Momentary release

I stood at the rail, hands clutching tightly, knuckles white with the pressure. I could feel it's weather-worn surface beneath my hands, flakes of old paint, even lettering carved long ago into the surface from those who stood here before me. Did they feel how I do? Devoid. Were those hastily carved letters their last indelible mark left on a world they had to leave? I'll never know.

The sea roiled beneath me and far out to the horizon, heaving up and down, endlessly moving, but never getting anywhere. It was dirty, sand stirred by recent storms; A reflection of how I felt. Dirty. Unclean.

The wind whipped at me and had I had a shed of feeling left within me I would have recoiled from its cold prodding fingers just as I recoiled from myself.

They had tried to help me, for weeks now; I felt no better though. I was torn inside, lacerated and bruised. I was sometimes hopeful as we spoke, but when I was alone I just wanted not to feel and that's what brought me here.

I climbed, swinging my legs over the rail one by one as I gripped the rail for support.

Gripped... Just thinking of that word was abhorrent. It made me recall those gripping hands, the fumbling, the pressure upon me, pinning me, holding me; Forcing me. Lank hair fell into my face as I struggled and kicked...Then the blinding white light when I was struck. And then...

I forced my mind away from the horror and back to the churning sea below, its surface littered with debris churned from below, rising and falling, rising and falling...And my mind went back to that moment again...Rising and falling...Seemingly endless.

I pulled myself back from that horror once again. It hand to end; But I couldn't see how it could; I would never be free because it was a part of me now, as indelible mark upon my souls a something could make. How does one rend their memory from inside the recess of the mind?

The wind pushed and I rocked slightly backwards then as I leaned into it for balance my head looked right down below me, eyes focused on the grey-green surface churning far below. I saw chaos there, reflected from within me, or real; It was all the same. It was at that moment I knew what I had to do. It was a simple thing, a brief moment in time, a release...

[A fictional story]