Dark Waters

The Realization

Water is essential to survival. A resource all known life forms on Earth are dependent on. It sprinkles down onto our land from the heavens, and surrounds us; as 2/3rds of our planets surface contains this strange liquid.

We drink it to hydrate ourselves. We clean ourselves with it. We even swim in it!

For fun, and as an activity, we play in the freezing waves of the vast, salty oceans. We splash, we cool off in our own little pools of the stuff during the hotter months. We float on our backs, face up, staring into the consuming, sparkling silver sky.

We fear its depth. We fear known creatures like jellyfish and sharks, that seem to swim aimlessly through the ocean, awaiting our vulnerable bodies. We even fear the unknown creatures that lurk, undiscovered in the desolate, unexplored ocean floor.

We use all our energy, powering through the slow moving waves, away from danger.

And we drown.

Shuddering, then shaking the image of her face out of my mind, I focus myself back to where I am currently- in this moment. I'm sitting with bleary eyes on a backyard lake deck, my numb legs lifelessly dangling into the black unknown. Where anything could slip by them, touch them, or grab them.

"Careless."

I've been contemplating the existence of water for so long the biting cold has cut off all feeling from my feet... Fuck.

"Ignorant."

Tuning my ears back to reality, I hear the laughter and yelling of conversations behind me that drown out the bonfire in my best friends backyard. Her seventeenth birthday party is where I am. More accurately, where I temporarily escaped from.

"Coward."

I had to get away for a while! They can be a little much for me at times... Now, I must have come up in conversation because they are calling out my name, wanting me to come back.

I hear my friends iconic fake laugh, and feel the footsteps of her slowly making her way down the dock to approach me.

"You ready to head back to the group now?" She asks, kneeling down to my left side.

"N-no" I answer firmly, but my chattering teeth give me away.

"C'mon!" She sighs and pulls my legs out of the black water.

"AH!" She yells in surprise. "This water is freezing! How can you stand this?"

"I like the cold." I respond tonelessly. And start rubbing my blue legs to get the feeling back.

"Seriously, you're going to hurt yourself! You've been down here for twenty minutes now."

"What!?" I panic, and attempt to stand up, only to have my legs immediately fail me and I fall right back down again.

"Hey, take it easy! Just give yourself a minute."

"Yeah, okay." Holy shit, I've got to watch myself next time, this isn't the first case I went deep into thought during a dangerous circumstance...