"She kept swimming, But that ocean had no shores."

Arabella Karve I've lived so long with pain that I don't think I've ever had an existence without it.

I think of me and pain as two trees, two trees that were planted beside one another. We learned how to live and grow together, how to survive this cruel world with only each other to protect ourselves.

Our branches became indistinguishable from one another, intertwined and woven together.

But slowly we have grown apart, just like everything does in the end. Our branches no longer one, our existence becoming severed like a forked road destined for two different journeys.

Though deep down I know that no matter how far apart we have grown, how diverged our branches are, under the soil and back to the very beginning of our existence, our roots are intertwined and tangled together as one.

I can run and change and pretend as much as I want, but I will never escape the origin of my entity that is rooted in pain.

Maybe it's because I am an error in this world, because I am a girl who didn't die when she was supposed to.

I have been left as a corpse rotting away beneath the skin of a girl who has survived against the odds of the entire world.

And the funniest part of it all is the irony that I survive, barely, again and again and again. The world is incapable of killing me and yet I've spent every hour of the life I keep living resisting the urge to end it myself.

But it doesn't matter because I never could. There has always been this unexplainable reason I never went through with it. Whenever I even thought about it there was this familiar yet unknown presence that tasted like the night and was the endless promise of something better.

And even as I was enveloped and drowning in the unbearable pain that became my life, I somehow survived because of that promise and it became the last thread of stary hope I had to cling onto.

I think about all of those nights of waiting as I wander around the darkness, lost in some endless void of nothingness.

I can't remember how I got here, how I ended up falling into some crack in the universe where there is nothing but me and all of my thoughts that have been dug up from the buried reminiscences of my broken soul.

I feel the faint throb of pain and ache somewhere in the distance, but it is too far away to fully grasp.

I can't tell if it's my heart, or maybe my head.

Is it even my pain?

My body feels like a faint whisper in this darkness, like the cage around me that I am so lost inside.

I can't find my way back out.

I think I might be stuck in this endless ocean forever, stuck swimming under the dark water of my own murky and straying thoughts.

Maybe I am dead.

Maybe the world finally grew bored of using me as its puppet for entertainment. Grew bored of playing all its cruel jokes on me, deciding it's no longer as fun as it was in the beginning.

Or maybe I'm dying and sinking further down to my forever. I can't even bring myself to be sad about it, for I don't fight, I just let my limp body become submerged into the warmth.

I let it take me, and I close my eyes, ready for the silence and painlessness that this void had to offer.

A sudden wave of regret washes over me as I give into the riptide dragging me under.

I'm not only giving up on myself, I hear an echo far away, somehow reaching me even under the soundless water.

Who else am I giving up on?

No one would care, if anything everyone's lives would be filled with less work and they would probably thank the world for finally giving them a break.

But there is someone.

The faint smell of fresh rain on the horizon and pine trees on a quiet night engulf me, and the scent is so familiar and comforting that it smells like home.

A voice that is not my own finally shatters the silence of my mind,

"Don't fucking touch her!"

That voice.

I don't know what suddenly compels my lifeless limbs, what compels the strength I thought I no longer had, but I start fighting.

I fight against the water pulling me under and I swim and swim and swim out of this painless sea that wants to keep me so bad.

I no longer want to give up, I want to see him and I want to protect him and I want to hear his voice again and tell him just how much I love him.

I swim towards my light and I swim towards him.

The sound of fists landing against skin again and again fill my ears, mixing with pained grunts and breathless coughing.

I am fighting and crying in pain, about to reach the surface when I feel my body being lifted off the cold ground, becoming weightless in arms that are too weak and too thin to be his. It hurts how I am held, it's too rough and careless.

But it hurts even more to hear his screaming and desperate yelling as I am carried away. His voice becomes a faint cry in the distance that I hold onto, wishing I could catch it in my hand and tuck it away in my pocket to keep forever.

I am pulled back under.

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Word count: 946:) Just a little baby chapter xx Hope you enjoyed! Please remember to like and comment.

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