Faded

NOTE: For those struggling with their mental health, it might not be recommended to read this. TW suicide and death.

Paul slowly came out of the ocean with a weird feeling radiating through all of his being.

He was cold. Cold enough to not really perceive the motions of the waves against his skin, cold enough for the soles of his feet to not hurt when they were pressed onto the pebbles under them as Paul took effortless steps to approach the shore.

His head was above water, but he felt as if more water was moving inside his brain than around his body. Because his head was above water, he saw that it was night outside.

That’s odd, he thought. When did it get dark? How long have I been swimming for?

The water level had descended under his knees, yet he didn’t feel any colder or warmer. Near oceans or seas, temperatures drop considerably during the night. So, Paul expected his body to tense and shiver after stepping out of the water, but his body was stuck in that numb kind of cold that he couldn’t really explain if someone asked him about it.

Not that someone would ask me about it… Or about anything, really…

People often ask other people ‘How are you?’, but it’s a hollow inquiry made out of plain curtesy, for which they expect ‘Fine.’ as an automatic reply, or a brief account of what a person has been doing lately, said in a cheerful tone.

People are not so welcoming of negative replies to that inquiry. If someone were to answer with ‘I’m not really okay.’ or anything indicative of an unwell state, the people who asked the question get thrown off their ax, they become uncomfortable and seek to fix the situation fast. If they can’t, they will cease asking such questions, because they will want to avoid becoming uncomfortable.

Over the last two years, or maybe longer than that, Paul had gradually faded more and more into the background. Partially by choice, partially because of the unspoken unwillingness of those around him to become uncomfortable, since Paul was unwilling to say neither ‘Fine.’ nor the truth.

As he made his way back to the hotel where he, various family members and various acquaintances were lodged, Paul saw people dancing on the sand in front of open pubs that played loud, commercial music everyone could have fun with. It made him uncomfortable.

Over the recent months, it had gotten increasingly uncomfortable seeing people be cheerful around him because it made him painfully aware of how different and distant he was from such people. It had reached an unbearable level and it felt like other people’s happiness was mocking his feelings that were very much on the opposite end of the spectrum.

The latest instance when it had gotten unbearable was at his cousin’s wedding. That was the reason so many of Paul’s family members and acquaintances had gathered at that tropical resort for a few days. His cousin had always dreamed of a big wedding held in a tropical paradise. So, after the man of her dreams proposed, they waited three years to save up money and made the dream wedding a reality.

How long has it been since the wedding? Was it yesterday? Two days ago? I can’t remember…

It wasn’t that strange for Paul to not remember. So many people were so cheerful, or pretended to be, everywhere around him for such an extended period of time, that it made Paul dizzy and he mentally logged off to not risk some defense mechanisms kicking in and making him run away. As such, the whole wedding was a blur in Paul’s mind. He only remembered fading into the background as always, trying to find comfort in his favorite whisky, and feeling some physical pain.

Maybe my tie was too tight. I think I had trouble breathing at some point…

Paul wondered if he was starting to have serious memory problems, because he couldn’t even remember how he had gotten inside his hotel room. In order to save up on expenses, he had to share the room with his sister Patricia, who was three years younger than him but so much better at living life. He expected her to be in the room at that late hour, but he didn’t expect their parents to be there as well. None of them seemed to have noticed Paul coming in though.

“What should we do?” his mother asked his father with a tear-stained face. “We have to check-out in less than two days, but the search-and-rescue teams and the police have barely started searching.”

“I’ll go to an international bank tomorrow and apply for a loan. You and Patricia can go back on the scheduled flight, I’ll cancel my ticket, find some cheap lodging and stay here until they find him,” his father declared with a stoic face that looked morphed by lack of sleep.

“Find who?” Paul asked, but everyone seemed to ignore his question and were continuing to ignore his presence there.

It was a very familiar feeling for Paul, and not only when he was among his family members, so he thought he would just fade into the background again as the conversation faded into heavy silence.

“If he drowned in the ocean, they’ll probably never find him,” Patricia intervened and broke that silence.

“Don’t say that!” her mother shouted. “We don’t know anything yet. He could’ve just passed out somewhere from drinking all that whisky. He left his phone at the hall, so he probably just can’t contact us if he got taken to a hospital or something. He’s still alive and they’ll find him!”

“He’s been missing for nearly two days!” Patricia shouted back. “There aren’t that many places he can reach on foot on this island and there are only three hospitals here. The police would’ve found him by now if he were still on the island, but he isn’t. He said he didn’t want to come to the wedding and you ignored it! He felt like shit throughout it and you know it! He’s had depression for years and you know it! But you didn’t want to see it because it’s inconvenient and uncomfortable. Just like you don’t wanna see it now that he most likely drowned him–”

“That’s enough, Patricia!” her father shouted and cut her off.

Tears filled Patricia’s eyes and she ran out of the room. So many things in that conversation indicated that it had been about Paul, but it hadn’t clicked in his mind yet and he only realized he had followed after his sister when she reached the shore, where she started screaming into the distance.

“Paul! Come back here! Come back, you hear me?”

Patricia was already crying, but now her chest started shaking violently and her sobbing joined the sounds of the waves in piercing the silence of the night. She let herself fall on the sand, brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, weakly letting out words through the sobs, “Please come back… I’m okay with being wrong. Just come back, okay? Please, Paul…”

Finally, it was all coming back to Paul.

***

All that cheerfulness around him at the wedding had made him feel dizzy and horrible. Combined with all that whisky, it had swept him into a state of altered perceptions. The laughter, the music, the lights were making him feel like he was suffocating, so he got up and tried escaping this situation for a bit.

“Where are you going? Are you okay?” Patricia asked him when he was exiting the wedding hall.

“I’m going to get some air,” he answered in a faded voice as he stumbled outside.

“Do you want me to come with you?” his sister yelled after him with concern in her voice.

“No!” he yelled back, hurrying away from that place with too much light, too much music and too much joy that made him feel distant from the world and people around him.

When he reached the shore, it was quiet. There was only a bit of moonlight coming down and getting reflected by the wavy water. The scenery in front of him felt like a tranquil and dark blue background that Paul could fade into to find some peace. The call from it was strong. The feeling inside him was also strong.

Let it end! Let it end! I can’t take it anymore. Please just let it end…

Without thinking about anything else, consumed by this simple yet strong sentiment, Paul approached the dark waves and took his last living steps.

***

It was too late now. It was probably too late even for regrets. It was definitely too late for hope.

Patricia somehow knew her brother was dead, but some hope stubbornly lingered within her. Unlike her parents, who were hopeful because they couldn’t yet accept the grim reality, Patricia was sure that Paul was dead, but she couldn’t get rid of that pesky hope to start fully accepting and fully grieving. That hope wasn’t rooted in rational arguments or baseless optimism, it came from her strong need to see her brother again. That’s why it was so hard to cut that hope off.

Paul cried alongside his sister on the shore that night. He thought she most likely wasn’t aware of it, but who knows? Paul had just recently realized his sister had been aware of his struggle and it was his fault he hadn’t realized that sooner. Almost on a monthly basis, Patricia asked him, “Hey, bro. Do you wanna maybe talk to a therapist or something? I can help you find a good one.” But Paul had dismissed the idea and treated his sister’s concern as background noise.

Yes, Patricia was uncomfortable with Paul not being fine and she sought to fix the situation fast partly to not feel that discomfort anymore. But, at the same time, her concern was genuine and she didn’t stop asking even if she received a negative answer every time. Paul had just lumped her in with all the other people he felt distant towards, among which there probably were a few others he had made false assumptions about. Had he realized these things sooner, maybe things would have turned out differently. But it was too late now.

***

Paul followed Patricia around throughout the next day. He heard many conversations about him, but nothing emotionally impacted him, whether in a good or a bad way. He was there, but no one noticed him. Faded into the background. A feeling and situation that was almost synonymous with him both before and after death. It was familiar territory, but something was somehow different.

He couldn’t tell anyone where his body was and he didn’t know either. Other than that, he didn’t feel like he had anything he wanted to say anyway. This was also familiar territory. But somehow it was painful knowing that, now, even if he wanted to say or do something and connect with the people around him, he couldn’t step out of the background anymore.

“Patricia,” a familiar voice suddenly called out.

“Kurt? Why are you here?” she asked and Paul almost asked the same thing before he remembered that no one could hear his voice.

Kurt had been Paul’s friend. Or had he? There was something different about how he looked in Paul’s eyes at that moment compared to how Paul saw him in the past. Paul felt his insides become unsettled.

“I just had to come,” Kurt explained. “Your family’s probably having a rough time handling everything in such a foreign part of the world. I’ll help with whatever I can.”

“Thank you,” Patricia said, then hesitated with what she wanted to say next. “Uhm… I know this is unlikely, but… did you get any kind of sign from him during the last couple of days?”

“No,” Kurt said after taking in a shaky breath and before pulling out his phone. “You said he left his phone at the wedding hall, right? Even before that, he didn’t answer me no matter what I texted or how many times I called… I just… had this bad feeling and I… really wanted to hear his voice, but…”

Paul could see the phone screen and, on it, there were at least a dozen text messages from Kurt that he had not read on the day of the wedding. It started with a causal ‘Hey, man. How’s it going at the wedding?’, followed by ‘Is your roaming on? Can I call you?’ and ‘I won’t bother you if you’re busy, just let me know you haven’t downed a bottle of whisky yet, alright?’ and many more texts that sounded increasingly concerned.

Paul had seen the first two texts, but he had been too stuck inside his own head at that time to reply. He also felt that there was no point in replying or having a phone call since he had nothing positive to say.

And there it was. The reason why Paul felt unsettled and why Kurt suddenly looked different to him. He had also treated Kurt as background noise when his friend tried reaching out to him. His friend that never viewed Paul as part of the background, that came to the other side of the world because of him, that would’ve surely come to him if Paul had considered for even a moment that someone did actually want to hear the negative things and know more about why Paul wasn’t okay.

Paul felt his whole being shake and ache, despite not having a physical body anymore, and he couldn’t even grab onto objects to help stabilize himself. So many emotions came crashing inside him like vicious waves and his awareness was absorbed by the many realizations and regrets that were coming forth.

***

By the time Paul managed to come out of his mind, it was already dusk. He looked for Patricia and Kurt and found them in the middle of another conversation.

“How long will the police and the search-and-rescue teams be looking for him?” Kurt asked.

“Two weeks tops,” Patricia answered bitterly. “After that, families can pay for search-and-recovery­ teams to continue looking if they really need to find a body… I don’t know if you can get a death certificate without a body. I don’t even know if you can have a funeral without a body… The worst part is that, without a body, I don’t know if you can stop clinging onto this pesky and painful, groundless hope…”

“Is there really no chance of him being rescued instead of… recovered?”

“Do you feel like there is?”

Kurt’s expression became clouded and he looked away instead of replying. After a long silence, he asked Patricia, “Can… Can you show me which direction he went in after leaving the wedding hall? Please…”

Later, Patricia guided Kurt to the entrance of the wedding hall and pointed out the direction Paul headed in when she last saw him. Paul really wanted to tell them the details of what happened, but neither of them heard his voice and it pained him when he realized again that he should have talked when he had the chance and possibility to talk. Several silent moments later, Kurt suddenly went in a different direction than the one indicated by Patricia.

“Where’re you going?” she asked.

“To find a liquor store.”

***

Paul followed Kurt and saw him buying a bottle of Paul’s favorite whisky. Afterwards, he went back to the wedding hall and closed his eyes for a few minutes. When he started moving, he somehow managed to perfectly retrace Paul’s last steps, as if he could see inside Paul’s troubled mind from a few days ago. When he got to the shore, it was late into the night. Kurt remained still while staring at the dark water that seemed like it stretched until the end of the world.

“I brought you your favorite poison,” Kurt started, holding up the bottle as if he was showing it to Paul who was somewhere out into the ocean. “Maybe you’ll feel like talking to me now…”

Kurt went on telling Paul many things as if he were actually there, without knowing that he really was there. Paul wept throughout most of that and let out apologies that never reached anyone’s ears.

An hour later, Kurt opened the bottle and started pouring half of the whisky into the ocean while saying, “I hope you’re okay wherever you are. But, knowing you, you’re probably struggling with something you’re not talking about again, so you probably need this. Drink up. Let the bad things fade into the night. And start your morning in a better place.”

Kurt then moved back from the waves, sat on the sand and took a mouthful of whisky for himself.

“It’s just me doing the talking again… No problem, I’m used to this. I can do this forever, but… I wanted you to talk to me!” Kurt shouted as he slammed the bottle into the sand. “So many times… I asked you so many times! Why couldn’t you just talk to me, huh? Why?”

Kurt started crying his heart out and repeating the same things until his voice broke. Paul could only cry alongside him. He felt overwhelming pain, overwhelming regret, but also overwhelming gratitude for having had people like Kurt and Patricia in his life, although he hadn’t seen that when he should have.

Paul looked up at the stars and thought about all the things he could have done differently. Some traditions say that souls of the dead stay among the living for a few days before really fading away and Paul felt like his time was running out. How ironic, he thought. The days in which he felt the most vivid, present, important and cared for, were the days in which he slowly faded away forever.