A Match Into Water

There always was something calming about water. From the rain, to the sea, to a pond behind a house. She felt at home near the water. There was something truly reassuring about the ocean to her though. Maybe it was the way that the waves and the sand could smooth even the roughest of edges of glass. It was her happy place when everything was dark; a sort of security blanket that could save her from even the most evil of monsters under her bed.

As a child she was noticeably smaller than the rest of the children her age. It made it easier for her to hide and sneak about. From a dark balcony like hallway on the second floor of her home she could hear her parents fight in the living room below her. She would always listen. They never knew she was there or they never cared. She would wait until they went to sleep, and once she was sure they weren’t going to wake up she would sneak out the back door and to the pond behind her house. She’d sit all night at the edge of a small dock and watch the fish swim in the moonlight. It calmed her after hearing such traumatic arguing. She felt at home with the pond and fish; dipping her toes into the water and watching as the ripples spread then faded. That night she lost a very vital part of her life. It was the last night she had the “American Dream” family. Her parents later separated and she felt at fault. If only she’d eaten all her vegetables. If only she’d done better in school. If only she didn’t sneak out after they fought… then they would still be together. She would still have her happy family. In her sadness she sat at the pond and let her mind slowly run blank in aquatic meditation. Her home was with the fish and the snapping turtles were her friends. And in those nights she was okay again.

A decade later she was in the same spot in an entirely different situation. The dock that looked new in her childhood was now slowly rotting beneath her feet. She didn’t dare sit on the end for fear of falling in the dark water. No one really knew what kind of creatures lived in the bottom of the pond and she wasn’t eager to find out. She could hear yelling from behind her and it got closer. She ran from her problem to a childhood safe-haven but trouble always had a way of following her.
Profanities filled the air behind her shattering the once relaxing atmosphere that she’d created around the pond and she started to cry. It wasn’t because she was insulted; it was because she was sad. Her aunt shouted and insulted her in two languages, both of which she could understand more clearly than she let anyone believe. “You never loved her!” was a popular phrase to be thrown at her. Her aunt wasn’t the first to shout these words. Her step-dad said it the day before too. And like the knife like tone that her aunt used, the words sliced through her causing a pain that she had never imagined in her worst nightmares. “You’re the reason she’s dead!” was one that hadn’t been used previously and it broke her heart to hear. She looked down into the water at the snapping turtles that surfaced for breath; she wanted nothing more than to be a turtle at that moment. She wanted to hide in a shell that could protect her from the onslaught. Tears slid down her cheeks and into the pond, she watched with glassy eyes as the ripples faded hoping that, like a decade ago, would help her stay calm. Her aunt kept yelling though.

Was it really her fault? Cancer isn’t something a person can cause another person. But with all the yelling and the high emotion that surrounded the family, she couldn’t be sure. Her head was spinning with all the jumbled thoughts that were rushing her. She was drowning.

“It should have been you.” It was the last thing she heard before the dam broke and she turned around and slapping her aunt. The safety of the pond was ruined. In an attempt to save her sanity, she took the car key’s she’d recently inherited and drove to the beach. The sun had finally gone down by the time she’d gotten to the shore line. She’d stopped crying as well. The pain was still there. It was her mother that her aunt was screaming about. Who could say she didn’t love her mother? It was evil, it was sadistic, it was a cruel thing to shout at a child who had just lost a parent. It broke her heart. They needed someone to blame and she was the scapegoat. It was savage.

As the ocean always does, waves carried sand over her feet as she stood there watching the moon push and pull the tides. Each wave that washed over her toes slowly calmed her inner hysteria and the air tranquility returned. That night she slept under a life guard tower. The gulls sang her to sleep and the warm ocean breeze was her blanket. And in that moment just before sleep, all the pain was forgotten and the trauma erased. Just as it was when she was a child sticking her toes in a pond, because to her there was always something calming about water.