Tossed At Sea

***Trigger Warning** This story does include mental illness as well as self harm. Please know that before reading.

Seas are supposed to be metaphors and beautiful and calming. You know, the whole typical walk on the beach with the soft sound of the waves rolling up to brush over your toes before scurrying back out to sea, gulls crying in the distance. If you don't understand what I'm getting at here, you probably aren't human. I mean, seriously, every person ever uses the sea metaphor at some point in their life. At least I think they do.. 

But what would I know? I'm just your typical outcast teenager who wears hoodies year round and gets a helix piercing before the can properly pronounce hippopotamus. I don't have many friends, so it isn't like I would know what people talk about and how they talk or what kind of figurative language they incorporate in their everyday lives. Wrong. I would know. Because more often than what's pleasant to admit I pass by lunch tables just in time to hear my name slide off of someone's tongue. Or I step into the bathroom stall right before a group of girls come in talking about the "weirdo in the green GAP hoodie", the one I'm clearly wearing that day. These are times that I stop and I, as wrong as it may be, tune in on the conversation. However, I never listen too long because after my name usually comes a long line of unpleasant insults about my size, my clothing, my hair, and just about every aspect of my life.

Anyways, back to the sea metaphor.

I've always had a hard time understanding why everyone uses the sea as that positive and pleasant metaphor because that is hardly how I am able to think of it. When I hear ocean waves, I don't hear the soft rolling sounds, I hear the loud crashing against the rocks. When I think of the ocean rushing towards my toes it makes me want to step away and hide what's mine to protect it. When I think about the sea, I think about this large, vast, deep place where everything and anything could happen to you and you'd be alone to face it.

Things are getting bad for me. I'm turning perfect and peaceful bits of this world into miserable and dark thoughts like the ones that cloud my mind and judgment. I'm slowly tearing this world apart along with myself and any bit of hope in my life. Everything good is being diminished and smothered. 

I'm aware that I'm mentally ill. I'm aware that I need help. I'm just terrified to go anywhere other than my blade to get a relief from the things this world puts me through. If you haven't done it, then you don't understand. You don't understand how it feels to take the small silver tool and hold the cool metal. You don't understand how it feels to press it against your skin and pull it across. You don't understand how it feels to watch the blood come to the surface and maybe even run a little bit. You don't understand how it feels to finally breathe once its done either. 

I'm lost at my own sea and I'm afraid that I waited to long to ask for help. The ship sailed away and left with my hope. I can't swim very well. I struggle everyday to keep my head above water. But you know what helps? Every now and then, this little silver fish comes by and comforts me. He doesn't stay long most of the time, he just kind of comes and goes as he pleases. I think he's the only reason I haven't drowned in this red sea I've become lost in.

Author's Note

This is the first thing I've wrote here and wrote in general in a really long time, so it's probably complete crap. I do want to know however if the silver fish metaphor made sense.