Past, Present, and Premonition

“Are they getting worse?”

“Yes,” I forced out through gritted teeth.

My mom took one of her almost too-slender hands from the steering wheel and rested it on my knee. I gripped both sides of my head and pushed as hard as I could. Applying pressure had never helped shorten or relieve any of the pain pulsing just inches below my skull, but I did it anyway. The mental win of feeling like I had any control over this part of my body was enough to encourage and sustain this useless habit.

I squeezed harder, half wishing my head would open up like a volcano and erupt, freeing me from this debilitating pain. I could feel myself drifting towards unconsciousness, towards the hazy in-between space of existence and nonexistence. I hated that place. I hated the things I saw there. I needed to be strong, to outlast the desire to just shut myself off.

I drove my feet into the floorboards, grounding myself in this reality, and pushed my back as firmly into the car’s passenger seat as I could. I could barely open my eyes, but knew that closing them was not an option. The pounding between my eyes intensified, and the throbbing sensation radiated from my brian, down my spine, oozing into every part of my body. Sweat streamed from my forehead, streaking my tan flesh, and soaking my oversized t-shirt and loose jeans. My skin was cold to the touch, but inside, I was on fire.

A thick haze clouded my vision, obscuring the coastal scene running parallel to the highway we were driving along. I squinted, trying to make decipher the shapes of what I assumed were trees, parked cars, and boats floating on the water in the distance. But all I could see were dark figures, shadows, blobs that I could not identify. I knew the radio in the car was playing, I heard it just before the blinding pain consumed me, but I couldn’t hear it now. All I could hear were the waves crashing onto the sand.

For a moment, the pain inside of me subsided. I was at peace, completely entranced by the melody of the waves.

But that didn’t last long.

What started as a dull roar, grew with intensity until the sound was unmistakable. They were screams. Gut-wrenching, ear-piercing, tortured screams. They were coming from the shore.

Suddenly, I felt my body floating outside of itself. It, me, or some part of me, felt transported to the shore below. I was standing, alone, but submerged in this thick cloud of perpetual screaming.

Then, the waves began to break on top of me. I couldn’t find my way up or out. I struggled for air, trying to find the perfect time to inhale, but there was no time. I couldn’t catch a break in between the waves' rhythm. Each attempt at a breath filled my lungs with more and more water. I tried calling for help, but only muffled gargles escaped my lips. The waves swallowed these feasible attempts like it was swallowing me. Whole.

No one could hear me. No one could save me.

This was my last chance for survival. I gasped, this time filling my lungs with air. The ocean receded, leaving my body dry on the shoreline. I took another breath. The scene around me started to come back into focus. The guitar rift coming from the car speakers filled my ears. I slowly dropped my hands from around my head and took my mother’s hand in mind.

She forced a smile through painted lips, trying unsuccessfully to disguise her worry. I could see how this, my headaches, had aged her. Her skin used to be smooth, like porcelain, but now it was riddled with cracks above her eyebrows and around her eyes. There was a heaviness under her eyes now, a constant drooping that no amount of concealer could hide. I could see lines of make-up free skin showing through the foundation on her cheeks from where she had been crying. I used to hate it when my mother cried, but she does it so often now that I rarely noticed it anymore. And that made me sad for her.

Knowing I am the reason for the darkness that has engulfed her so completely makes me sad for myself.

“What was that? The fourth one this hour?”

“Yeah. They’re getting more frequent, lasting much longer, and are more intense now. The ones today are the worst I have ever had.”

“We will find some way to fix this. I promise.”

I half-smiled, trying to appease my mom, to make her think I was still hopeful. But I wasn’t. These headaches started when I was 10 and have only worsened with age. They are really the only thing I remember about my life. Everything before them is just black. Each time they hit is more debilitating than the last and according to the last doctor I saw, if they keep going at the rate they are, it would either kill me or drive me totally out of my mind. Neither were bad options, but I couldn’t tell my mom that.

She had given up her entire life- she quit her job and sold our house, packed everything we needed into her black hatchback- to drive up and down the coast to consult specialists and find some type of treatment or cure. I was all she had left, the only thing that told the world how she had spent the last five years. My dad stuck around a few months after the headaches started, trying to be there for my mother and I, but between his incessant drinking and fits of rage, it had all become too much. One morning I woke up to go to school and he was gone. Just like that. No goodbye. No word of where he was going. Just silence and shattered expectations left in his wake.

I was her entire world now.

“Oh, I love this song!”

My mom gave one good spin to the volume knob on the radio and belted the lyrics louder than Prince, as if he was her backup singer. I tried to commit this moment to memory, needing to remember her just as she was right now- how she shimmied her shoulders and tapped her fingers against the steering wheel slightly off-beat to the music. She never had a good sense of rhythm, she was always a few seconds behind, but it was charming. And for a quick second, I could see her eyes lighten and her body release the stress and tension it had been harboring for these last five years. For a moment, she seemed free.

I opened my mouth to sing along, but the words emanating from the car’s speakers quickly turned to static. I looked over at my mother, who appeared to still be singing to a song that I could no longer hear. I turned the volume up, but still only heard the crackle of the static. A dull, deep ache began to pulse at the base of my brain, spreading like wildfire throughout my body. I could feel my blood curdling and my organs twisting in on themselves. I doubled-over and pressed my ear against the speaker on the side of the car door. In between the crackles and the fizz, I could hear a voice. It was light. Delicate. Like that of a young child.

A girl.

She was calling out, for something or someone, but her words were so faint that it was nearly impossible to hear them. The roaring in my head became louder, but I couldn’t focus on that. I needed to focus on her.

I listened. I begged for her to call out to me again. Her voice got louder until the words were finally crisp and clear. I did not recognize the voice, but the word she was saying was unmistakable.

“Sage. Sage.”

I pulled back from the speaker, and for some reason I cannot explain, turned towards the ocean. There was a solitary shadow standing at the water’s edge. The ocean behind her was a dark shade of red. The color of blood. She stood there, staring back at me, unmoving, calling out my name every time the waves rolled back from the shore.

“Sage.”

This time the voice sounded familiar. I turned to my mother. I waited for her to speak, but she said nothing. She just looked at me, horrified. I turned away from her and stared back out towards the ocean where everything had returned to normal. I reached out to roll down the window and that’s when I saw it. The blood on my hands. I tried to wipe it away, but my attempts were futile. The deep red color seemed permanent: my hands stained red.

“Mom. Do you see my hands?”

“What is that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what is happening to me. Mom?”

“It will all be okay soon.”

I was expecting to feel comforted by her words, but there was no warmth in them. It was like she had shut off all of her humanity and compassion for me. Her words were empty. Hollow. It felt like she was a hundred miles away from me. I thought about saying ‘I love you’ or something that would prompt her to respond with some level of affection, but I’m sure that would have made me feel worse. It would have felt forced and nothing between us had ever been forced before.

I watched out the window as the sun disappeared behind the ocean’s horizon, streaking the sky orange and red. Without warning, my mother turned the car off of the freeway and drove until we came to the beach’s edge. Even though I had lived my entire life within walking distance to the beach, my mother and I had never gone to one. There was something, a force or a feeling, that made it impossible for us to move too far away from it, but at the same time, stopped me from getting too close to it.

Until now.

I followed my mom in silence from the car towards the beach. She continued on to the sand, but I stopped at the large rock that served as an entrance marker. On the side of the rock that faced the parking lot, there was a small shrine, assumedly for someone who has died. There were stuffed animals, books, and flowers lining the bottom of the rock.

Emerson Jane- beloved daughter, source of laughter and light, our angel. 2008-2016.

I looked up from the remembrance plaque to find my mom standing ankle deep in the water. I walked out towards her. As I approached the ocean’s edge, the crippling pain in my head began, intensifying with each step. Standing next to my mother, I reached out to take her hand in mine, pleading for some type of comfort, but she did not move. She stood rooted, like a statue, in the sand, staring out at the horizon. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

“Mom.”

I wanted to say more, but that was all I could muster out before I collapsed onto the sand. I felt a hand gently brush against my arm. Startled, I turned to my right, not sure what to expect. I blinked, trying to focus my eyes, but could only make out a shadow. I rubbed my eyes with my forearm until I could make out the shape of the once amorphous blob.

She had come out of nowhere and was just standing here. Next to me. Smiling up at my mother. I turned towards my mother, to see if she saw the girl, too. She did. But unlike me, she was not confused or shocked. She was staring down at the little girl, smiling. Happy. Overwhelmed, but in the best kind of way. It was like she was being reunited with a part of herself that she had lost years and years ago. Like reconnecting with this girl, strange but familiar, had awakened something within her that she had convinced herself to lock away. Looking into my mother’s blue eyes, I saw no pain. Just relief and pure elation.

I watched as my mother crossed in front of me and took the young girl’s hand into hers. The young girl smiled back at her. They looked happy standing there together. There was a part of me that felt happy for them. I could sense that they belonged together. My mom hugged the little girl as she whispered something in her ear before coming to stand behind me.

I studied the girl, memorizing her features, acutely aware of how similar they were to my own. She could not have been older than eight. And standing here, in front of me, in her black one-piece swimsuit that was covered in daisies and sunflowers with an oversized jacket draped over her shoulders, she seemed smaller than that. The longer I looked at her, the smaller she seemed to become. As if she was shrinking right before my eyes. Her light, her spirit, dimming as the sun disappeared from the sky. I stared into her eyes, watching as the life drained from them. Her sun-kissed skin turning to a pale, lifeless white. Her bright, green eyes sinking back into her skull. She lifted her hand and rested it on my shoulder, flooding my mind with images I had never seen before.

I saw her standing here, in this exact spot, in that exact outfit, at the edge of the ocean. And I saw me, 10 years old, watching as she waded deeper and deeper into the sea. She was calling to me, asking me to follow her, but I refused to move. I stayed on the sand, collecting shells. She went deeper, until the water reached her chest. She called out to meagain. She was smiling. Laughing. She wanted me to play with her in the waves. I was getting nervous for her. She seemed to be out too far, but I convinced myself that she would be fine.

I watched as the waves crashed into and over her. She yelled out to me. This time the lightness in her voice was replaced with desperation. She screamed. I watched in horror. She was dying. But I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. All I could do was watch.

It all happened in a few seconds, but it seemed to last hours.

Finally, I saw a man and a woman running into the waves, searching for their daughter. I realize those are my parents. She was their daughter. She was my sister.

My father emerged from the waves, carrying her limp, soaked body towards the shore while my mother frantically called for an ambulance. We waited for them, together, at the edge of the sand, leaned against the rock. But by the time they arrived, it was too late. She was already gone.

We shrank into ourselves.

Consumed by grief. Consumed by guilt.

Suddenly, I felt the ocean’s waves wash over my body, knocking me onto my back, onto the ground. I tried to come up for air, but couldn’t find which way was up. I made it out from under the waves, only for a second, before I was submerged by water again. Someone was holding me down, forcing me into the sand. It had to be my mother. She was trying to kill me.

No matter how hard I struggled, it was impossible for me to break through the waves. It was impossible for me to breathe. I could feel myself slowly losing grip on this reality. I did not have much time left. I had to find something, anything from within myself and use it to break through the water. I tried, one last time, with no success.

The harder I struggled, the more fiercely my mother fought to keep me down. She was not going to let go until I let go.

I was the only part of this dark tragedy left, the daily reminder of the worst day of my mother’s life. I’ve been punishing myself ever since that day, without even knowing it. I was the one fueling the darkness that had been following my mother for years now. Perhaps my absence would be the source of her happiness.

Maybe this was all for the best.