Drowning in a Metaphor

Posted on March 30, 2021 by Apparently Catherine

Dear M,

We’re all a little lost right now, a million tiny undefinable memories are surfacing and their weight seems to sit on our chest, pinning us to the ground in such a way that we are still able to breathe, but only just and we don’t know for how much longer.

It seems like an age since I last saw you, less than two weeks I’m told and yet I’m sitting here trying desperately to remember your face but all I can see is your walls, the photo of the horse and the walkway to the sea… that walkway feels like a metaphor for life right now, like I’m heading down a path into the vast unknown.

The ocean is unpredictable and terrifying, it’s full of predators and currents threatening to drag you away at any moment and yet it is somehow still so beautiful and enchanting enough to leave you breathless with awe, unable to look away.

As much as the ocean frightens me, I’ve never been afraid of drowning. I know it somehow, it’s peaceful. Time slows down enough for you to notice everything around you, the particles in the water swirl and sparkle, weeds covered in slippery algae seem to dance in time to the current and the sunlight twinkling on the surface above gradually slips further and further away as you descend into the arms of comforting darkness.

Perhaps this means I should be noticing my life more before it swallows me up, life, like the ocean, is terrifying and unpredictable but also beautiful. It’s just so hard to see sometimes, the beauty, as if obscured by frosted glass.

We felt it before, they tell me. When we were first told we were dying. We noticed, we saw, we captured and yet it’s gone now as though it never happened, so what was the point? Simply solace in a forgotten moment. Is that enough? Maybe it has to be, maybe it’s all that can be hoped for.

I feel as though the real world doesn’t exist for me anymore, although now that I think about it I’m not sure it ever really did. Can you lose something you never had?
I can’t remember a time when I personally felt a part of the thing society calls life. I’ve always stood on the sideline, safely hidden in the shadows, watching, whispering my thoughts to the wind.

I like it here, alone in the quiet. The sound of a ticking clock echoes in the nothingness, implying there is structure in the world outside of me, even if I can’t reach it.
Frogs croak in the distance, grateful for the recent rains and nature emphasise how small I am in the vastness of this earth. I like that, to be small is to be safe, it’s easier to hide, easier to blend in when other lost souls in my mind scream to be heard, I will once again cower in my corner. I don’t want them to be noticed, I don’t want to be noticed. But it’s hard to hide when everyone is looking at you.