A Love So Deep

(Content Warning: A suicide is attempted in this chapter.)

I stand alone, my elbows on the railing, watching the dark ocean water churn into waves along the gleaming white hull of the cruise ship. I can hear the distant laughter of people having fun mingled with upbeat music. In my hands is my phone, on the screen the final words of my short and miserable life.

The message simply read: “I tried Mom and Dad. I really tried. I love you.” I had written a dozen lengthy notes over these last few weeks but no matter how I wrote it or how long I made it I simply could not convey the despair inside of me. Some things just couldn’t be written. In the end these eleven words would have to do. A meager last message for a meager life. It was fitting.

This far out to sea it would cost money to send this over the ship’s cellular service but that hardly mattered now. I had gone into so much debt taking this trip. I just wanted to see somewhere beautiful before the end, and I had. The cruise went from L.A. to Hawaii and then onto Guam before finishing in Japan. Guam and Japan I would not get to see, but Hawaii had been everything I dreamed it would be. A little piece of heaven on Earth. Knowing that I could rest after it allowed me to actually enjoy the experience.

I read the words one last time and reflect. I had tried. I tried it all. I tried embracing my Korean heritage, and failed. Try as I might I couldn’t conform to the expectations of the maternal side of my family, it sure didn’t help that I was never properly taught the language and didn’t know what they were saying most of the time. I tried embracing my Cuban heritage, and failed. I could never seem to find my place in my father’s machismo steeped family, most of them just thought I was weird and avoided me whenever possible. I tried simply living like the second generation American that I was, and failed. It wasn’t so easy to “fit in” in the cliquey and intolerant little town that I grew up in, though Lord knows I tried. I tried living as a man, and failed. I was naturally small and effeminate and it just never felt right. My interests didn’t align with sports or cars or hunting or any of the various ‘masculine’ things my dad had tried to get me into to ‘toughen me up’. I tried living as a woman, and failed. I wasn’t accepted by my parents or family, even though I looked so androgynous naturally I was looked at like a freak by the few friends I had despite their hollow words of support, and despite all the progress made in recent years the world wasn’t yet ready accept a woman like me, at least where I came from. Gender-wise I was a fucking confused disaster. I tried being a student, and failed. I kept being told that I was smart but that I had to develop better focus and discipline. I tried being a wage , and failed. I just could not take day after day of the same soul sapping grind just so that I could barely buy groceries and pay bills. I tried to be straight, and failed. I tried to be queer, and failed. Every attempt at a relationship, be it man or woman, failed. I couldn’t even blame them. Who could want me? In the end I tried just to be myself and be alone and say to hell with the rest of the world…and I failed at that too. My standing here right now was proof of that. I didn’t fit in anywhere, I didn’t match well with anyone, and I couldn’t even be by myself. Someone other than me could have made it work. Any of it. All of it. They could have found a place to belong. But not me, I wasn’t strong or brave enough. As a human being I was a complete and utter failure.

Would my parents respond to this text with sadness…or relief? They would act out the former but the more likely truth was sadly the latter. I was doing them a favor. I whisper “I love you” as I hit send, wait long enough to make sure it had gone through, then toss my phone to watch it fall to the Pacific. This was the spot. We were over the Mariana Trench. The deepest, darkest place on Earth. Once down there I would never be seen again. Even if somebody did figure out what happened there would be no rescue and no body retrieval possible down there. To simply disappear from the world completely, it is all I ever truly wanted. I had chosen the lowest and furthest back deck I could find specifically to lessen the chances of people seeing my fall on the way down. I didn’t want any fuss made. I hoped they could all sail on so everybody could go about their pleasant vacations. They would be in Guam before anybody would have any clue the standoffish loner was gone.

I feel a deep calm as I take in a long invigorating breath of the fresh ocean air and look out toward the endless horizon. Blue sky, cotton white clouds, a warm breeze…a perfect day. I liked that. It felt right.

This was it. Looking left and right to make sure there were no witnesses I vault up onto the rail with a bit of difficulty thanks to the ankle and wrist weights I had concealed beneath my loose clothes. Perched on the rail I look down at the long drop below me, no worse than some of the cliff dives I’d done back in Hawaii. After only a moment’s pause let myself slip off the edge. From my high school years of diving and swimming my muscle memory takes over. My body straightens, my legs stiffen, I suck in a breath, and I ready myself for impact. My eyes still trained on the horizon I fall, as if in slow motion, until…BOOSH!

Like a bullet I plunge into the dark, and surprising warm, briny water. The instant I feel myself engulfed and sense myself sinking…doubts, doubts, DOUBTS! Through sheer of will I keep my body streamlined like a torpedo as I watch the wavering surface recede above. The massive shape of the cruise ship chugs on its way West without me. I furiously fight back these rising doubts as they close in around me like the dark Pacific I was submerged in.

Another month, another year, maybe things would have come together for me. Maybe Japan would have given me opportunities. I would be bankrupt after this trip, I would be to move home. Maybe hitting rock bottom would have been the place to start again. Mom would weep at my weakness and I would disappoint my father one last time. Maybe this wasn’t the way! Maybe had I waited just a little longer…NO! Not now! Why second thoughts now!? It was too late! Please God, let me do this ONE THING right. My life had been one fuck up after another, at least let me face my in peace.

I tried. I tried to commit suicide with dignity and, in keeping with who I was, I fail at that too. I knew in my heart it was already too deep as I start to frantically claw my hands through the cooling water. My lungs burning I kick and stroke with my arms and try to swim back to the surface. No, no, not yet! Just one more chance! The wrist and ankle weights attached to me fulfill their purpose and keep me from swimming up. I try to tear at the ones at my wrists. With all my strength I battle for a life I didn’t even want.

With each passing second it gets darker and colder. Further and further I am pulled from the beautiful blue surface waters into the frigid inky depths. I heave and end up blowing half the breath inside of me out. I watch the bubbles rise to the now distant surface. My lungs ached for another breath to feed my straining muscles but I knew the next one would be my last. Eventually it would not be denied. The last of my breath is from me in not a scream but a whimper, the sound swallowed by the liquid void around me. I pull back into my body nothing but dark briny water.

My body convulses in ever weakening spasm as my vision and consciousness begins to fade, my wide terror filled gaze frozen on the dimming light above.

Mom…Dad…I tried.

The last thing I see, a final impossible phantasm from my oxygen starved brain, is the dark shape of a swimmer between me and the surface. A swimmer with the head, shoulders, arms, and torso of a man…and the long sinuous tail of a fish.