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The Scientist

It was hard all those years ago to find out that I had no choice but to let go. I thought that in the next five years I would be able to recover the ground I lost, the time I spent waiting for him but I guess I couldn’t…I guess it was just too difficult for me to let go. I carried on happy and joyful like there wasn’t anything wrong but I guess that somewhere in the back of my mind I was still dealing with the problem of losing him…I guess I wasn’t ready to let go of a big part of my life.
When I was a kid, I moved away from my home state and grew up somewhere else for a long time. My family was a mess and things were only getting worse. I went back out to my home state when I was old enough to actually start discovering myself. I didn’t know myself quite yet and that move was a good way to discover myself even more.
The school I went to was huge, I giant place in comparison to what I had been used to seeing. I was a little overwhelmed by it all. My parent just dropped me off at the front and told me “good luck”, leaving me to fend for myself. I took a deep breath, my chest sore from my heart dancing inside, and walked through the front doors.
Teachers were outside, looking at student body cards that hung from student’s lanyards. They told the kids where they belonged and what classes they needed to go to. I walked up, nervously gripping my lanyardless and glancing around to take in my surroundings. I walked up to the teacher and she looked at me. She smiled warmly and asked me my name. I answered calmly and she helped me go to the class I belonged in. When I sat down in my chair, the teacher, who would be my mentor for the entirety of my time at the school, welcomed me warmly. Right away I had two friends and they were with me the entire time. I love them and it was pretty good.
I soon fell victim to the monster know as bullying. The students there were vicious when it came to things like that. They wouldn’t leave me alone and drove me to suicidal thoughts. I just couldn’t stand it! It was horrible! Not wanting to go to school because you felt like you were going to die, like you were going to drown in hate and torment, was the worst thing that could happen to me.
I soon fell into darkness and couldn’t break free. I was sinking deeper and deeper in the black water. I was losing myself because of other people and I was all alone. I was by myself in this world and nobody could save me from the torture of dying on the inside.
Right before my candle flickered out someone came and held me high out of the breeze so I wouldn’t blow out. It was like I was being thrown a line while I was sinking and I was being pulled out of the water. The darkness that had overcame me lit up and it was amazing to finally be able to see. A hand had come my way and helped me let go of myself and look into the world.
When I finally opened my eyes again, I was in class. PE was the worst class because all of the kids who picked on me were in there and they could all get in on it at once. It was horrible and I couldn’t stand it. I could breathe for five minutes when they averted their attention to someone who they hadn’t seen in a long time apparently. I looked towards where they gathered and standing well above them was a kid my age. He smiled and enjoyed the attention, looking at the people who surrounded him and praised him. I sighed as the air cleared; the smog finally left my lungs and hovered around someone else.
When the activities continued, I stood in line and watched the kids play their games. I was standing by myself when he noticed me. He was all the way on the other side of the room from where I was and walked to stand by me, going out of his way to do so. His friends tried to get him to stay with them, advising them that I was an odd kid and that I would only weird him out. He didn’t listen and came to me anyway.
We stood there next to each other without saying a word for a long time. We silently watched the games being played. He decided to break the silence and introduced himself to me. It was a funny name, one I had only heard in cartoons and stuff like that. I told him my name and that’s where things kicked off. It was a happy time for me. We talked about stupid stuff like soccer and how he would teach me, we talked about the fun places in our area, and we talked about odd jobs. It was pretty cool.
At the end of the day, we were inseparable. We had lunch together, stopped to say hi in the hallways, and we even walked home together. It turns out he lived a couple houses down from me. That night, I lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling and counting the glow in the dark stars that had been laid out in front of me. I couldn’t sleep because he was always on my mind.
Soon winter turned to spring and spring turned to summer. My feelings for him grew and we made each other happy. We decided to try and go out and we lasted for a long time. One dark day, he was getting ready for a vacation that I didn’t know about. He was getting in a van as I walked to his house and I didn’t realize he was leaving before it was too late. I looked and saw him in the window and wanted to say goodbye. I chased down the van as it sped up and soon he was out of sight…
I would never see him again…
A tragedy brought me out of the state again and I left before he came home from vacation. I moved all the way across the country to a small town that no one heard of. I cried and cried, thinking that I needed to be there before he came home so that I could tell him I love him one more time. That was a wish I could never get.
Many years passed and I grew up. I went from a skinny little girl to a full blown adult. My body definitely developed and my mind did too. I matured to some point. I had gotten in and out of relationships, never finding one that I wanted to stay in because none of them could get me to that level of happiness like my very first one. I cried myself to sleep almost every night.
Finally I was old enough to live on my own and I did. I moved to a big city back in my home state and decided to live there for a while. I had pretty much given up hope on looking for him at that point and didn’t want to look for anyone else. I got a simple job and was really successful in it. One day, I decided to go on a vacation and left the city to go to the island that was my hometown, the place where we met.
I parked in an empty lot next to the ramp that led onto the boardwalk. The fall evening air brushed by my body and I shivered in the cold. It was a shiver of cold but also a good feeling, a memory of my childhood here almost twenty years past. I walked towards the ramp and hid my hands in my pockets, pulling my scarf on my neck and hiding my nose from the cold wind. I walked onto the boardwalk and looked around, noticing only joggers and a few sightseers. This place was busy during the summer and died out during the winter season.
The beach was in front of me, the ocean lapping the sand with every crash on the shore. I leaned on the railing that kept people from falling off the boardwalk. I closed my eyes and felt the salt air kiss my face. I went back to a place in my childhood where I was there before, jumping off the boardwalk and landing in the sand, laughing hysterically and then running to the closest stairs so I could do it again. I laughed at the memory and looked down. I could still make it, I was still young. I dropped my bag on the sand and then my shoes. I sat down on the boardwalk and then ducked under the bars. I looked down at the ten feet of distance between me and the ground and smiled. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then jumped. My imagination placed me in my old days, jumping with him onto the sand…
My eyes opened when I saw his smiling face and looked down at the ground that was approaching faster than I anticipated. I landed on my feet and then fell on my knees, not catching myself in time. I looked up at the ocean in front of me and suddenly felt a determinedness strike up inside of me. I stood and tossed my shoes into my purse, taking off in the direction of the shore.
The sand was hard to run in, my foot sinking into the earth with every step I took. I kept tripping but I was determined to reach the shore. I kept running, finding myself crying and screaming as I did. The sky was a gloomy gray, threatening to rain on me as I ran. The sun was hidden behind the horizon, to ashamed to see my face in this state. I kept going, no plan to stop…
I dropped my purse in the sand before I came to the water, not wanting it to get went. I felt the cool wet sand beneath my feet and could get better speed on this sand than the looser sand. I hit the water with a splash, tripping over washed up sea cucumbers that seemed to be everywhere scattered on the shore. I got up, my clothes soaked and dripping. I blinked back tears and just faced the ocean, screaming and crying as the waves kept hitting me. I decided that I didn’t want this pain anymore. I didn’t want to live a life like this, of not ever being happy until I saw that smiling face once more…
It was all too much like a dream that I couldn’t live in anymore…
I stood up and walked deeper into the ocean, the waves slapping me in the face as if to tell me to turn back, that this was a mistake. This was a warning I did not heed. I kept going farther and father in and soon was up to my shoulders in the water. I closed my eyes, about to embrace the cold hand of death, ready to be taken away. I was floating and felt the chill of the beginning of the end. Soon the tide had taken me and I was starting to lose consciousness.
“Don’t you give up on me!”
I woke up as I was being dragged out of the ocean. Letting myself go was easy but bringing me back from the brink was the hard part. The water that had filled my lungs was making it hard for me to breathe and I could barely see where I was. I was getting frantic and afraid and soon the unstable ground became hard and coarse beneath me.
I looked around, trying to breathe, and found myself on someone’s lap. I felt hands brushing off my face and pushing hair away. I saw a silhouette of a man through my vision that had returned; I tried to catch my breath and blinked away the sand in my eyes. As soon as I regained my sight, I lost it once more as tears filled my eyes. The man above me kept asking me if I was okay but then his voice went silent too as we both realized who each other was.
It was him. He saved me and now I found him.
I pushed myself away from him, still too weak to stand but forcing myself to do so anyway. I scrambled to my feet, snatching my purse up and trying to run. I took off and he followed me, asking me to wait for him. I wanted to be with him, so why was I running? I tripped and fell, landing hard on the sand. I just lay there, crying into the ground, too pathetic to move. My heart was in my ears and I couldn’t hear anything. I found myself being picked up off the ground and I saw him there above me, face red from trying to keep up with me, eyes wide with shock. I just stayed limp, too hurt, relieved, confused, to do anything else. I examined his face and held my eyes on him, hoping that would be enough to keep him by me.
His brown hair hung in his eyes, the water from the ocean rescue soaking it. His face was a jolly kind of round, the kind that showed he had been happy for a while. He was fit, his clothes hinting at the muscles underneath. His brown eyes just stared into my brown eyes and we couldn’t look away. A moment of silence was shared and soon, we were in each others’ arms, holding on so tight that the breath I didn’t have showed signs of never returning.
We sat there for a moment, just holding onto each other. He held my head into his chest while I clung to him so desperately, afraid that if I let him go, I would never regain my hold on him again. I couldn’t stop crying and I didn’t think I would be able to. Finally, the grey skies turned pink and orange with the failing light and then they turned the deep shade of night that they always did.
He picked me up, helping me walk to my car. Our clothes had dried off and were stiff with the ocean water. We left a trail of sand behind us as we moved on and kept walking. When we came to my car, he opened up the passenger door and helped me inside. After I was belted in, he moved to the driver’s seat and asked for my keys. I gave them to him and closed my eyes, my mind too tired to comprehend anything. I drifted off into sleep as we drove off, not knowing where I would wake up at.
When I finally reopened my eyes, I was at home in my bed. The house echoed back its emptiness and I sighed. I suddenly remembered the day before, the day I tried to end my life. It was such a short memory that I wasn’t even sure if it happened, if it was just a dream. I pulled the covers off of myself and sat up, sand falling in my eyes. The sensation caused me to freeze where I was and time started to slow down around me, so much that I could see every grain of sand that fell from my body. I snapped back to reality and ran to my door, flinging it open and standing in the frame, my hair exploding around me and my eyes frantically scanning the room for him. I found him, sitting on the sofa that had its back to me. I felt tears fill my eyes as he turned to look at me, a smile pulling across his face.
“Good morning!” he said warmly.
I felt my knees give out from under me and I fell onto the ground. I clung to my door frame, needing something to keep me from flying off into the skies with relief. I cried and cried, my eyes closed so the sand wouldn’t wash into them. I sat there and couldn’t stop crying.
“I found you!” I cried into the hardwood floors of my top floor apartment. “I looked and looked and never gave up! I finally found you!” My shoulders sobbed and my heart ached from finally being able to beat wholly rather than in pieces. “I just can’t believe this…”
I felt a tugging on my arm and I looked up to see that he was pulling me up, wanting to hold me. My eyes were damp with tears and the ones that escaped left trails across my face. He held me straight, sliding his arms around my waste and pressing his forehead against mine. I felt my arms move on their own accord and snake around his neck, like a natural position, like it was where they belonged. I closed my eyes and took in the sweet scent that was him. I just took the moment and embraced it, placing the rest of the world outside of my new little one. I held onto him close and finally, the moment came that wiped all the painful years of searching away. All those lonely nights crying alone in my bed, all those days endlessly wondering where he was, they were gone.
His lips met mine and then parted a second afterwards. We stared at each other, a little shocked at first at what had happened. His eyes began to shine with the threat of tears. He drew his face close to mine once more, our lips meeting again. It soon turned into a battle of who could absorb the most of each other and it was battle neither of us could win.
I sat on my balcony later that evening, wrapped up in blankets and in his arms. We stared at the moon and laughed at jokes that we had told friends but not each other, jokes with punch lines too corny not to laugh at. We told each other about tragedies, about the things we missed the most of each other, about the things we missed out on during the past. It was a wonderful evening, filled with happiness, love, and fullness. The void that was in my heart was now filled by the reunion of this wonderful man. I was so happy to finally be in his arms, just like I had dreamt it during these years.
When the evening ended, we lay in my bed, the covers hiding our bodies as we lay close to one another. He looked into my eyes as he stroked my cheek with is thumb and I looked back into his just as fiercely. A pair of earphones was shared between us as we listened to music on my mp3 player. “The Scientist” by Coldplay played out for us.
Come up to meet you, tell you I’m sorry
You don’t know how lovely you are
I had to find you, tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions
Oh, let’s go back to the start
Running in circles, coming up tails
Heads on the silence apart
Nobody said it was easy,
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh take me back to the start…