A Maiden's Voyage

The saltwater smacked upon my lips and the icy wind whipped my hair in a painful flurry. Through my tear-stained lens, I watched with horror as my dreams begin to sink into the abyss.

Fighting through the fear and the helplessness I tried to see what had happened. I was at a loss. What just happened and how did I get here?

I looked around, my heart leaping into my throat. Where is he? What happened? The sea was like liquid ink in a great shaker. It rose and fell with every beat of my heart and every pulse through my veins, like slow motion in an agitator of horrific proportions.

Strange shapes floated on the waters. Boxes and limbs rising and falling with nowhere to go but down. Unless by sheer miracle a passing moment caught up with their drifting reality and they were swiftly hoisted from the icy soup.

Every moment of hope was coupled with hopelessness. Every breath on this jettisoned raft in unison was tightly held and momentarily released in a surge of passing relief.

I took a moment to fight through the fear and the tears to look beyond. To try to see from where I came. The ship of fools was sinking fast, and I was a witness to my folly.

I wanted this. I wanted it so badly. To go on this maiden voyage. To sip champagne from crystal flutes and don the bedazzled finery of my ancestors. I wanted to be an adventurer, however, not the kind that has real journeys into unknown realms that edge on the savageness of an interior mind that knows no bounds, but an adventurer of the safe kind. The kind that wears silk stockings and coiffured hair, that purses painted lips and sees through a monocle of one-eyed luxury and gentile posturing. The kind of adventure one only reads about in the safe confines of the sheets at night.

Lights flashed out in the night, casting seconds of nightmarish truth that seared upon my consciousness. The lights drove me out of the safety of my illusions to the edge of a reality that was harsh beyond my wildest dreams.

I wanted to believe I was in a nightmare. This couldn’t be real and yet there was the stinging of the salt on my lips and clouding my vision. My clothing was saturated, and I became aware of just how cold I was in the moment.

Then the sounds reached something within. How had I not even noticed them before? The waves and the bumping of solid forms that found contact for a split second before launching apart again, cleaved away to the lost realms of the never-never. The screams of muffled names thrown to the wind in hope of finding their destination. Screams that were laughed at and teased by a wind that knew no bounds, and a coldness that had no heart. Screams that found a place to stay forever in the recesses of our minds, alone and together in dystopia.

I looked around to a small sea of faces frozen in the darkness. Frozen in disbelief and wide-eyed, I tried to call out his name, but no sound escaped me. I couldn’t speak, only witness. I couldn’t think, I could only exist, and for how long I did not know.

How could I feel so alone in a raft of lost souls like I? Yet here I was, drifting into an unknown and temporal future, not of my own desire, but of unknown forces. Drifting into my fate like all these others whose steady paths had been collectively obliterated.

As we drifted further, the screams grew softer and we witnessed in silence the hull of the mighty vessel kiss it’s last goodbye to the night. To the world of the living and the world of fiscal floatation. Finally, they sunk into the abyss, along with all the possessions that aligned us and identified us in this world.

Who are we now? We are survivors in the storm of life, unshackled, unfettered, united in mutual purpose, to gather up the pieces of our lives. To reform the remnants of our memories. The ones that come from the before.

I realised as I sat in silence, this moment in time will always be marked by before and after. This is a fissure and a scar that will always remain, no matter what comes next. If anything comes next.

I realised at that moment, hope still abounded. Even though this moment was marked with unmeasurable pain, hope was still a possibility. I realised that whilst I could not see him in this small posse of pain, perhaps he was still out there. Just maybe.

At that moment I stood at the helm of my life and felt a surge within as I called out his name to the wind. This time, the sound pierced my ears and scored my heart. I called again and again. The word whipped into the ether of the storm to be carried by its will.

I found my heart in the midst of the storm, in the middle of the ocean, and in the centre of the abyss. I found a strength I never knew I had, a strength to live by and a strength to die by. A strength and a will big enough to share.

I grabbed the hands of those next to me, cold and frozen. Our eyes met and they reached out to the hands and the hearts of those next to them. A chain of hands, a string of hearts, and a will of warriors we prayed to The One. The One that made us and The One that saved us. So far anyway.

Our collective prayer mouthed in silence, held in each heart and mind, a unison of our human vulnerability challenged by a strength of will to survive. Strengthened through our collective spirit and faith in The One.

In that Oneness, there was so status, no hierarchy, no position, no finery, no wealth, other than the wealth within, the sheer beauty of the human soul, seen in the wells of the eyes of the other, and felt in the grip of a hand. A moment shared. Our eyes told us,

We all make it, or none of us make it.

Our fate in the hand of the other, in the strength of the other, and in unity. We are One, with each other, with the elements, with our destiny and The One.

In the distance, the sound of a foghorn cried out in the night, a blast of the world from which we had come. A blast that had never sounded so good. The sound held our hopes and our dreams for a rebirth into a future we hadn’t yet planned.