tw: drowning, choking
I know the lifeguard is saying something, but his voice is a Peanuts cartoon murmured through six layers of wool. my brain feels out of breath, drenched in sea foam. I don’t know what to do but nod. I can’t say anything but “thank you.” when my voice reaches back to me, I can’t make sense of why I sound six years old; almost a child again made by fear, as if I’ve been sipping three tanks of helium instead of polishing off a couple of ounces of the Pacific.
“I’m going for a swim.” I said to my grandfather before I left, wiggling on my sneakers and heading out the door. I remember his shape sitting at the kitchen table, hands resting on his stomach in the happy stillness of doing nothing at all. he smiled before the door closed behind me, “My, you’re such a free spirit.”
it’s this wording that echoes back to me with my hands pressed into my knees, coughing up salt—not all the things I still want to do with life, not even the combatting voice reminding me, “that was the dumbest thing you’ve done in a good while,” but twisting my grandfather’s words to better frame reality; are we going to chalk it up to whimsy or examine this recklessness? “My, you’re such a free spirit.”
I went to the beach alone. I saw an alert for high surf. I saw everyone on the beach playing far from the waves. I’ve spent so many summers with my nose buried in books, devouring stories about how the sea is a fickle god. all of this and still, I didn’t think twice. I knew how good the water would feel. I had been restless and dreaming of it.
time moved like molasses. not even fifteen minutes had passed and I could remember every second. dismissing panic, dismissing exhaustion, how fact-of-the-matter my thoughts became; “I have four dives left in me. it will take two to wave for help, for someone to see me and move. but what about that article I read on the bystander effect? what happens then? that’s three waves. keep moving. please keep moving. if nobody sees me by the third, I’ll grapple with drowning.”
“the swells turn before you notice.” the lifeguard reasons with me. the cotton starts to clear from my ears, but my head still feels waterlogged. after a few minutes of sitting with me while I heave ocean floor back to the sand, he reminds me it’ll be high surf for the next week or two. he dusts sand from his knees, slowly heads back to the parking lot. and leaves. was he stationed here to begin with? imagine if he had left fifteen minutes earlier. fifteen minutes was all it took. I gather my things, press my dizzied face into my shirt, and wait. the ocean did not let me go, but I escaped it, and what does one do after but walk home? to tell a story back to my grandfather that will allow a reasonable amount of worry? to pour a heavier glass of wine with dinner? to wake again and make breakfast? what else is there to do but live?
the walk home feels like it’s missing a laugh track. a “gotcha!” an odd thing, to sit at the table not as a ghost, but still rinsing the hollow taste of almost from my mouth. I walk the hall after dinner clutching my chest; watch my face in the bathroom mirror and cup both hands around me. “oh love, you’re here. you’re alright. you’re here.” I feel my reddened cheeks, my chapped lips, my little earlobes. “you’re here.” two feet on the cold tile. a tomorrow that I will see, still stirring on the horizon. before more days have passed and I relax into the footfall of routine, before I forget enough to be bored or impatient, I’ll hold close to this feeling. that even in its terror, I see the reminder: an empty seat at the dinner table, my bed warm and unmade, the space in conversation that belongs to my laughter—how precious to have a part in it all.
with love,
schuyler (sky-ler)
venmo: schuylerpeck