Salvation

Journey

Bright lights dance behind my eyelids. I'm not ready to be awake yet. Can't I sleep a little longer? It's not just light though. The light is hot and burning. My skin feeling dried and cracked, I open my eyes to the sun beating down on my slightly wet body. I'm laying on sand that feels like coals atop of my skin. How.. did. Sitting up I look around. Confusion is the foremost emotion I'm feeling. How did I get here? Where am I? There's nothing but sand for miles and miles in each direction except the coast line which is all water. I washed up here? Everything comes rushing back to my mind. The plane, being ripped out the cabin and floating in nothingness. Now I'm here. But how? Why is it that I of all people have the worst luck known to man kind. An unfortunate survivor of a plane accident. No one's even looking for me because I have no one. To think I could be back at home in a bed bored out of my mind, yet I'm in the middle of no where surrounded by nothing with no way home. No way to contact other living people. No belongings. Just me and my lonely soul. A heavy feeling sits in my gut. Is it acceptance? Acceptance that inevitably I came into this world alone and I shall live it and die alone? Acceptance that no matter my intentions in life, luck just doesn't seem to be on my side? Basic human instinct would say that I should fight to survive. Fight to live. But what life do I have? No one loves me, so wouldn't it be better if I died here as an unknown? Doomed to be discovered a thousand years from now by settlers in this region. Would they wonder who I am? Where I came from? Surely I don't look like the normal person from here because I'm from America. And America certainly doesn't have any dessert areas with a coast next to it. Would they search for relatives? Check my dna? Who knows because I'll be long gone by then. So with no will to live or survive I lay down back in the sun and stare at the sky. Voices swirl in my head. The voices of the classmates I signed up to leave on this journey with. Voices of the teachers encouraging me to step out of my comfort zone and see new places. The voice as soft as wind whispering to me in the void of nothingness that I floated in for a while. It's not lost on me that I wouldn't be here in this place if I had just stayed home. If I had just settled for the Burger King across the street. "So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives and who seeks will find. And to him who knocks it will be opened." My spine straightens and my ears zone in for the voice again. The voice like the wind come and gone again. These words spin around in my head and my heart beats uncontrollably. I must be going crazy. Crazy enough to hear voices in my head. Crazy enough to want to die. Crazy enough that I speak back. "Who are you?" I sit in silence and wait for the voice to come back. To speak to me again. But it doesn't come back. I sit here in silence for hours. Mulling over my thoughts and the last moment on the plane. I was scared. The most terrified I've ever been in my life. And I'm realizing I was scared to die. I was scared of the nothing. Because as much as I'm willing to admit I'm alone that doesn't necessarily mean I want to leave earth. I love life and I want to be here. It's just hard to be in a place so utterly alone. No one understands me. No one checks on me. No one misses me. These are the things that make it so hard to be present in the world. Even though I know without a doubt now I want to be present in the world. With nothing left to do I get up looking both ways down the coast. Looking left and right I try to decide which way I'll go. My gut is tugging me towards the left. So the left I will go. I have no direction and I know nothing about where I am. School taught me that I should look for civilization when lost. I washed up in a coast. Coasts mean ports and ports mean boats. Boats mean people. So I'll walk until I find someone or something to help me. I walk and walk and walk. No end in sight. Just the ever stretching of the toiling sea at the coast line. Looking deep into the hazy water, I see shapes that aren't there. Danger in every wave. How I made it though that I'll never know. Walking and walking and walking. My feet hurt and my body is sore. My throat feels like a fire has started and it's reaching an inferno. My stomach is eating my back and the ringing in my ears tells me I'm low on energy. But I don't want to die here so I keep walking. And walking and walking. The world starts to get hazy and my view feels lopsided. But I must walk. No one will find me here. It's desolate no one around for miles and miles and miles. I don't even know how long I've been missing. How long I was in the icy ocean. How long I was floating in the void of nothing. Everything I owned was in that plan. Time and reality are concepts that are slipping considerably faster than I anticipated. But I'll continue to walk. I'm not sure when it happened. The voice I hear feels sentient. All knowing almost. It feels like it's here with me accompanying me on my walk. But that couldn't be because no one is here but me. I'm just as alone as I was in the plane and in the water. "I'm always with you". The windy voice says. And it's that moment that my body gives out on me and carries me to nothingness. Again.