Isla

ISLA

Some people are born with tornados in their lives, but constellations in their eyes. Other people are born with stars at their feet; but their souls are lost at sea.

- Nikita Gill

If you looked into my eyes, you'd see the colour of the sea. You wouldn't see the reflection of Nikolas coming into the harbour, grinning ear to ear because he'd caught a mass amount of haddock; you wouldn't see when Nikolas took out the boat in the middle of the night with a picnic to sweep me off my feet for our one year anniversary; you wouldn't see the man behind my love for the sea – you'd just see the colour of the water, a mix of blue and turquoise in my irises, and the depths of the sea, an inky black, if you glanced up at my hair.

If you looked at my eyes, you'd be more than likely to see the wrinkled lines because I'd been crying myself to sleep; the wet, long eyelashes that frame my irises, the red that run like wrinkles in my sclera.

If you looked into my eyes, you'd see my pupils dilating and my eyes darting around.

What you wouldn't see when you looked into my eyes, was that my soul no longer wanted to be here. Although, many a wise man had quoted that the eyes were the windows to the soul, but mine had frosted over. I didn't have the warmth, the love, and the will to live anymore. You wouldn't find that in my eyes.

You'd find nothing but a hunger, living like a host in the foremost part of my brain, to drown myself at sea. At least that way, I'd see Nikolas again. The thought feeds off of me with every breath I take. Any other thought I tried to have, my mind finds a way to bring it back to that most pressing thing: I do not want to live on Earth without Nikolas.

Some, I must admit, many find this morbid, or maybe even tragic. Why on earth would someone want to give up their life because they've lost someone? Why would a Juliet follow a Romeo just in the name of love? We weren't even married. We were only kids, after all. Twenty something's, with our whole lives ahead of us, but why should I give up mine just because Nik's had been taken from him too quickly?

I'd pictured it, you know. I'd pictured moving on, living a life, growing up and growing old and having children and getting married and accomplishing all the things that I wanted to do in life. I had imagined that, all the time, even when I wanted nothing more than to kill myself. I had thought about it. I'd weighed out all of my options. I'd pictured every way I could possibly imagine my life going.

But it all seemed bittersweet without Nikolas. I could move on, eventually the excruciating pain would turn into a dull lull until ultimately it would finally be easy, and Nikolas would be a fond memory that I missed. But I didn't want that. I had chosen my life when I'd chosen Nikolas. I'd chosen to live with him, to love him, to wait for him to return from sea and because he could no longer do that, when the moon ignited the sky, finally having it's bright, guiding moment in the dark, I would return to him, in the depths of the sea.

Often he visited me in the night. I'd been dreaming of him ever since the night he didn't return. I'd dreamed of octopus tentacles wrapping around his body, shielding him from the stormy waters and the rocky terrain near the shore, cushioning him so he could just rest in peace, preserved by this softness of the animal that had chosen to protect him. I'd been dreaming of sirens, and merpeople, and had even learned their names. I'd been talking to them, watching Nikolas flourish as he transformed from a man lost to the sea, into a merman, a new life for him after he could no longer return to his. I'd learn that merpeople were just people reincarnated, their souls and the world they'd come from merged with the one they were now reborn in.

If I died in a train wreck, having been pulled out too late, I wouldn't be satisfied. If I died with bullet to the brain, it would be insufficient. I needed the sea to caress my body and chuck it at the rocks. I needed my brain to fill with the salty water. I needed to feel Nikolas embracing me as I took my final breaths, so I could join him. I needed to feel him close to me. I needed to experience what he experienced to truly understand what he went through. I needed to know how he died, what he would have been feeling, how he would have spent those final moments.

The world was stone cold now. I needed the sea to keep me warm. Nikolas used to keep me warm. He used to come home, smelling of the sea, the salt water would have layered his face, the sun would have lightened his hair, and he would wrap his arms around me and pull me in for a kiss. Then I would undress him, and feel his warmth against my own. We'd leave dinner, simmering on the hob, and he'd take me up the bathroom. I'd wash the salt from his body and let him have a moment to feel grounded, to feel back on dry land again, but still water had to run down his body like it was his oxygen. He needed the water to feel alive, and he needed me.

He came home for me, and so I had to go home for him too. Home was wherever I was when I was with him and now my home was lost to me. I could find it. Nikolas was more precious than any sunken treasure. I had made a promise to him, and I intended on keeping it.

We would be together, always.

I had spent nights on the beach, away from nomads, and passer-by's, just watching, just dipping my toes in, just thinking. I had always gone back to my parents, to say goodbye, but a hello had always followed.

They had tried to help me through this, but there was no way through it. Not like they wanted.

Every time I took the blade to my arm, I didn't see blood running out, I didn't feel alive – I saw water leaking from my veins, and the fact that I was standing, with my feet on the ground, alone in a bathroom, was drowning me.

I often spent too much time in the bath, with my head under the water, but I didn't feel the closeness to Nikolas that I did as I stood before the tide, wishing it to take me.

The sea had been ours. We didn't need the world. We didn't need the universe. We had each other. We had the water that touched every corner of the earth, and touched us, somewhere deep inside where nothing and no one else could reach.

That touched me now, in places my parents or friends, or surviving couldn't. It was wrapped around every vein, every cord inside my body, every connection, every atom, every ounce of blood and piece of cartilage. It wrapped around all the links in my brain and found it's way into my soul.

Here I was broken. There I would be fixed. I wouldn't hide in dark spaces and cry, I wouldn't abuse myself, and I wouldn't torture myself about the possibilities of living. I would have found my lighthouse, not on the rocks, guiding me home, but from deep within the heart of the ocean, where happiness lay, where I could be safe and whole, and home again.

I could be so much more, if I just took that last, painful breath. If I could let the salt burn through my skin, and the water seal my lungs and the rocks crush my bones, I would be able to feel Nikolas' hand envelope mine. I would keep my promise. I would be reborn with love, and life, and the purpose I had already set for myself.

Still... Nikolas often visits me in my dreams.