Into the Ocean

The sea is much louder than any city she has ever been to. The sounds of the city fade in and out of her ears; she could tune it out then. But the sea cannot be ignored. The constant beat of the waves nauseates her. The waves are all she can hear when she opens the faded red door to her sea-side shack. In a lonely house on the sea, she finds it hard to think of anything else but the loudness of the outside. The walls within are an all-encompassing quiet that wraps her up and insulates her away. 

The outer walls are stained gray from decades of sea spray, the water leaving splotchy patterns of dried salt and sand. The roof is red to match the door, made of tin that makes no noise when it rains. Inside the house is deafening; in a cotton-stuffed ear sort of way. 

The inside walls are white. The color is too empty for a house of this age. Along with the wrinkled bedspread, the wobbly table at the window, and the fridge emptied of photos; everywhere she looks is a dull white. At night, the moon always has one phase: a wide eye that lights the single open room of the house. She has no need for the orange glow of a candle, though she sometimes wishes for one. 

Lately, the only time she allows herself to see true darkness is when she hides under the sheets and closes her eyes. 

The white of the house is like the noise inside it, devoid of anything. If she sits very still and holds her breath, she can still hear one faint sound. Her heartbeat doesn't change at the raging thoughts of the dark sea when she's within her walls. 

The firm clink of her single coffee mug cannot be heard by her. The butter dish sits left untouched next to the cooling slices of toast on the soft paper towel. She hears nothing. She hasn't heard anything since she left the city four months ago. When the final heat waves of summer were fading and the nights gradually began to drop, preparing the leaves for their eventual fall. She fell into the house that night, exhausted by the changes from noise to silence. The white house was dwarfed by the large dark sea beside it. When she made the first turn off the road, she saw herself as that tiny house. 

She has found solace in the quiet of the house, but she longs for what she knew as the sea before it was so dark and loud. There are days when she can face the loudness of the sea and feel the brisk wind on her reddened cheeks. The color of them is like the door she peeks out of. She can only step so close to the frigid water with her bare toes before she thinks the wind picks her up and swoops her back into that quiet house. 

She will then wipe the spotless counter with a dry rag, and then sweep the floors with a bristle-less broom; she'll move over to the window facing the sea and wipe it down only to stop before it can squeak out its cleanliness. She does not know whether to face the music outside or remain within the safe quiet. She doesn't know if she will like the sounds better when submerged under the dark waves. 

She gives herself an ultimatum; if she can still not stand the white noise of the house by the new year, she will walk into the sea. 

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The winds are screaming at her; screaming to make a choice. Fall and embrace the noise or stumble back down to the quiet house. She can't think, she can barely see through the rains; she wishes she could hear the rain on her little red tin roof. She thinks about the rumble of the exhaust on her twenty-year-old car. The clicking of her dog's nails on hardwood floors. God, does she miss that dog. When everything was too loud as a kid, she would bury her face into that old girl's side and pet her soft ears until her brain would stop humming like a disorderly beehive. 

She finds herself pathetic; a young adult whose best combatant against overstimulation was her elderly childhood pet. She misses everything about her childhood. At its peak, it was full of the stomping of her many younger siblings, heady sandalwood incense drying out her eyes, and the smell of fall-time butternut squash. It was full of noise and the warmth that followed it. 

But even in that warm house, there were days it would grow cold. Mornings when the hardwood was too chilly without someone to warm it with the woodstove. Without the excited shouts and clambers in the tiny unfinished kitchen. Towards the end, the house kept getting colder and quieter until it was entirely silent. 

'Have you driven by the house lately?'

'Yeah, I saw it... you?'

'... the woodstove is gone. It was sitting on the porch. Why take it out?'

'Well, it was old, still worked but still pretty old. You know that stove had been there over forty years.'

'Yeah, I know, Nana and Papa put it in themselves, right?'

'Yep, and it did a pretty good job all these years. I'm sure they're putting in a new one.'

'... they haven't done much else by the looks of it. Why let the house just sit there?'

'Money, time. It needs a lot of work. A lot of projects left unfinished.'

'We would have finished them eventually... we still could’ve if they hadn't kicked us out.'

'It's been years, we were better off with a new start, right?'

'Yeah... a new start.'

Below the waves is quiet. She can no longer hear her heartbeat. The humming of the beehive in her mind is gone. She has been submerged so long that the cold has faded, and, with her eyes closed, she can pretend that the warmth she feels is from sitting in front of that old woodstove. 

She can fill her mind with any sound she likes.