Love Me When I'm Dead: Prompt Response Journal

[1.] Message in a Bottle

Prompt: "While at the beach, you decide to write a message in a bottle. What would it say? Who would you like to find it?"

I sit in front of the looming sea, staring aimlessly into the endless horizon. The dark waves push toward me and retreat as if to beckon me. I am not tempted, for I fear the abyss that stands before me. From the seagulls overhead, I hear words of torment in their shrieks. From my right, a dark storm is approaching; I am not yet concerned.

I sit upon the sand with a beach towel beneath me, grey and worn. Out in the sea, I spy the garbage and trash humanity has dumped upon this paradise.

If there was a message in a bottle floating out there, would anyone even notice?

Before me, my pen has turned my thoughts concrete. In little black letters, I begin to see my most existential thoughts across the paper.

If not for my fear of the unknown, would I let the waters consume me? No, likely not. My only fear greater than that that stands before me is fire. I fear nothing more than the power of destruction and pain that lays inside the smallest flame. How could something be so good and so evil? How could something have the power to sustain us and kill us? How could someone hold the power to support you and take everything away from you? How could someone warm your bones and still have the power to rip your flesh from them? How could people be so good and so evil?

Perhaps what I fear most is not fire. Perhaps I fear loss. Perhaps I fear the great mystery that lies in humanity. Trust. I am one to trust too much. I am one to put my life in the palms of another and watch them break me in their fists. Most of all, I am afraid to lose something I never had. I find a love in material things because I have only known one person to ever love me. I fear loss because I don't ever want to lose her. I know that one day I will. Perhaps the sea beckons me so because it knows. The sea can hear my fears; the seagulls entice me. Deep down, I never want to see the day I lose her. She means everything to me. The sea offers me a solution. The sea offers me release from this anxiety. The sea holds out its cold but welcoming arms to offer me my final chapter.

I know I could not do that to her. I am not tempted by the sea because I do not wish to hurt her. I know that in the end, one of us will bear the great pain of losing the other. Neither one of us is prepared for such a burden.

I am afraid.

I tear the paper from my notebook, roughly rolling it and stuffing it into a glass bottle. As I stand, the sea calls, but I do not answer. I cast the bottle into the tide, waiting for the water to swallow my darkest thoughts and fears. I will not be content until that bottle is sitting at the bottom of the ocean, deteriorating with each passing day.