To Know You

Eleven: Seth

As I dove into the cool water it engulfs me and forms around me as if we were one and not simply human and element. The air locks into my lungs desperate to keep my body alive but as my limbs propel me through the large pool thoughts invalid my mind like a mini army set on killing my sanity.

Inward and out I feel like an idiot, if I had not questioned Olive about the baby's father then maybe she wouldn't have run away from me as if she saw through my clothes and discovered the scars upon my skin. I wouldn't even be labeled a human for my skin appears to be trash and therefore maybe I should be labeled the garbage of the world. However, maybe I deserve to feel worthless for during dinner when Olive was speaking of her past lover all I wanted to do was kill him. Olive was as skittish as a stray cat when she spoke about her ex-boyfriend, and it troubled me deeply for the thought of someone or something hurting her angers me to my pure core. 

My head emerges from the water and air is greedily welcomed back into my dry lungs. Resting my back against the stone wall I stare out over the water of the large pool. The midnight moon shines through the glass ceiling of the shed that hides the pool from plain sight. This is one of the only places where I can take off my clothes and not feel the need to hide. I can embrace my skin, of course I still kept my boxer briefs on for I didn't feel the need to completely be in the nude. Raising my arm from the water I watch with emotionless eyes as the clear water slides through the cracks and indents of my skin. When I was a child and with my adoptive family, I was always scolded for showing any emotions and a time even unknown to myself, I simply just learned how to hide behind a mask and not show what my soul is feeling.  

Or what my mind is screaming...

Leaning my head back, I sigh for I love my Cheyenna, but I am beginning to feel emotions for Olive that I shouldn't.

"You're a married man and I don't want others to start thinking things that are in fact not true."

My mind echoes her words and she's right I shouldn't be having dinner with a woman when I am married or rather fake married. But when I was out with Olive, I didn't feel like I was cheating because being with Olive might as well be the closest, I'll ever be to Cheyenna. My mind wanted to keep being around her to simply fulfill my serotonin fixation, but my heart knew it was wrong and so my soul sided with the heart. 

Like it should but rarely ever does...

Opening and closing my mouth I take air as my hostage and dive under the clear blue water once more. The water was colder than most pools and I preferred it that way. If I wanted to feel hot water wash over my form, then I would take a shower, but I want or rather need the ice-cold water. It awakens my body and forces it to endure mild torture. The need for this was as great as the need for oxygen in my body. For most of my childhood all I knew was how to survive and it made my body change into a form that only feels alive when it's put into situations that cause it to fight. People say after you are removed from an abusive situation that with time and with the help of a therapist that your life will just magically go back to what it used to be. But newsflash it doesn't. And in my own opinion therapy is just a joke and a way for the justice system to just try and make victims 'normal' again because this world can't handle anything that isn't normal. 

Rather I am swimming in cold water or allowing my fists to strike upon a worldly surface in a fit of anger that should only belong to a beast and perhaps a beast I am. Is when I feel like my body is in survival mode and as if turning back the clock and twisting the tables on my abusers, I am finally in control of what happens to my body. At times it feels like my body nor mind can forget what I endured. For eight years I was a prisoner in practically a concentration camp. I was on the brink of death for ninety-six months and two-thousand, nine-hundred and twenty days. The scars that lay upon both my body, soul, and mind are ones that I am stuck with for the rest of my life.