The helpful guide to the big blue abyss

do you ever feel like you are just a boat, bringing people across the river, but they never show profound appreciation for a distance so long because they could get a million other you's, because you are just one boat in a million others, because they don't care to notice the special etches and notches and roots in your wood, and they don't care to see the names reckless kids carved into you with force and selfishness and no care in the world for what it would to do your vessel, no one cares to look at the carvings and think "oh poor boat" they just think about the people who were riding across the river, and what they were like, and then feel the urge to carve into you as well.
no one polishes you, or takes you out of the rain, or plug up your leaks, they only get more frustrated and angry at you, leaving you rotting and falling apart with carvings of strangers into you.
there's always the occasional couple who climbs aboard for the views, and sees the carvings, and carves they're names together inside a little heart, you wonder why it's so important that they must bleed you dry for a simple heart, a heart so full of love but none of it for you.
you wonder why no one would ever look at you that kind of way, appreciate you the way he appreciates her by sliding her hair behind her ear.
after awhile you are so used up and falling apart that no one wants to ride you, no one would ever trust you to not fall apart halfway across the lake, and they aren't wrong about it either. so you just sit there, and this time you are all alone, no one's carving into you, or stomping on you, or rocking you back and forth to torment another passenger, no one's doing anything with you now.
and you miss it. you miss being used and abused, you miss companionship even if you weren't the companion, you miss watching friendships fall apart and mend back together on your treadful little boat. you miss the days where there was still room to carve.
and then one day, when the dam is let loose, you go floating out into the ocean.
you thought it was lonely before, not having anyone riding across the river on you, underappreciating and destroying you, sitting on the lonely bank of depression
but now, as you drift across the oceans, you wish you could just be on that bank to watch them walk by you, to hear they're whispers of sympathy or concerns or even sometimes, if you were lucky fascination for your abused little body, but not fascination for you, fascination for the influences and experiences that surrounded you.
now sitting out in this big deep blue, you find yourself struggling to hold your planks of wood together, getting banged on the tides and waves, tiny bits of water entering your vessel. you think to yourself that it won't be long before you sink and are never seen again, you just wonder if you'll completely fall apart first.
you are no longer on the bank of depression, you are engulfed by it. surrounded by nothing but endless suffering, but you don't even take a look around to realize how many boats are floating beside you, carved and mangled, hopeless and lost. you dont even gander down to observe the empty, spiritless, deprived boats underneath you, sinking deeper and hitting the ocean floor.
you taste the salty sweet air instead, you gaze up at the birds swooping down for the fish, so free, probably bringing it back for baby birds who will leave the next and never think twice or care about the mama bird who raised them and risked her life every single day for a simple fish. but when the bird swoops down you are amazing to find the fish dives up and chomps down on her, taking her under to devour her while she restlessly worries about her children.
it won't be too long now before some wild sea creatures devour you too.
your wood rattles and shakes under the vicious storm that arises out of nowhere. you think that it won't be long now, but it feels like an eternity as you wait for your demise.
you hope you arent one of the unlucky ones who float down to the bottom, to drown in they're self pity forever.
but when the tide smashes down into you and your wooden planks begin to disperse you are finally reassured of one thing, that this WILL be your end.
you are at peace knowing that one thing will accept you, that one thing will be there for you, and never let you go, and that's the sweet release of death.
and as your planks drift off in so many different directions, it finds its way to a poor lost little soul swimming in the ocean, desperately calling out for help as it engulfs water.
the poor human soul grabs on to your almost lifeless plank, and you tell them to hold on tight to that plank,
because once you let go
there are no lifeguards to save you