When Oceans Collide

The all encompassing, blue hues of the sky fill Catherine's view as she wanders aimlessly along the deserted shoreline, a cloudless day. The sun, a blinding blur that pierces the eyes, has moved steadily across the sky. The ocean harnessing the sunlight to create a spectacle of shimmering, illusive diamonds to adorn her tumultuous waters with. Normally catching onlookers and passersby in a mesmerising pull to her beauty and magnificence, her waters have a scarce few admirers today though.

Time and the sun drift together, laconically across the sky, they flow and lilt together, pulling the oceans tide with them as they go. Giving rush to the waves that throw themselves to the shore in a rolling, crashing kind of thunder, powerful, unyielding and unrelenting. A sound that has a repetitive, soothing nature to it, all the same. Catherine walks the shoreline, her bare feet leaving a short lived history in the water heavy sand. The ocean pushing herself forward in flowing, rhythmic rushes, seemingly intent on maintaining her flawless appearance.

The breeze, filled with the oceans kiss, is a refreshing coolness against Catherine's sun painted skin, a beautiful bronze, from a lifetime lived by the ocean. It swirls about her skin, and gives life to her hair, bringing her focus from eternity to now.

She pauses her walk, stopping to look out across her surroundings, wondering how many hours have passed, she looks back the way she came, mildly startled through the numbness, at just how far she has come. Looking to the sun she roughly considers the time that may have passed, sighing as she realises how worried her partner is going to be when she finally makes it home. Unable to contend with even just the thought of her husband is too much to bare. The raw and wild emotion that seizes her is a blinding force that simmers her life down to two choices. She finds herself a position on the warm, soft sand, she sets her shoes down beside her, sitting crosslegged and gazing out at her ocean home. The suns rays captured within the glowing exorbitant blues and greens of the ocean. Reflected through the tumbling waves that the ocean throws to the sky and gravity throws back down.

Running her hand through the fine sand, lifting small handfuls and feeling the gains waterfall through her fingers, becoming once more, one with the baron, lifeless ground. Her eyes glazed with a bleakness that permeates her mind, stripping her of the essence of light that used to glow within her. If only times healing hands could flow as quickly as the sand through her open fingers. Watching the waves of curling blue crash into a trillion bubbles rushing to the surface to form a frenzy of white wash, glinting in the sun. She closes her eyes, her mind numbly seeking refuge from the pain summoning up the many memories of her favourite buzzing, fizzing noise of the bubbles reaching the surface merging together, popping, becoming one with the sky again. A rotation, a journey, made endlessly.

A child's laughter is carried to her ears, by the wind, from further up the beach. Causing a spasming jolt of pain to sear through her chest, it arrests her breath momentarily and severs her mindful appreciation of her surroundings. Looking up, she watches a diligent, proud father watching over his child, smiling as the toddler laughs and squeals at the sun warmed water. The salt, the sand, the movement of the water, every detail a new exploration, a new lesson, a new adventure for the child.

A deluge of emotion floods Catherine's mind, a destructive and forceful torrent. Looking away from the child she sees the mother watching on as her family plays at the foot of the ocean. Half laying, half sitting she goes back to reading her book, her wide brimmed hat gently moved by the breeze as she reads on. Her red bikini displaying her toned, slim body, any sign of having given birth to a child already long gone, a long forgotten memory.

A bitter, jealous thought invades her mind with spite

'Perfect family, perfect life...I bet they have a perfect house too'.

Sighing out loud, she tuts herself with a click of her tongue, for letting her pain speak for her. Sighing again at her brief, unguarded lapse of tainted thinking. She, of all people, knows that nothing is ever easily won, not all facades hold truth...and if they are truly happy, then it is a thing of rare beauty that should be inspiring, should be celebrated. Forcing her breath from her lungs again, as if the breath will carry away with it the overwhelming emotions.

Feeling as if she is drowning on land she turns her attention back to the oceans heaving, unable to contend with the grief and sorrow that fill her mind and pull her down like a burdensome weight of metallic lead. She runs her hand along the scar across her stomach, a constant reminder of the child she lost. Unable to face the flashbacks of fear and panic she stands, brushing the sand from her legs, an instant urgency to be safely home. Turning back, she begins making her way back down the beach, the way she had come, retracing footsteps lost to the oceans thieving hands.

Her mind barely afloat on overbearing, dark waters that refract into a thousand needles, piercing her mind with painful desperation that surges forward. The still tender scar roars with a sense of loss, her little girl never even saw the sun rise. The thought breaks her destroying the thin thread of resolve that held her.

Leaving her shoes on the safety of the shore, she gives herself to the oceans embrace. The cool water enveloping her body in a form of weightlessness, she swims out with the pull of the undertow, where waves crash over her, she allows the ocean to tumble her into a moment of surrender. Holding herself under the darkened, chilling waters of the deep, she opens her eyes to the stinging salt water, watching the chaotic thrashing rolling of the waves above. Nestled in the relative calm of the deep where she hides from thought, from memory, from emotion and the pain of it all. She focuses on the weight of the water pressing in on her lungs, she takes in every sensation, every detail, trying to flood her mind with anything and everything to push away the haunting vivid past that she relives with each waking moment. A chapter in her life that defines and dictates every moment of thought, every inaction. A chapter she wishes she could erase, but also holds to with a clawing desperation that she cant shake off. Her lungs begin to burn, all her oxygen already risen to the surface in buoyant glistening bubbles that radiate a rainbow of colours all swirled together.

Her grief has brought her to a cross roads, crossroads she faces fifty times a day, crossroads that call for her in her darkest moments. Her arms pushing against the heavy water, she stays beneath the tumultuous waves a few seconds longer, lungs feeling like they will simultaneously burst and collapse. Making her decision once again, feet to the solid surface of the sandy bottom, she kicks off, propelling her body to the crashing waves above. Her lungs gasp in desperation for air, her body tingling for the lack of it. Lightheaded, she lets the waves deliver her safely to the shore, propping herself above the shallows on hands an knees, she fights for enough oxygen. Wiping away her hair from her face and the sharp salt water from her eyes, she senses a presence on the beach, looking up she sees her worried husband, the dark circles around his eyes from the endlessly grief striken, sleepless nights. The gnawing desperation that feeds off her; it feeds off him too. How could she be so selfish? Climbing against the forces of gravity that sink her deeper, she pulls herself together, regret coursing about her body, a vivid spasming of shame jolts through her. She goes to him broken, torn at the seams. Without words he gently wraps her in a towel, layering her with a warm, silent, embrace that holds both their lives together. She cant stop the helpless babbling of apology that spills from her...but he already knows, the same collision of emotion swells within him too.