Rhythm

TW: Gore, Suicide/Self Harm, Loss of a Parent, Mental Health

The saltwater licks up the wall of the cliff face as a cool breeze carries the scent into my nose. The rocks below are grey and jagged, but rather than interrupting the calm ambiance, it contributes in splitting the crashing waves. The rhythmic fwoosh of a wave coming and retreating echoes below, and the wind softly whips back and forth. Somewhere a crow caws to its own rhythm. That's something I've noticed, that everything seems to follow a rhythm; Erratic or consistent, in synchrony or out with the rest of the world. And I often find that those separate from the collective are the most bold, glaring, and unique. When I was just ten, my mother lie on a hospital bed, and that rhythmic beeping plagued me. I did not know much, but I knew it meant she was dying. It's not normal to grow up with only one parent, but I was different once that beep became one steady ringing. I hear it still, that pitch, replaying in my ears whenever I manage to immerse myself in silence. In school, I tapped my fingers anxiously; matching the rhythm I had heard nights before. Slowly speeding up. Climaxing. I learned to tense my forearm and wrist to make my hand flutter, and to time each hand in the moment between taps of the other. I never could quite get that perfect beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

A tree to my left sway, the leaves shaking as the pace and direction of the sway shifts; A soft sound, like someone making a shushing sound and the sound that the letter F makes at the same time. A whole forest lay behind me, thousands of trees and plenty of birds, squirrels, deer... When I was eleven, my father gifted me a guitar. He loved guitar, and made it a point to take me to concerts every month so I could indulge in all kinds of music. When he asked, I hadn't the heart to tell him I didn't care, to tell him that it hurt to hear, to tell him that I wished it was him in that hospital bed. So I told him guitar. And his eyes lit up, the way I thought they might, and he got me my own. There is a certain genius that comes with music, to be able to recognize pitches and chords, harmonies and melodies. A genius that, unlike my dad, I did not possess. I had training and sessions constantly, yet all I could do consistently was play discordant notes and jerk my arm back and forth, fingers flying over the strings until they bled. I created chaos, noise, not music.

A branch snaps behind me, and I do not look back. I know without looking that the deer who has been sneaking toward me is staring at me. It is waiting for me to turn so it can bolt away. I will not turn, I won't give in. I focus on the blue sky, an uninterrupted mass of bright blue that paints the ocean a similar color. The deer's heart beats in time with mine, at least I imagine it does. When I was twelve, I had my first episode. I was playing War with a deck of cards, across the table was my father. My breathing got heavier and I slowly lost sense of where I was. A pounding so rapid no other sound was allowed into my ears filled my head, and drowned out my own thoughts. I slipped in and out of consciousness, catching glimpses of my dad, then him on the phone, then an ambulance, then I woke up in the hospital. They had connected to me one of those beeping machines, and the doctors told my father and I that I had PSVT. I hardly heard anything he said over the beep, beep, beep, beep. I caught one word: "fatal" and nearly freaked out, but I was reassured he had actually said "not" before that.

I let out a deep breath, seeing the smoke leave my mouth and dissipate into the air. Far, far to my right, a storm brews. I see that veil, the sheet of rain next to a complete absence of rain that looks like a curtain. And I see a white bolt jump between the dark clouds. When I was thirteen, I slit my wrist. I took the razor out of my father's Gillette and hid away in my room, letting the deep red ooze onto a desk that I built with my dad. It pooled atop my arm where I cut, and I pressed play on a YouTube video titled "100-400 BPM Metronome, Steady Increase". I focused on the sound, willing my heart to match it. Then, for as long as I remained awake, I watched the blood come out more sporadically in spurts from my twitching arm. The next day we had to buy a new desk because my blood had soaked into the wood.

The curtain has grown closer, and I can hear the thunder rippling through the air. Twice now I have felt the ground shake with the immense sound. When I was fourteen, we crashed. My dad was driving me to the hospital for another checkup (which I despised, since all they accomplished was billing insurance) when a motorcyclist tried to weave between us and another vehicle. My dad didn't see the cyclist, who fell and lodged his body under the tire. His bike went under the other, and we spun out on a bridge. An enormous semi-truck caught the body of our minivan with its trailer, so we did not fly off of the bridge; I remember the terror I felt, the pain, and then I was back in the hospital. That time insurance got billed even more.

The deer had made it near me, and was beginning to peck at the food I left upon the ground around where I stand. When I was fifteen, a classmate of mine brought a gun to school. I'd never even met him, probably because he never said anything in class. But I'd seen him in the halls the day prior, strolling along and laughing with his friends. That day he strolled along less confidently, his eyes darting back and forth. Then he reached into his backpack and I heard seven shots go off before the silence. My teacher told us all to stay where we were, huddled up against the wall in our classroom. I snuck around her and peered out the long rectangular slit in the door that passes as a window. I saw that he had shot four people, and then himself.

The thunder no longer took seconds to reach me after the flash of lightning. When I was sixteen, my father died. His chest hurt him, but the both of us had had enough of the hospital. So we waited. We waited, he ate popsicles, and we waited some more. He slumped over and never got back up.

When I was seventeen I was living with my aunt, the sister of my father. She was sad every day. She cried, and never had the time to talk to me. She provided me with food and a roof, a bed and a bathroom. Aside from that, she might as well have been dead too.

Now I am eighteen, and the first drop of rain has hit my neck. The deer is directly in front of me now, calm, comfortable. He is a buck, with massive antlers. It is a buck. Slowly, I draw a knife from my jacket, the knife I've been holding this entire time in my pocket. The buck is still immersed in the food on the ground, especially the concentration a few inches from my feet. Carefully, I reach around the deer and with one jerking motion I slit its throat and dive away. It managed to place a kick on my hip before I was out of reach, and as it toppled I realized that my hip was broken. No matter. I won't be needing it.

With standing impossible, I roll over to the edge of the cliff. Then I roll some more. For once, everything seems slow. No more noise, all I can hear is a steady rhythm of throbbing in my head. My hip feels much colder than the rest of me, but I am cold all over. The last image that burns a place into my mind is the blue sky disappearing, hidden by the dark grey clouds that bring rain and lightning and thunder. That bring darkness. It feels perfect, the slow descent. The image of the sky fading. The sea crashing into the cliff in slow motion, specks of water flying up the side.

I would be nineteen tomorrow. A sharp stone tip presses softly against my back, and suddenly everything speeds back up.