My Father's Pier

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I was born during a hurricane. My father joked that is was God's way of letting the world know that trouble had arrived. I emerged screaming louder than the wind raging outside. As humorous as it would have been for my parents to name me after the hurricane that devastated nothing but an abandoned coastline, I was instead dubbed "Adrian".

As I grew, so did my voice, spirit, and excitement. Every tiny crab scuttling through damp sand, every gull crying overhead, every beached jellyfish that I happily threw back to the merciless sea, it all fascinated the young me. My love was the ocean, the beach, and the short pier my father built just after I came into the world. It was all mine, and I was the only person in the world out on the edge of that pier.

When I was old enough to start going to school, I protested. All I needed was the ocean, I had demanded. I could look up what I needed when I needed it. We had plenty of old reference books from when my father was working as a marine biologist for some big company that fell due to its own controversial environmental hazards. As much as I fussed and kicked and whined and refused, I still went on that first day in late August. And on that day, I couldn't believe how much I would have missed had my mother caved and let me skip. I met my first human friend then. Her name was Victoria, or just "Tori" for short. She was a very quiet little girl, one who stood out from visible groups of kids. The loud and incredibly outgoing me could think of nothing else but to approach her and acquire her friendship. Looking back, it's kind of like that thing about introverts only making friends because an extrovert adopts them. That was Tori and me.

Aside from outcasting herself, Tori's most visible feature was along her left cheekbone. Two simple words, scrawled out in hard to read and rushed letters. It was the birthmark a cruel god had placed upon all humans: the final words ever spoken to us in life. As a child, I thought nothing of it, but how fucked up is it to go your whole life knowing the last words you'll hear before dying? My mother's was across her left collarbone, dark and small lettering stating, "Wait for me." My father's was in the same place, written in beautiful loopy cursive, "At the usual spot?"

Tori's read "Stop crying!" I always wondered what it meant, as I had never seen her cry. She was always smiling, even as she flinched when someone raised their hand or voice. She had a beautiful smile, and I may have fallen in love with it had I been old enough to comprehend that form of love.

She stopped coming to school one day. At the time, I never knew what happened to her, but I was sad not having her to talk to or play with anymore.

Over the years, friends came and went. It was fine. People fell out, moved on, fixed the fractures in their hearts with the kind actions of someone new. I excelled in most of my classes, my only weak point being Language Arts. Other than finding my native tongue to be the most confusing and difficult thing to master, I was an intelligent, talented, and model student. I graduated high school with highest honours, just barely missing Salutatorian by a hundredth of a point. I opted out of college and military and dove headfirst into a job. "I'm gonna be an adventurer!" was how I romanticized it, but really I was just going to be under the wing of a local fisherman, learning the ropes and how to read the ocean and the best spots to find the best fish. He was an old man with the classic poofy white beard, worn pipe, and one glass eye. "Marlin got this 'un here, but eye fer an eye they say!" He'd burst into laughter and motion the mounted swordfish in the cabin. Scrawled along the muscle of his inner forearm were the words "Abandon ship!" He always laughed at that, too, saying he became a captain just to spite the god that dared write that on him. He was gruff, but patient. He turned the scrawny kid with fantasies of the sea into a rightful sailor and captain of their own little dingy (which I named "The Victoria"). Sailing that sad excuse for a fishing boat gave me the same feeling as standing on the edge of that pier my father built: I was the only person in the world. And I was then one with the sea I lived by and loved.

While I was out on an "adventure", a storm rose up on land, taking with it the little house I spent my first 20 years of life in. My father's pier stayed strong and withstood the winds and waves. My parents, deciding that was a sign of some sort, moved into the city, away from the uncertainty they fell in love with as young adults. And even after they left, I remained with the only worlds I knew. My boat and my father's pier.

But, it eventually gets lonely being the only person in the big wide world.

The Victoria was a good little ship, only springing a few leaks every few weeks. She withstood harsh waves and heavy loads, taking me safely back to shore after each voyage. Yet my arrogance and confidence cost me, and I lost her one drunken night in a game of cards. It was sad to lose her, but it tore me apart when I saw her ran aground by her new captain, hull torn to shreds and badly beaten by the unfair mother nature. Seeing the broken body of the one thing I loved etched an ache deep into my soul. It reminded me of the clumsy and shy little girl in elementary school who always came to school with a bruised cheek or arm or cut lip. It was like the ocean I loved was now retaliating for my blatant disregard and ignorance.

I went back to my old home, the crumbled remnants a sad reminder of happier times. My father's pier had started to resemble the pile of wood once known as a house, with boards missing and an overall dark, damp, green and rotting look.

I died on that pier, head clear and yet full of regrets, the ocean I once loved now lurching around me, ready to swallow me up into the bleak abyss. I had lived my life how I wanted, even after losing all the people and things I held dear, but I was realizing things that I should have seen sooner. Do you know that sensation you get, when you're standing on a high place, and you have the urge to jump? That was then for me, except I actually did it. On the rotting wooden rail of that little pier, wind whipping my wet hair harshly across my face and neck, I whispered to myself the words tattooed on my wrist since birth in the scratchy handwriting I now knew as my own.

"Ready...steady...jump."