🏝️ S1 EP3 "C-A-M-P-F-I-R-E-S-O-N-G Song" : Run Me Down

“You see, as human beings, our nervous system is hardwired for comfort, whereas the essence of what makes us, us. Some would say our soul is hardwired for growth. And it’s managing that dynamic tension between how good a comfort zone feels and the innate calling of our potential that lies outside of that that causes the frustration for most people and keeps them on that hamster wheel of mediocrity.” ~ Peter Sage.

See, the thing about me, however, is since birth, I refused to conform to my innate wiring; in fact, I had a particular affinity for fighting anything that had the slightest semblance of normalcy. Consequently, that made all the difference.

I sunk into the waves while their ferocious claws bore hooks through my throat and minaciously suppressed me under the vast horizons of its fluid being. Each reaping hand proudly pounds against its chest. Continuously ringing this triumphant and spiritual chantey, barbarically aiming to submerge me under its war cry. But as the storm continued, it wasn’t the endless collision of the tides that rang through my ears nor the rushing tendrils slithering through my canals. No! It was the sound of sirens drudged through my mind. Sirens flooded my thoughts, my face flushed blue, and my lungs burned red as they grew engorged from the torrents thrashing against their walls. Filling to the brim until, with a loud pop, the oceans fade to black.

I washed up against silky white sands. Sands engendered waning comfort were now in an ebb and flowed with the tide. It felt as if with every handful of sand, the waves would tug at the draining weighted blanket cast over me by the nebular grains. Don’t let me fool you; this was a constant brawl. An endless struggle between the fragile façade of solace and the stark reality that I was anything but ok. But this war was tactile; the battles continued for months, and the war a lifetime. Each punch approached at a leisurely, almost sedated speed. But they hit harder than a scene from a Shonen, and let me tell you, over the years, they’ve left me tattered and bruised. At this moment, under the weight of these pearly sands, I yearned to throw in the towel and finally let the curtains drop and let the world fade back into nothingness. But as I was ready to retreat to the ethereal line of comfort to regress back into my body’s natural wiring, the ocean’s vigilant hand jostled my foot. A bouncy wave overtook my body, reminding me that there was so much I had promised to atone for. And a promise is a promise: I will always keep those.

I stood up and gazed upon a path of tiki torches as they were set ablaze by blue wisps one by one marking a way through a thick of palm trees that stood latently still in the calm breeze. With nowhere else to go, I Walked into the thick of it, Each fire igniting a new emotion within my soul like an oil painting gradually being consumed with Tartarean teals, loathsome lapis, aggrieved azures, Maverick, Resolute, Arctic – Simply: Blues. My heart was lit by passionate anguish I couldn’t place as I continued to amble through this candlelit road. Memories of times past cluttered my brain to the point they were indiscernible. Moments of walking hand in hand at the riverwalk were entangled with pots and pans flying across the kitchen, red steeped bruises, and broken ribs that wept blue under high-pitched screeches radiating from street lights. Scenes of padded walls and passioned melodies on rooftops. An Episode upstairs on the storming night. A Love story that mingled with immense friction in the astral plains of my mind. Significant events, like planets rotating through this star-crossed solar system, and every component like atoms clashing cacophonously blurring the picture, colliding angrily until space collapses under the weight of times nearly forgotten, crumbling into nothing more than T.V. static. Suddenly, my foot was met with the irate touch of flame, and my vision was halted back to reality, where I stood to burn amid a campfire. The sands erupted around me, winds parading about as a set of camping chairs flailed frivolously at its mercy.

The flames flickered egregiously in the wind whipping back and forth, crackling like iritic white noise in my wake. flashing almost irregularly, as if a malfunctioning signal corrupting my vision. distorting my reality until I could press through the oppressive storm to see friends circled around the campfire laughing over natty lite and playful plumes of recreation. But I stood stagnant in the flames, being berated by her hands, ignited with the rage of another night's sins. the tears searing down her cheeks. Inaudible screams erupted through the silence waking me from my slumber and reminding me this was more than a dream. I reached for her only to realize I was repressed behind the polarized glass. I pressed and begged for the crystalline sheet to shatter, to give me one more chance to fix what I'd broken. but every ounce of pressure only stood to infuriate the inferno as it flashed with such intensity that it split the spectrum into an incandescent rainbow of misery. Corroding my vision until all I could see was a viscously corrupted rainbow trapped in T.V. static. Static, desperately trying to find a signal back to the happier days, begging to reach tranquillity, pleading for the hush of forgiveness.

I realized now I was stuck in a snow globe of sorts. A souvenir from a desert storm. Notably, this storm was one I never dreamed to forget. But for whatever reason, He – or maybe She – decided on this reminiscent night to shake the black blizzard into an enraged wakening. I attempted to shield my eyes, but even still, the sand bore into my sleeve and grated at my eyelids: forced to see. I aimed to mute my ears, but the winds sheered at my pads until they hung limply from my breast: forced to hear. Evermore, I tried to drown the blistering storm from my mind and retire to a brighter memory. Still, the dust clouds were unrelenting, casting their void blanket and smothering me under its absolute gravity: forced to remember that one fatal night in the underpass.

Meanwhile, the winds grew to a cycling roar; and the dust devil encapsulating me began to look more and more like blinding snow.