The Broken Seahorse

Chapter 1- Nally

 I'm gone in the gray, it finds me, climbs insides me, and dismantles my thoughts. Mist weaves through my memories, and visions become blurry. The remembering covers my eyes, stopping in one direction. While my arms, legs, toes, fingers relax into a trance. My eyes are now open and have gone in my brain now rolled in my head. Pictures become scratched glass, fictional days, or real memories? Close to knowing until an icy frost turns the mist into the snow. It mists in the nights when I'm so hot and yet, extremely cold, a body that can remember, but a mind that cannot. I'm distraught from what I don't know, can I ever? Objects I hold in my hand for the millionth first time make a spring day become a winter storm. When was this, how does it relate to me? Why can't I see the moments in the day, a week, in the many months? Hang on because this will only take one moment I can remember, I will remember, ha! The mist, little grays drops stuck in the middle trickle down the sea horsetail into sparkling intricate snowflakes bursting into sharp razor ice, and I am forgotten.

- stuck in the mist

 Nally Shay hand glided over the page of the bumps from the lead of the mustard, red top eraser perfectly sharpened number two pencil. It was a letter she wrote to her self the first entry in her journal. The nurse at the rehabilitation center had given her. For remembering her old memories and to always have to make new memories and keep them. She had never felt the need to write in a diary or journal to keep her basically everything in. Feeling it to be a giant book of her life that anyone could steal at anytime it was just to risky.

The strength from her nurses and the respect that she now had for these individuals advice will now be always welcome with open arms. Seeing how she thought it was best to seek advice from people who knew how to build strength in a person. Trying something never hurt anyone and although it hadn't lead her to old memories. Writing was a way to sort out new memories that were filled with frustration and anxiety. She had lost a whole year of her life and bits a piece of it floated around in the mist. An accident how very vague, a mistake, unstoppable and it was. One day she was at home lying in her bed ready to go to sleep then she woke to find herself in a hospital bed.

The story of her getting there like it was some kind of out of body narrative that she was suppose to tell but couldn't. She decided to write in her journal like a story book not about he feelings not point blank but as a story a narrative with dialogue. Every night she wrote it was to tire herself from the nightmares that would wreck her mind into to a frenzy. It would take her till 1 am to 5:45 am it didn't matter she would write until she knew her mind would not be able to wake. Wake her restful mending brain into unimaginable dangerous not being able conceive in the mornings.

This morning was one of the best she had in a long time rare she didn't wake covered in cold sweat and matted hair but to sunlight coaxing her out of bed to greet the day. No, nightmares just an ordinary day, it was the first day in August and that meant she would be going to a place she could never forgot. A ritual her family had till the early days of her parents marriage a break in the year one month to spend in a safe little town away from their ordinary daily hassels. The cottage was named Serenity and rested on the dunes of Lake Michigan and She could see it pictured it taking a breathe instantly with relief. 

Her hand rose and fell, mimicking the waves while slowly walking along the blue silk sanded walls. Closing her eyes, she could smell the moist water, and hear the small waves, crashing onto the beach. Seagulls shrieked of joy, and instantly she felt peace sink into her sun kissed skin. Breath in and out, it was a place where she belonged, it was Serenity located in a town called Charlevoix set in the middle between miles off Sleeping Bear Dunes and the Mackinaw Bridge. Those thoughts consumed her as she was packing her suitcase. 

It was that cottage and the visions of this summer town, that made her keep going about a task she hated. Packing for a month, the last month of summer before it was time to go back to school. It was a place where she felt total ease and happiness. A place that could mend a broken mind and this year she never needed serenity so desperately. She was determined that this last spot would spark something inside of her that would make the gray turn rays of sunlight. This cottage and town would be the strong foundation of regaining her life again, after it had been taken from her. This month she will soak up light blissful feelings the sun brings and bury the cold winter nights in the sand.