rise and smash the handle, the door jerks open as the frame splinters which grants me entrance. The water splashed under my feet as I run to her face down in the over-flowing bathtub. I hear myself yell that I need help. My hands dive into the water to roll her over as I then pick up her soaking body, the cold water running down my arms and chest as I struggle to carry her down the stairs. As I come down the stairs the older man is talking to himself. “She is just trying to get attention, the only help she needs is to help herself.” I set down the body, yell at the adults to look as I then start to rub her cold wet face and tell her to wake up. I lunge over and grab the phone, calling 911 then praying for what I knew would never come. My heart breaks all over again and I fall to my knees, letting the wave wash over me and taking with it the courage and hope I had only just begun to gain.