When I started college, my hair was cut to my chin. I did my makeup every morning. I started raising my hand in class, went to parties, spoke bluntly, and girls would say that I was fun and spontaneous. After these moments of partying and grandiose attitudes, I would drive back home, go to bed, and in the midst of my sleep, I’d have a recurring dream where a huge tsunami would hit, and I would need to run from it. I avoid going in the water because of this dream.
It wasn’t until February when my so-called sparkle started to diminish, and I would call out of work and stay in bed until the sun went down. I stopped doing my makeup every morning and went to school in whatever I went to bed in. My appetite was basically non-existent, I was in a constant state of sea sickness, and I became obsessed with hot lattes just because of the warmth. I knew something was wrong with my sensitive mood, but I didn’t want to admit defeat. I didn’t want to admit that the person I had been, even if it had been for a short while, was gone.
Now, I am usually silent. In a classroom, I can probably be considered mute. I think a lot. The thoughts in my mind bob with the current, but my moods move like a tsunami. Everything I feel, I feel it completely, and it all crashes down on me like a menacing wave about to engulf me in salty sea water. It’s a routine. The wave pulls back, a little bit each day, and unexpectedly, once I feel I can finally untense my shoulders and relax, the shadow of a tall wave greets me once again.
The first time the tsunami hit, I was in such shock that I forgot to close my mouth, and the sea water slithered into my throat. After eight days passed, I sat on the shore coughing up water. My friend Sarah found me and rushed me to the hospital in her shiny, blue convertible.
I asked her why she didn’t seem as panicked as I thought she’d be.
She replied, “This isn’t the first time I’ve driven a friend to the hospital.”
I looked down at my soaked pajamas, “I’m sorry that you had to do it again.”
She looked at me and smiled. “I wanted to help you.” Then, looking back at the road she added, “Besides, I was the only other person on the beach when I found you.”
At the hospital, they woke me up at six in the morning to draw blood and every hour someone would let out a random, stark screech. The first few days I was relieved, admittedly, to be there. I ate three meals a day and every few hours a nurse would pull the patients into a room that resembled a classroom. We would color, listen to music, or just talk. I napped anytime I wanted to, read books anytime I got the chance, and the only conversations I had to have were ones about me. My father came to see me everyday, and though the situation was quite sad, I basked in the fact that people were paying attention to me. When he came to visit there were tears in his eyes and he said:
“You didn’t deserve this.”
I hugged him tightly. I will never forget that he said that.
As the week went on, I started to become annoyed with the loud, erratic behavior from the other patients and the mundane everyday routine. My mother came to see me and refused to look me in the eye, so while my eyes looked into hers, all she could do was stare disappointedly at the top of my head. Before she left, all she told me was: “You did this to yourself.”
Lying in bed reading and staring out the windows was all I did. I couldn’t even go outside. I wasn’t allowed to. I became perpetually anxious. I blamed that hated wave for bringing me here. I would never go by the sea again. At the end of my stay, my father came to get me. After my discharge, I made a beeline for outside and stood in the warmth of the direct sunlight for a good few minutes so that my skin was still heated when I climbed into the car.
I lived nowhere near the ocean. I did go to school by it, but I was so busy keeping up with assignments that I didn’t go near it until a month later, when summer vacation started. When I eventually went near it, it was just a benign mass of water winking at fishermen, women with their retrievers, and kids covered head to toe in sticky sand. It was so harmless from where I sat on the sand that I almost went in. Almost.
Summer was going by and every now and then I would feel sad, but it was never too sad, never dreadfully sad. I could go to the beach and act fine, but I was a terrible liar and being so close to the sea made me lose control of my mood. Friends I thought were close to me drifted away because of my pessimistic nature. I cared so much at first, but as summer went on, the sea took up more and more of my attention.
I started to think that the tsunami would never hit again. I was a fool for thinking that, but I didn’t realize it was a pattern at first. Just when school started again, the wave crashed onto me like a yacht driven by drunk teens onto a rock. I cursed myself for putting myself into these situations that brought me close to the sea. I stayed tumbling in this wave for days, and I thought it would never end. I remembered to keep my mouth shut this time. If I opened it and tried to scream, the water would fill my lungs once again. I didn’t want to end up in the hospital. It’s not like anyone could hear me anyway. So, I pulled my legs close to my chest, shut my eyes, and let the wave knock me around. Swirling around me, in the combinations of sea foam and debris that I felt floating past my ears, I began to hear grating sounds. It was an amalgamation of screaming, crying, laughing, and barking, and I began to sob at these distressing sounds, silently begging them to stop.
They did not stop for eight days.
I was in a mood so low, afterwards, that I couldn’t bear to listen to music. I was haunted by these sounds. My head was full of them.
I truly hate this wave. It makes me become angry, then miserable, then hopeless, then happy, then mad. This change of mood has made my head so cloudy that my mood has become a sort of stagnant state of sad.
The tsunami came again and again. Sometimes, it would be milder, and I would be able to lift my head to the surface for breath or find a piece of driftwood to hang onto. Sometimes, they were severe, and I would be pushed down to where there is only deep, dark blue water. But I never open my mouth. No matter how bad the waves have gotten, I’ve never gone back to the hospital.
Now, I know it’s coming, and I wait anxiously at the shore for its arrival. I track its patterns in a journal–every month for eight days. Here, it comes again. The tsunami rises in front of me, and I stare catatonically into its gloomy waters. There’s no point in running anymore and I let it take me. The wave threatens to suffocate me. I sense the stinging salt water in my eyes and throat. I don’t fight it anymore. I know I’ll be able to come up for air soon, in about a week. Once that week passes, the wave deposits me gently onto the sand and from there I wait for its return once again.