Crimson Tide

Scar tissue.

You only need to look at my body to know. 

Although wounds heal, time shows the true depth of damage. Penetrating. The physical build up of the residual unrest in my body.

You stare in the mirror and sunken eyes reluctantly return the reflection;  echoing an emptiness. These are not yours. This is not you.  You know that you have fallen so much further than you could have ever even dared to imagine. 

You don’t recognise your own face  anymore. You can’t feel any physical connection with your body. All you can do is sense. You sense the silent sucking of your soul as it seems to slip further away. Your self, once defined, is deflating without dignity.  How can you hang onto something that you can no longer feel? That fails to feel familiar or safe? When people speak of being kidnapped by things that are indeterminable,  is this what it feels like? To have your body, mind and soul hijacked and to be left with one thing; nothing more. Just an achingly raw, deep pain inside, boring into the crumbling calcification of your once strong spine.  You are no longer aware of your breathing, your heart beat or your connection to anything tangible. 

I look again. The eyes evoke emptiness. There is no warmth, glimmer of hope or sadness.

The light has seeped out of them. 

Like thick blood from a tired wound 

I struggle to wrestle with my reflection but all that is returned, is passive. A neutral nothingness that fails to resonate with me.  I am dying. 

Death. The thing that defies so many. Dying. Not in the true physical or spiritual sense. But it is  here. Death. Inching towards me, its full belly dragging along the ground as it snakes its way slowly, soullessly, almost seductively before it somehow secures itself around one of my listless limbs. 

I am in the clutches of death. 

A sense of purpose. Belonging. Direction.
I know this now and the gnawing pain that steals sleep from my mind and warmth from my body has been the early warning that my imminent death is just that.
Imminent.    Impending. Irrepressible.

The only interruption to this monotonous muted muddle is when the blackness rolls in. 

I understand more so than ever what it means to be merely existing. I have lost the connection with the earth. Lost the connection with myself, my body and my senses - I cannot seem to be present. I fight awkwardly against the folds and creases of my conflicting thoughts. Thoughts that dully drag themselves back and forth inside my head as day blurs into night. Blending into the white noise that they have now become. A background dialogue to my existence that could be my preparation for the goodbye as my identity slips soundlessly from my grasp.  

Thundering against the hollowness of my skull the blackness builds. It ricochets from one side to another - echoing and repeating until I am forced to listen. 

A black cleaver that slices through the intricate web of negativity, showing me a different way. A crimson red line that draws me closer to the possible escape. 

The get-out.

I need to. 

But there has been no public shedding to indicate a period of change for me. No signs or subtle signals. Yet, I am fearful of the eyes turning to me. I may be crying out for help but it is so buried, so silenced, so much more than strangled. 

I must remove myself from this coffined pain in which I have become so senselessly cocooned.  

Can anyone really hear me? Can they see what I truly am? A shell of my former self. I just am. The ache is here. I just am. The ache is here. I just am.

I AM.

More than suffocated. I am castrated.

 Now I am left. 

Just left.

Eyes are powerful and when they rest upon me, the burning, crushing sense overcomes me. Perhaps one day I will be seen. Finally uncovered and left bare, naked and raw. 

Naked and raw like a newborn baby thrust into the world with no preparation, no knowledge; forced into the bright lights and artificial world that begin to engulf it. The baby is clutched by those close, clamouring to make that connection and so the smothering and suffocation begins. 

The blackness floods my mind teasing my thoughts. Lucid. Vivid. Brief.

But I am fearful of the crimson red that 

woefully weeps as the 

blackness bleeds through the white noise. 

The crimson tide has an allure; a shine. 

It is mesmerising. 

I begin to feel consciousness as I allow myself to be carried along inside its ebbs and flows. 

I feel protected as the dark red engulfs me, giving me weak warmth and heartless hope. 

I can escape the banality of what I have become. 

No more white noise and empty soul. 

The red and black swirl and dance, whipping up the thoughts that are coming into focus. 

There is nothing left.

I have nothing left.

Nothing.

              Left.              

                                                Just let me 

                                GO