Harsh Water

I had spent three long weeks in the sea. Everyone back home thought I was dead.

The winds were bitterly cold; they bit hard at my body and left my breath frozen. I couldn't feel my lips, only the harsh icy frost-bite that had covered them.

The only thing that I knew was that I had to keep swimming if I was going to survive.

Dark and heavy tall waves thundered all around me, forcing my head under the surface of the water; and when I came back up, I was spluttering while the waves cut into my skin like shards of glass wrapped all around my body. I was shivering in the water, violently and my entire body felt like lead. I could barely feel my body moving in the water, and I soon realized that I was in a state of hypothermia.

I knew that I had to keep moving, keep pushing through this horrible, dark nightmare until I woke up.

I haven't slept for three weeks, and I must have been daydreaming in the water, or maybe I had been unconscious for a split second.

I don't know.

All I know is that a violent, heavy wave of water unexpectedly crushed my head back down into the deep, murky depths of the ocean and that it took every little bit of weak strength that I had left to push me back to the top of the surface. When I reached the top, I was gasping heavily for breath; the cold water had wrapped around my neck, the waves strangling my windpipe leaving me dizzy and wanting to pass out.

Having not slept in three weeks had left me exhausted. I felt very sharp, icy pains in my flesh and bones as the water continued to drain the life out of me.

It felt like my entire body was going to crack, then dust into tiny dust particles.

I had a very bad cold, and my eyes hurt badly,

could it be pneumonia?

Again I don't know.

All I know right now is that if I don't reach land soon; I will die.

I coughed hard as I finally managed to keep my head above the water. I strained my painful, half-open eyes as hard as I could while I scanned the ocean for signs that a boat or a ship might come to rescue me, but there were none. Something hard suddenly hit my shoulder, and I thought that it might have been a shark attacking me. I attempted to scream though there was no point, my voice was too weak and nobody was going to hear me out here anyway. I swam closer to the item that had hit me, and discovered it was too rough and too square to be a shark; besides it remained floating on top of the water, whereas sharks usually go back underneath the water.

I managed to regain a little focus, and some of my senses had come back to me.

Being in the water this long can dull your senses, and make you think in delusional ways. I was also severely dehydrated and hungry.

I managed to identify the floating object as a raft. It was a little damaged, but it still appeared usable. I attempted to climb onto it three times before I managed to board it because my legs felt like deadweights beneath this heavy, murky water. The cold had weakened every muscle in my body, and it had now destroyed every little bit of strength that I had left.

I must have fallen asleep on the raft; because when I awoke, I was in a hospital and I had no memory of how I came to be there.

I was covered in a space blanket and there was a drip in my arm. A nurse asked me how I was feeling, though I felt too weak to answer her.

I managed to ask how I got here, but those were the only words that would come out of my mouth.

The nurse told me that I had been found unconscious on a floating raft in the middle of the ocean and that a crew ship had found me and brought me to this hospital. They told her that I must have been on the raft or in the ocean for some time because I wasn't breathing when they found me.

I have permanent damage to my muscles, and I have a long way to go before I regain any strength. I can barely eat because food makes me feel sick, and the seasickness is taking some time to go away.

It has now been two months since my ordeal in the ocean, and though I am getting a little stronger every day; I still have no memory of how I came to almost die in the middle of the sea.

I am glad that I don't remember the whole horror story of what happened to me; I'm not even sure that I want to remember it.

However; I am grateful to the crew on that crew ship for rescuing me and saving my life.