I wrote this a little while ago...

To fill the gap of a day... I wrote this a little while ago after reading a book called Breath by Tim Winton at the suggestion of my amazing mother. Just randomness.

***

It was the thrill, he said. It was taking a risk, feeling the breath rip itself from your lungs, feeling the life seep from your soul, that was when you knew you were alive.

And it wasn't becuase I was naive, or ignorant. It wasn't because I needed the thrill, or needed to understand what made this man tick, it was morbid curiosity that found me 3 miles from shore on a small piece of fiberglass and wood.

While the human race can build ships that roar to the heavens, and can construct buildings that dwarf the trees, nothing they do can match, not even contemplate the true power of the waves. Each rush of it felt like a steam train, rushing down around you, every ripple of white and blue slithering around you seems to tug and call, a Medusa of nature that tempts you down to Davy Jones.

And he stood there, on the rock, miles away while I sat there on that board. My teeth smashed together in nervous excitement, my body trembled at the curse of the rush, as if all the drugs I had ever taken had come back to haunt me in that brief moment, all the hash and coke that had shuddered through my veins, driving me to the brink over and over.

My hands felt clammy and cold, and my mind flashed back to a time of the mortuary, where the deathly silence was more earth shatteringly cold than the temperature could ever be.

I felt dead already.

My eyes squinted in the bright light that burst from the sky, and the waves underneath me rolled and screamed as I waited. He was standing there, I knew he was, just watching, watching to see if I could understand what it was that he did.

The waves were inhuman... they were so strong, so incredibly impossible to understand that my mind started to ache just trying to watch them. Tears started to fill my eyes as my fear exploded deep within me. There was no rescue, there was no friend nearby. I was alone, like I had always been.

And I looked to the cliff where I knew where he was standing, and the knot of anger within me that felt like a hole in the universe ripped to life. My hands threw themselves at the water with anger, cutting through the waves and the energy to pull me and my board forwards.

The timing made me sick, the thought of a slight miscalculation killing me made me curse around a mouthful of saliva that I had forgotten to swallow. Out here, it was difficult to remember to breathe.

The waves grew like monsters rising from graves, their hands of power determined to catch you, to drag you down. I slipped round so my ass pointed at them, mocking them with every ounce of my being.

My breath slipped from my lungs when the wave hit me, it's force knocking everything I could think of out of me. I screamed in fear as I was pushed forwards, but had the sense to slam those fingers forwards, to grab the board and push, pushing my legs straight, my body up, my soul into life.

And I curved down the wave, the power and energy and life and passion all bottled up beneath me, and I roared my disbelief to the skies. I felt small, insignificant, I felt like I was nothing, nothing in this sea of power.

But I felt extraordinary.

That was what he said, when he stood upon that hill. Are you ordinary? Or are you more?

And I knew... as I flew forwards, that I was not content with ordinary, I was not happy with life plain. Life was too short for questions, for queries, and I would not allow myself to return to my home and just sit there.

My green eyes flashed in the light, and the waves seemed to cower at my determination.

I would not hide anymore.